Peace, harmony and good will. We hear the terms throughout the holidays but these are words that apply to technology as we move into the future. Technology continues to evolve and mature at hyper speeds. Cloud computing is creating new opportunities to harmonize platforms, services and infrastructure. The Internet of Things (IoT) is driving technology to connect everything from DevOps to services and security. Here are some of the technologies you will see dominating the tech landscape in the coming year.

Edge Computing and IoT

Smart technology means data-enormous amounts of data. The more connected our world becomes the more data is collected. For mission critical applications there is a need for hyper processing speeds and that is where edge computing comes in. Edge computing is growing quickly in popularity due to a combination of reasons including automation, speed, bandwidth, costs, maintenance, and predictive analytics. With the huge amounts of data that needs to be analyzed, there is a critical need for a faster, smarter and more cost effective data processing. Traditional computing gathers data and sends it through networks to the cloud where it all gets processed. Edge computing moves the processing of data closer to the source providing local processing of the data, saving the time it takes to send and receive data directly from the cloud.

Cloud Computing

The maturity of legacy IT architecture is a persistent challenge in an environment where technological disruption is now the norm. Start-ups are using a cloud-first model successfully and in 2018 there will be a movement of large enterprise businesses to follow suit. In this model platforms are virtualized, containerized and treated as re-useable resources that can be manipulated and changed. Systems are only loosely coupled and automated. These automated systems are self-learning and self-healing. Public and private cloud capabilities work dynamically to ensure the best price and performance point for every workload. Companies are focused on outcomes and moving to this cloud-first architecture will enable enterprises large and small to manage outcomes better than ever before.

Analytics

Breakthroughs in computer pattern recognition and vision will allow businesses of all sizes to gain new insights from unstructured data that could not be mined earlier using more traditional reporting and analytics techniques.

Blockchain and Security

Trust is becoming a bigger and bigger topic with data breaches and the sheer volume on online transactions. With the advent of new technology and globalization we are seeing increasingly complex products, digital currencies, and investment tools that make the trust of consumers more reliant than ever on the transparency, accountability and security of transactions. Blockchain technology allows digital information to be distributed but not copied and it is a revolutionary technology because the blockchain database is not stored in a single location. This means that there is no centralized version of the information that a hacker could corrupt. Blockchain is inherently robust because no single entity controls it and it has no single point of failure. This is what makes it such a powerful tool for security and so it is likely to become the anchor technology for digital identities as the trust economy continues to expand in 2018.

Mixing Realities

A strong trend for the coming year will be companies looking to find ways to combine the physical world with digital systems to create a blended reality that is intuitive, intelligent and feels natural to encourage greater, deeper customer engagement by providing opportunities for customers to interact with both digital and real-world objects. This will also bring a stronger focus back to bricks and mortar stores where the emphasis will be on improving in store experiences by leveraging technology.

Say Good-Bye to Bounded IT

In 2018 there will be a strong move toward breaking down the traditional bounded IT organizational structure that embraces functional silos such as infrastructure, applications and information management. Thanks to cloud platforms and software as a service offerings companies are able to greatly reduce their IT forces. Meanwhile, organizations continue to embed technology into business processes and business teams, breaking down silos, and moving more IT resources into multi-functional teams that focus on delivering results. These functional teams take responsibility for the vision, the design and the day-to-day decision-making. This creates greater harmony and efficiency without having to get approvals from several different siloed business organizations.

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