Technology Trends Businesses Must Consider
Artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, the blockchain, fog computing, and their combinations are some of the main trends that will impact the way companies improve their processes, their arrival on the market and the experience of their users.
No one doubt that technologies are evolving and being adopted at an amazing speed. Many of them emerged in recent years and have already gained different applications and representation in innumerable segments of the industry. Therefore, we cannot stop looking at the evolution and the impacts that each of them will have on our businesses and sectors. These technologies enhance the daily activities of businesses. To facilitate this analysis, we review five technological trends that companies should consider their applications.
Artificial intelligence (AI)
This technology will continue to be one of the main themes of this year. It is developing by leaps and bounds for various applications and will be in virtually all types of systems and solutions. More than that, the AI will also leave things more intelligent: robots, drones, agricultural machines, they will all answer questions and offer insights into decision-making in different industries.
The evolution of this trend also goes a long way through conversational experiences, such as Alexa, Amazon, and Apple's Siri. These examples of personal life will enter strongly into the corporate universe, such as customer service, for example, to ask for guidance or ask questions by voice or text command and be directed to a manual or to the specific location of the response on the FAQ page.
In addition, there are studies on the operation of machines and systems with the use of voice commands. In this way, through an interaction with natural language, it will be possible to interact with software and ask it to issue an invoice for a company and the system will do it.
Virtual and augmented reality
Other technologies that are going to grow a lot this year are the virtual and augmented realities. It is often used in the gaming industry. It will be driven by the leisure sectors, such as museums and stadiums, hotels and tourism. But they will also be widely used in the retail, health and education segments, including training.
These concepts gained popularity in the gaming market, such as Pokémon Go. They are being inserted into business applications. With an application like this in a physical store, it will be possible to obtain additional information about a product or to verify if what you are purchasing is similar to what you have at home.
In the health segment, it will be possible to "scan" the ankle after a concussion and obtain indications of what happened and recommendations to be made. All this will be done with the camera of a mobile device.
The benefits do not stop there. These technologies will allow an immersive experience. For example, the Singapore airport already trains its new mechanical engineers with virtual reality glasses. In distance education, studying the human body as if it were in front of it will be a great experience for students and teachers. And imagine if, before buying a ticket to Japan, you can experience a walk through the streets of the city without leaving your home or experience the view from the seat you want to buy for a show or a game in the stadium before you even buy it. Even a walk in the museum or in an exhibition becomes richer and more interesting with additional information.
Blockchain
There will be a strong growth not only of the technology itself but of solutions developed on it. It is possible, for example, to track and audit drug transport using an internet of things (IoT) sensor that tracks the journey and the temperature of the drugs throughout the process, saving that information in the blockchain. The measure guarantees the protection of the data, their immutability and even the safety and quality of the products. The same principle can be used in the supply chain and agriculture.
Technology must also grow a lot in the financial segment, where it emerged along with the bitcoins. Today, there is no financial institution that does not use or is not discussing the adoption of the blockchain. Another aspect that should grow is the digital identity and the blockchain will be used to guarantee the security of the information.
Fog computing
People have started to use the computational power of edges. This will streamline the routine of companies and professionals, since it will no longer be necessary to send all the data to a cloud, wait to process them and send the information back to make decisions.
Imagine the difference of this paradigm shift in an autonomous car, in which the speed of decision is fundamental for the safety of people. By using the computational power of the edges, the process is performed locally and only the storage of the result in the traditional cloud, combining several clouds instead of centralizing everything in one. And that will only happen because the computational power that we have today in our smartphone or in an autonomous car is incredible.
Combination of all these technologies
In addition to the benefits offered by each of these technologies to businesses, the combinations of several of them will also strongly impact the daily activities in the companies. In health, we will see the use of AI and augmented reality to give a preliminary diagnosis. In addition, with virtual reality glasses, it will be possible to scan a patient and then interact with him through augmented reality and artificial intelligence.
These are some trends that will affect companies and businesses in the future. We need to be attentive to the impacts they can cause, not only in the corporate environment, not to lose competitiveness, but also in the interaction with customers and in the experiences that we offer to them. Application of the use of these technologies is essential for businesses to stay ahead of its competition.
Author Bio:
Melissa Crooks is Content Writer who writes for Hyperlink InfoSystem, one of the leading app development companies in New York, USA & India that holds the best team of skilled and expert app developers. She is a versatile tech writer and loves exploring latest technology trends, entrepreneur and startup column.