This is perhaps one of my favorite times of the year because all the analysts put out their predictions for the year ahead. Even if many of the predictions are a bit grandiose, they often do point to trends on the horizon that will be important to watch in the months ahead.
Consider the example of Gartner, which publishes its Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2023. Interestingly, many of the trends presented on this year’s list are ones we here at Connected World and Constructech have been talking about for a while. Let’s look at a few of these in-depth.
First up is sustainability—which is something Peggy Smedley has been talking about for several years. Gartner suggests sustainability traverses all of the strategic technology trends for 2023. As many know, sustainability in and of itself is not a technology, but to achieve it, executives must invest more in technology to meet ESG (environmental, social, and governance) goals. Such technologies include traceability, analytics, renewable energy, AI (artificial intelligence), and IT (information technology) solutions, just to name a few.
Another big trend to watch in the “pioneering” category is the metaverse, which Gartner defines as a collective virtual 3D shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. The growth is certainly evident by the number of companies talking about the possibilities of the metaverse in the past few months—as well as by Gartner’s big prediction. The analyst firm suggests by 2027 more than 40% of large organizations worldwide will use a combination of Web3, AR (augmented reality) cloud, and digital twins in metaverse-based projects aimed.
Two other “pioneering” trends to keep an eye on are superapps—which combine the features of an app, a platform, and an ecosystem in one application—and adaptive AI, which aims to continuously retrain models and learn within runtime and development environments based on new data to adapt quickly to changes in real-world circumstances that were not foreseen or available during initial development.
Another category of technology is “optimizing” technologies, which include AI trust, risk, and security management; digital immune system; and applied observability.
Digital immunity combines data-driven insight into operations, automated and extreme testing, automated incident resolution, software engineering within IT operations, and security in the application supply chain to increase the resilience and stability of systems. Gartner predicts by 2025, organizations that invest in building digital immunity will reduce system downtime by up to 80%—and that translates directly into higher revenue.
Meanwhile, observable data reflects the digitized artifacts, such as logs, traces, API (application programming interface) calls, dwell time, downloads, and file transfers, that appear when any stakeholder takes any kind of action. Applied observability feeds these observable artifacts back in a highly orchestrated and integrated approach to accelerate organizational decisionmaking.
The final category of technology is “scale.” Here we see industry cloud platforms, platform engineering, and wireless value realization are also all projected to grow. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 60% of enterprises will be using five or more wireless technologies simultaneously.
What are you planning for your construction company in 2023? Have you considered what comes next for your business—and how technology fits in? Have you considered sustainability, the metaverse, or AI?
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