In this fast-changing tech world, businesses need to stay current on trends and adopt digital business solutions to stay in the game. Each year, Gartner (a multi-billion dollar business consulting firm) analyzes and identifies technology trends that are imperative to the growth of a business. Their trends are selected from “CEOs’ priorities for their organizations” to ensure their advice is current and accurate. For this year, Gartner has identified the following 12 strategic trends that you’ll want to be familiar with (6 are mentioned here in Part 1, please read Part 2 of this blog series for the other 6):

  1. Data Fabric: This is a powerful data service and architecture set up that provides reliable capabilities across multiple cloud environments. It standardizes the data management practices across the cloud and in-house and is a “flexible, resilient integration” of your data sources. What this does is allows important information to be accessed by your team from anywhere regardless of where the data resides. Gartner estimates that implementing data fabric could reduce data management efforts by as much as 70%.
  2. Cybersecurity Mesh: This security measure is in response to a rapidly evolving cyberattack environment that we are experiencing today. Because cyberattacks are getting more and more sophisticated, implementing cybersecurity mesh will improve your digital business’s overall security by integrating security measures into a cooperative system designed to protect your data. It is flexible and customizable and combines commonly used security services with your own stand-alone solution to provide the best defense.
  3. Privacy-Enhancing Computation: Another security detail, this involves the “processing of personal data in untrusted environments.” Privacy-enhancing computation (PEC) has been around for a while but its perfection in real-world applications is just taking off. PEC protects data while also providing secrecy and meeting compliance requirements. As consumer concerns about privacy grows, keeping current on the details and application of PEC is critical to meet the demands of the ever-evolving protection laws.
  4. Cloud-Native Platforms: These allow your company to respond effectively to digital changes. With cloud-native platforms, you can develop, build, run, and manage resilient application architectures without added complexity. Your team won’t need to be bogged down by manual processes associated with traditional underlying structures with the self-service approach of a cloud-native platform.
  5. Composable Applications: These are functional and competent portions of an application that you can detach from the complete product to create new application that function even better. They make it “easier to use and reuse code” and is a way to scale storage and databases to promote better flexibility and functionality.
  6. Decision Intelligence: This is a practical approach to decision making in the workplace. Decisions are recorded or modeled like a set of processes, therefore utilizing analytics to inform those decisions. The process of decision intelligence involves AI learning from these analytics and, over time, makes human-led decisions more refined while also enhancing and improving organizational decision making.

Please follow up with Part 2 of this blog series for information on Gartner’s other 6 tech strategies for this year.