The Internet of Behaviour (IoB), total experience, distributed cloud and intelligent composable business are among the top strategic technology trends next year that could help organisations thrive in the post-pandemic era, says global research firm Gartner.
Brian Burke, vice-president of research at Gartner, said 2020 is a tough year because of the pandemic, which is taking a toll on the economy.
"This sets the stage for a major shift in the IT landscape. Executives must strive to rapidly adapt to the changing conditions for their future business," Mr Burke said during the virtual "Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2020", touching upon strategic technology trends.
There are three major themes that could arise next year: people-centricity, location independence and resilient delivery.
People-centricity highlights how technology could lead to changes in people's behaviour, experience and privacy. Location independence touches upon the fact that employees, customers and suppliers can be operating anywhere and remote communication usage is escalating in the wake of the pandemic.
Resilient delivery outlines any resilient organisations and technology architecture that can rapidly adapt to overcoming challenges and exploring new opportunities.
According to Mr Burke, several strategic technology trends could prevail in 2021.
The first lies in IoB, which concerns the use of data to change behaviour. For example, telematics can monitor driving behaviours, such as applying sudden brakes and engaging in aggressive turns, and give feedback.
These solutions are aimed at improving driver performance along with saving cost for maintenance. Insurance companies can collect data of drivers' behaviour to adjust car insurance premiums collected from motorists.
Many technologies have been rolled out to capture people's daily life, which could shed light on user behaviour.
By 2025, more than half of the world's population could have their behaviour influenced by IoB, according to Mr Burke.
The second trend involves total experience from customers, employees and users for the improvement of business outcome.
"By 2024, organisations that apply total experience strategy are likely to outperform competitors by 25%," said Mr Burke.
The third is privacy enhancing computation where different technologies will be used to ensure data protection, he said. By 2025, about half of the large organisations will rely on privacy enhancing computation for processing data, said Mr Burke.
The fourth is distributed cloud, where cloud services are distributed to different physical locations. Allowing organisations to have these services close to their areas would ensure low latency and reduce data costs. Over half of the organisations will use distributed cloud services at the location of their choices by 2025, Mr Burke said.
Another key trend is intelligent composable business, which means the capability of an organisation to adapt at the pace of business change.
By 2023, organisations that adopt this approach will implement new features 80% faster than their competitors, he said.