After releasing its annual Tech Trends report for 2019, Dimension Data spoke with TechDecisions about what it expects in the tech sector in 2019. The Tech Trends 2019 report identifies key trends which are primed to define the technology landscape during 2019.
You can listen to the full interview with Ettienne Reinecke, Group CTO at Dimension Data, here. In the meantime, learn more about 5 key tech trends to expect in 2019.
Robot Process Automation and Customer Service
We’ve seen a lot of robotic process automation come into client services, but we’re now seeing the next level happening.
We will see a direct connection between RPA activity and AI. A simple example is to think about omni-channel. We’re starting to see more automation, but we’re also seeing linkage to AI where the technology that has been isolated – natural speech recognition for example – to improve what we can do in client services.
In real time, we can scan channels as we engage with clients to find words that might predict the emotive state of the client. Based on that, you can decide whether the client interaction is coming to the point where you need to inject a live employee.
This has the potential to bring a different angle to client experience and services. It will also reset some of the cost models of these environments. One could argue that with this type of technology embedded, you can provide a higher level of service at a lower cost.
Cloud-Based Cybersecurity
If you look at where attacks come from these days, it’s hard to protect the network in a fragmented way.
What we need to do is re-engineer cybersecurity as we know it. With the processing power we now have in cloud-based environments, there’s a stronger ability for us to be more predictive. Massive data analytics in real-time can help us assess where these threats are coming, track them down, and isolate them.
Blockchain also has massive potential to re-engineer cybersecurity. Capital markets have been dominated by blockchains platforms. The killer app here is identity management – most breaches in the past several years have gone after identity. If we can find a better way to protect identity, we can make a difference in cybersecurity.
What do you attack when everything is centralized? That’s where blockchain could aide in this endeavor.
Programmable Infrastructure
When we look at infrastructure today we categorize it in three rough categories. If you look at programmable platforms, they were born to be automated through APIs. Non-programmable infrastructure is what we’ve historically had. Programmable infrastructure offers the opportunity to meld those two ideas.
We’re getting to a world where we are seeing underlying systems to be much more programmable, which changes how we deal with infrastructure. The cost metrics are too competitive for this not to happen.
It’s one thing to think about technology in the workplace, but what about how humans really use technology? When you make infrastructure more programmable you get closer to the human API, which begets wider adoption in the workplace.
A good example is with smart watch manufacturers. They’ve released functionalities like detection of g-force. So you can sense when someone falls and start triggering responses. That’s where programmability is crucial – what is the interaction, and what should be triggered?
That’s the same in the workplace – programmable infrastructure allows tech to react to human actions and automating responses. That brings operational costs down and allows for more user adoption.
Customized Applications
With Internet of Things pervading the workplace and beyond, we have much more information available to inform. There are sensors embedded all over the place, and that gives us actionable intelligence.
Applications will evolve to meet this abundance of data. With so much information available, and with such nuance in information, applications must be customizable to react. An application needs to understand how to trigger events based on a number of factors, and a number of refined potentials within each factor. This is happening already.
The Value of Data
Data has become a commodity. It feeds into AI, automation, networking, IoT, and more.
Data will become the center of the value universe. While the technological landscape is rapidly evolving and reforming, at the center of everything is the data that informs technology.
The digital transformation is when the value of your data drives a new revenue stream that exceeds the revenue stream of your previous model. It’s an aggressive statement, but we’re already seeing it happen in industries.
People are paying for data as we speak. Advertising companies go to all ends in order to gather data about consumers in order to better market client products. Live events gather data on attendees to aide everything from customer experience to health.
Value of data is already being realized, and there are technologies being developed to unlock more value of data. One of the values of data today is the security of data. GDPR, HIPAA, and so on. If you want to turn on the power of data, you need to bring bigger and bigger sets together. So we’re seeing development around anonymous analytics – where the source data isn’t given away but the information is no less influential.
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