A glance at the upcoming top technology shifts in the world

Technology is a fast moving industry. What was hot two years back can easily become obsolete today. Hence, firms have to continuously keep one eye on the upcoming technology shifts so that they can strategize to align their businesses with these shifts. Let’s look at some of the recent and upcoming technology shifts around us-

1.     AI & Machine Learning- Machine learning has been around for quite some time, but with the recent advancements in Deep learning and GPU’s (Graphical processing units), they are being more popular now. Several companies have climbed aboard the AI bus. For example, Google’s Brain, Facebook’s FAIR, Amazon’s Alexa, Adobe’s Sensei etc. Research in this area have enabled companies to provide a personalized experience to their customers which they definitely appreciate.

2.     Cloud computing – This idea came about in late 2000’s when Amazon realized that the extra server capacity that it used during holidays could be used to rent out the resources on the remaining days of the year. Since then, Google and Microsoft have adopted the tag of cloud providers and added this piece of business to their portfolio. Crucially though, a lot of smaller companies and startups which realized the benefits of using cloud early on, benefitted by adopting to a faster and leaner way of getting computational resources. They ended up with less costs and faster software build times than others.

3.     Edge computing and Internet of Things – With the sudden explosion of mobile devices, edge computing and IOT have become quite significant. The processing power of latest smartphones is huge such that a lot of computation can be done on them. Companies like Google and Apple benefitted by strategizing around this by creating a marketplace for apps which could run on smartphones. Companies like Microsoft were left behind since they thought that personal computers would last for a long time. (https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/Satya-Nadella-reveals-Microsofts-one-big-mistake/articleshow/48082064.cms)

Another revolution in this space is sure to come is of Internet of things and cloudlets. Instead of computation being done fully on the cloud, part of that will be done on the smartphones etc.(edges of network). This is one key space which companies like Salesforce has started researching. (https://www.salesforce.com/products/salesforce-iot/what-is-iot-cloud/)

Thus, with such upcoming technology shifts, it’s important for companies in both tech and non-tech space (oil, gas, consultancy, aviation etc.) to embrace these and strategize and plan early on how such innovations can be utilized to their advantage. Let technology be your friend!