3 Trends in Tech for 2022

There is a group that has great fun every year making predictions, and they’re never wrong. That’s because the prognosticators group looks at the past year and boldly predicts what happened. I’m a little late getting to my annual look at software trends for this year, but I’m still ahead of the prognosticators.

When I gaze into my silicone ball, I see:

• Cybersecurity becoming a board room concern;
• More work and applications moving to the cloud; and
• The Internet of Behavior driving more transactions.

Cybersecurity

The attack on Apache Log4j headlined as the most pernicious breach, but there were thousands of others, many with lasting consequences. Ransomware became a familiar term when cybervillans created gasoline shortages along the East Coast by hijacking the pipeline company’s databases. The attackers were bold, too, demanding $4M from a metropolitan police department whose data was locked.

We know that many hacks go unpublicized, unless regulations require reporting. I see that in Gartner’s report that the average ransom payment in the first half of 2021 was $570K. That’s a lot of small companies. No matter the company size, these malicious intrusions cost thousands of dollars in mitigation expenses, downtime and possible insurance premium increases. When production and shipping delays become a drain on the quarterly earnings report, more board members will begin asking questions.

With the continued increase in remote work – I don’t see offices ever returning to pre-pandemic levels – demands for improved cybersecurity will intensify in a work-from-anywhere culture. Look for more Chief Information Security Officers to join Chief Technical Officers in senior management roles because it will take the additional vigilance to thwart these evolving attacks.

Cloud Growth

The affordability, scalability and downright efficiency of cloud computing make it an attractive alternative for many companies, especially tech, enterprises with a distributed workforce and many startups.

Communication in real time and document sync encourage collaboration, helping increase efficiency. Mission-critical data is safe and accessible because it is not on your locally hosted servers, and security updates are more frequent and deeper because the hosting company has too much at stake to be lax.

Cloud-hosting is easy to set up. You only pay for what you need, and there are enough cloud hosts that you can move if another better suits your goals. Additionally, as machine learning and artificial intelligence mature – especially in the channels of supply chain and customer service — we’re likely to see the enhancements first in the cloud.

Gartner projects that by 2025, the cloud will be the first option for more than 85 percent of all organizations. I urge Citinet Solutions’ customers to do some spade work before rising to the cloud. This is a data migration issue and should be viewed that way. Look at each application and determine whether it can be migrated seamlessly or needs to be rewritten.

Think also about licensing. Not all licenses for your data centers will transfer to the cloud. The cloud is the future, but let’s make sure that the decision begins with both feet on the ground.

The Internet of Behavior

Remember the first time Amazon wowed you when it recommended a product based on previous purchases? It was exciting, enlightening, helpful and – let’s admit it – kind of creepy.

The Internet of Behavior is the mega-grandchild of that targeted marketing. The Godzilla of sales growth. The mashup of edge analytics, behavioral science and the Internet of Things. Simply put, with the data waterfall produced by all of our linked devices and social media (the Internet of Things), marketers are getting an Ultra HD picture of what we like or don’t like, are curious about or might be enticed to consider on a rainy Tuesday following Super Bowl Sunday.

The information cuts both ways. Users get a highly customized experience, whether that is viewing news stories, shopping or taking online courses.

Businesses can expect a clearer understanding of a customer’s buying evolution: the entry point for the product or service, factors influencing the purchase decision, the actual choice and customer response to the decision. Using that information and looking at internal costs to create, sell and deliver a product, businesses can identify operating efficiencies. Which can benefit the producer as well as the consumer.

We’re going to hear a lot about IoB in coming years as consumers opt-in to data collection programs that will help improve their user experience and bolster bottom lines.

Check back soon for my prediction about Ground Hog Day.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/3-trends-tech-2022-edward-zaremba/?published=t&trackingId=w1UAAhSWQF2HfUSS%2FMUa0A%3D%3D – 3 Trends in Tech for 2022