As the world grows more and more digitised, tech companies are continuing to show impressive growth rates - which is why we decided it would be a good idea to discuss some of the top tech trends that you should watch out for over the course of the upcoming year.
Today's technology is developing quickly, enabling quicker change and advancement and accelerating the rate of change. However, there are numerous additional changes that have occurred over the last year as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, which has since made IT professionals recognise that their job will shift in the contactless world of the future.
The future of technology has many reasons for confidence. Firstly, growth has been strong for several years across the board, not just for the giants. In terms of investment, last year was the greatest for the UK's technology sector, securing £29.4bn in funding.
More importantly, as organisations continue to adapt to a difficult environment, they will depend more than ever on technology to secure the efficiencies and opportunities that are needed to survive and even thrive in a difficult environment. This should guarantee that a few segments of the technological ecosystem will continue to expand.
What to look for next year!
The Metaverse: The metaverse is gaining popularity as the 'immersive internet' where we will be allowed to work, play, and socialise on a persistent platform.
Experts have predicted that the metaverse will contribute around $5 trillion to the global economy by 2030 - and that 2023 will be the year that defines the metaverse's direction for the next decade.
Companies have already started to use metaverse technology such as AR and VR for training and onboarding purposes, and this trend will undoubtedly continue to accelerate in the next year. Consulting giant, Accenture, have already developed their own metaverse environment known as the 'Nth Floor'. The virtual world includes copies of real-world Accenture offices, allowing their new hires and current employees to carry out HR-related tasks without needing to physically visit their offices.
Cloud: The cloud provides significant opportunities for businesses to reduce costs while developing new capabilities. Public cloud hosting enables businesses to quickly scale up or down their operations without imposing excessive capital expenditure, which could be useful for either investing extra free cash in growth initiatives or taking defensive action in scenarios.
Essentially, public cloud platforms enable businesses to maintain stricter control over their fixed costs, both in regards to technology, internal IT capability, and floor space that was previously used to house on-premise infrastructure. This will be especially valuable at a time when these skills are both expensive and rare.
AI & Machine Learning: Artificial intelligence, also known as AI, has received a lot of attention over the last decade, but it remains as one of the latest technology trends because its significant effects on how we live, work, and play are still in their early stages.
AI is already widely recognized for its superiority in speech and image recognition, navigation applications, smartphone assistants, and a variety of other applications.
Aside from that, AI will continue to be used to analyse interactions to establish underlying connections and insights, to help determine demand for services such as hospitals, allowing authorities to make better resource utilisation decisions, and to also detect changing patterns of customer behaviour by analysing data in real-time, that helps to drive revenue and enhance personalised experiences.
Cyber Security: Given its long history, cyber security may not seem to be a new technology, but it's definitely evolving in the same way that other technologies are - simply because threats are always new and evolving.
Hackers attempting to illegally access data are not going away anytime soon, and they will only continue to find new ways to overcome even the most strict security measures. As long as there's hackers, cybersecurity will always be a popular technology because it will continually evolve to combat them.
Energy Solutions: Stopping carbon emissions so we can address the global warming catastrophe is one of the largest challenges the world is currently facing.
In 2023, look out for continued progress around green hydrogen, which is a new clean-burning source of energy that helped to produce almost zero greenhouse gas emissions. Two of the biggest European energy companies, Shell and RWE, are beginning to create the first major green pipeline from various wind plants in the North Sea.
We're also set to see progress in the development of decentralised power grids. Distributed energy generation that uses this model essentially provides a system of small power generators and storage that are typically located in communities or even individual houses - helping to provide power even if the main grid isn't available.
Huge gas and energy companies currently control most of our energy infrastructure, but localised energy initiatives have the ability to distribute power while lowering carbon emissions.
Although technologies are constantly emerging and evolving around us, these top technology trends are offering promising career opportunities both now and in the near future. And because the majority of these trending technologies are looking for skilled professionals, the opportunity has arisen for you to pick one, get trained, and jump on board at the early stages of these trending technologies, situating yourself for success now and in the future.
We would love to hear your thoughts on some of these top tech trends ahead of the New Year - feel free to provide any other trends you're predicting!