Top Technology Trend for 2016 And Beyond

The competition between man and machine

According to the top tier research company, Gartner Research –  2016 and beyond is all about the emerging and dramatically different relationship of man and machine.

As machines and autonomous devices get smarter (surely you’ve noticed) they acquire the ability to compete with and surpass the ability of humans to effectively replicate tasks previously assigned to humans.

One example?  Robowriters create content previously produced by humans. In fact, they shine at creating data driven content like finance and sports using algorithms and natural language generators.

Dramatic Implications

The implementation of robotics will affect nearly all areas of human endeavor from manufacturing to analytics, to life-like receptionists and assistants similar to the new humanoid introduced in Singapore.

The concept has dramatic implications for how interaction of workers, machines, management and consumers will play out in the years ahead

For instance, Gartner predicts among other planning assumptions that

• By 2018, 20% of all business content will be authored by machines.
• By 2018, 6 billion connected things will be requesting support.
• By 2020, autonomous software agents outside of human control will participate in 5% of all economic transactions.

A bit thought provoking?  Indeed!  And Gartner suggests harmonizing the interactions of autonomous devices and technologies with humans will be among the business community’s (if not humankind’s) most dramatic challenges.

For example, by 2016 spending on new Internet of things (IoT) hardware will exceed $2.5 million a minute. Plus, as digital “smarts” are increasingly incorporated into hardware and other platforms, so does the likelihood of malevolent intrusion.

Security Challenges Will Proliferate

Perhaps most importantly, this march into the future, increasingly demands that business carefully plans for the multi-faceted IT and security challenges  they will face.  Cloud participation, machine to human harmony, software, hardware all must work in unison.  On demand technology will become centric to most business paradigms.

Digital Transformation A Must

In an article by ZDNet discussing top CIO priorities for the year ahead, front and center was the need to continue work on company digital transformation. For those selling direct to the end user, digital revenues are expected to more than double in the next five years.

In all, small business, particularly retail, that has relied on a brick and mortar mentality will be increasingly at risk unless they incorporate digital technologies appropriate to their business model.  Larger concerns already grappling with the reality of a digital future must continue to create agile IT business models that can incorporate and react quickly to emerging technologies and trends.

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