What year will it be that is about to come? What kind of novelties will it bring with it and how will we welcome it? These are all questions to which
Gartner
, a multinational company that deals with strategic consulting, research and analysis in the field of information technology with over 15,000 customers worldwide, has tried to give answers. First of all, the one on the pandemic emergency: is it really behind us?
However, there are not really important reflections matured in the context of the “Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo EMEA”, a fundamental moment to take stock of the state of health of the technology market on the European continent and to understand how the business of companies, thanks to information technology, will change in the near future.
What has emerged in a disruptive way is that companies are aware that, after a year spent managing the emergency, with tactical investments aimed at supporting new ways of working such as smart working, 2022 is the year of a return to growth-oriented strategic decisions.
But there is one more element that the sad historical moment we have experienced has shown in an overwhelming way: without digital technologies we would have struggled to counter and overcome critical moments. So, while last year and the one we are about to leave behind were characterized by survival, 2022 according to Gartner predicts will be affected by a massive growth in IT budgets. We are talking about a plus 3.6% compared to 2021.
Here, then, are the “Top Strategic Technology Trends 2022”. We have chosen six of them:
“Cloud Native” platforms, i.e. born directly in the Cloud. Thanks to this feature, they are elastic so as to respond to the rapid changes desired by the CIO and CEO. Gartner argues that these types of platforms improve on the traditional lift-and-shift approach to the cloud;
AI Engineering, an approach that allows artificial intelligence to be applied to the business in an automated way, thus simplifying the deployment of artificial intelligence and automating updates of data, models and applications;
Generative artificial intelligence , i.e. an intelligence that learns from data and generates so-called “digital twins” similar to the original but with different elements that can accelerate development in different fields of application, from medicine to the creation of new products;
Privacy-Enhancing Computation , i.e. the computing capacity that can guarantee the safe processing of personal data. This, in fact, is a very critical aspect related to data and personal protection laws and the growing concerns of consumers about the inappropriate use of data itself. Privacy is a rare commodity nowadays and it is precisely for this reason that this will be a trend of 2022;
Total Experience , i.e. “total experience” of users/customers. In this way, companies define a strategy that, through the interweaving of multiple experiences and relationships, can accelerate growth and undoubtedly improve the experience of employees, customers and users. This increases trust, satisfaction and loyalty;
Data Fabric, a technology that ensures data integration between different platforms and users, making data available wherever it is needed, regardless of where it resides. This technology could reduce data management efforts by 70% and benefit the business.
The real news is therefore that enterprise software will have the highest growth, driven by Cloud Computing , which has shown how its elasticity was extremely indispensable in times of pandemic. John Lovelock, VP of research at Gartner, said the cloud “has allowed them to scale when they needed to and reduce investments when they were too much, so CIOs are using the cloud to ensure speed of reaction and to demonstrate the value of their IT investments.”