Innovation in the Digital Era – Top Tech Trends to Watch in 2017

Each year brings renewal. Whether in the field of business and technology, we are all curious to know what the coming new year will be made. When approaching the end of 2016, many organizations released their reports on technology trends in 2017 that will strongly impact innovation and even transform entire sectors of the economy.

Some of these trends may seem futuristic. But consumer interest for new exchange paradigms such as Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality, and for the integration of the Internet in the walls of homes, even in our bodies is very strong. Meanwhile, the core business system must always be converted and experience on agile projects shows need to know adapt these emerging technologies to project development rhythms.

ECM TechNews highlights the following trends from the long list released by the media.

Gartner identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2017

• AI and advanced Machine Learning – Artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced machine learning (ML) are composed of many technologies and techniques. The more advanced techniques move beyond traditional rule-based algorithms to create systems that understand, learn, predict, adapt and potentially operate autonomously. This is what makes smart machines appear “intelligent.”
• Intelligent apps – Intelligent apps such as VPAs perform some of the functions of a human assistant making everyday tasks easier and its users more effective.
• Intelligent things – Intelligent things, such as drones, autonomous vehicles and smart appliances, permeate the environment, Gartner anticipates a shift from stand-alone intelligent things to a collaborative intelligent things model.
• Virtual and Augmented Reality – Immersive technologies, such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), transform the way individuals interact with one another and with software systems.
• Digital twin – Digital twins include a combination of metadata, condition or state, event data, and analytics.
• Blockchain and distributed ledgers – Blockchain and distributed-ledger concepts are gaining traction because they hold the promise to transform industry operating models. While the current hype is around the financial services industry, there are many possible applications including music distribution, identity verification, title registry and supply chain.
• Conversational system – The current focus for conversational interfaces is focused on chatbots and microphone-enabled devices. However, the digital mesh encompasses an expanding set of endpoints people use to access applications and information, or interact with people, social communities, governments, and businesses.
• Mesh app and service architecture – The architecture encapsulates services and exposes APIs at multiple levels and across organizational boundaries balancing the demand for agility and scalability of services with composition and reuse of services.
• Digital technology platforms – Digital technology platforms provide the basic building blocks for a digital business and are a critical enabler to become a digital business.
• Adaptive security architecture – The intelligent digital mesh and related digital technology platforms and application architectures create an ever-more-complex world for security.

Forbes writer Daniel Newman’s top 10 trends for digital transformation in 2017:

1. Adaptability is more vital to success than ever – Digital transformation isn’t only about technology, it’s about bringing together the power of technology with a culture that embraces the change that it can lead for the organization.
2. Growing importance of the user experience – The customer experience (including employees) is the ultimate goal of any digital transformation.
3. Innovation must happen rapidly – Proactive innovation is one of the best ways to stay competitive in an evolving marketplace.
4. Embrace the remote workforce – Young professionals prefer flexibility to compensation. Mobile technology and bandwidth proliferation allow businesses to connect with (and retain) top talent anywhere in the world.
5. The advent of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) – The booming success of the Pokémon GO AR app is a wakeup call to any business that hasn’t evaluated the potential of AR and VR.
6. Application program interfaces (API) – New tools and technologies need more than one avenue for viability—otherwise, their value quickly drops. APIs are a secret weapon for embracing true digital transformation.
7. Big data and analytics – Analytics drive business by showing how your customers think, what they want, and how the market views your brand.
8. Digital transformation is driven by the Internet of Things (IoT) – The IoT offers immeasurable insight into customer’s mind. It’s also changing how daily life operates by helping create more efficient cities and leaner enterprises.
9. Smart machines and artificial intelligence (AI) are taking off in a big way – Soon machines will be able to learn and adapt to their environments. AI has long been considered the realm of science fiction, but as technology improves, AI becomes a reality.
10. Destroying silos – we will be seeing a rise in the important of digital transformation happening now, and the importance of it happening not just in the technology of a company, but across the entire organization.

Information Management contributor Bharadwaj Chivukula’s top 5 trends in Big Data for 2017:

1. The Internet of Things (IoT) – Businesses are increasingly looking to derive value from all data; large industrial companies that make, move, sell and support physical things are plugging sensors attached to their ‘things’ into the Internet.
2. Deep Learning – Deep learning, a set of machine-learning techniques based on neural networking, is still evolving, but shows great potential for solving business problems.
3. In-Memory Analytics – Unlike conventional business intelligence (BI) software that runs queries against data stored on server hard drives, in-memory technology queries information loaded into RAM, which can significantly accelerate analytical performance by reducing or even eliminating disk I/O bottlenecks.
4. It’s all on Cloud – Hybrid and public cloud services continue to rise in popularity, with investors claiming their stakes.
5. Apache Spark – Apache Spark is lighting up big data. The popular Apache Spark project provides Spark Streaming to handle processing in near real time through a mostly in-memory, micro-batching approach.

The 8 tech startup trends to watch in 2017 by James A. Martin:

1. AI and machine learning startups – The true importance and impact of AI has been discovered and has become more accessible than ever before.
2. Chatbot startups – Automated services that interact with and offer information to humans, especially consumers, through a chat interface.
3. Cybersecurity startups – With every new attack vector or vulnerability exposed in 2016, a cybersecurity company emerged to fill the space; we will see continued growth in the cybersecurity space in 2017.
4. Digital transformation and the cloud – In 2017 and beyond, enterprises will undergo a digital transformation on a massive scale.
5. AR and VR startups – AR’s big sibling, virtual reality (VR), also offers exciting potential for enterprises in 2017 and after.
6. Marijuana startups – Startups focused on marijuana are expected to proliferate in 2017, leading to innovation on the technology side of the cannabis industry.
7. Innovative wearables – The company behind Snapchat, which let people record and share up to 10 seconds of video, are “breathing new life” into the wearables category
8. Intelligent things – “Intelligent things” are at the intersection of AI and IoT and are among Gartner’s top 10 strategic trends for 2017.

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