None of us have predicted where 2020 would take us: The last six months during the COVID alone have produced more digital transformation than the last decade.What does this mean for 2021? Will Mainstream technologies like AI and data analytics still dominate headlines, or will we see newer, previously emerging technologies take the lead? Here are the top 5 digital transformations to look for in 2021.
1.COVID-19 Augmenting 5G Forward Faster
This Lock-down has made everyone realize across the globe the importance of faster connectivity, both at home and in the workplace. COVID-19 only escalated the demand as workers left their offices in well- connected areas for at-home offices in the sprawling suburbs and beyond. Better networks are needed to keep everyone connected. The Positive note is that: Despite the virus, the pace of Deployment is never hindered. Many telecoms are on track to deliver their 5G implementation goals.
Here are a few more noteworthy stats on
* Verizon launched a virtual lab on May to test 5G deployments and rolled out 5G coverage across San Diego, CA.
* In China, 5G deployments are happening so rapidly that Ericsson had to up their 5G enrollment goal, for the year.
* Qualcomm announced in its most recent earnings that over 60% of devices shipped that quarter were 5G.
* Ericsson predicted that 5G internet will cover up to 65% of the world’s population by the end of 2025.
* 5G technology is already being put to work in China and other places too. Chinese hospitals are using robots powered by 5G to monitor user temperatures and other health applications.
* It’s very clear that 5G was not hindered at all by COVID-19 and has only continued to boom in the coming months & 2021 should be a massive year for 5G technology.
2.Customer Data Platforms & Data Analytics — Powering Businesses through Pandemic
”Businesses which aren’t heavily invested in analytics in 2020 probably won’t be in business in 2021”. Big data and analytics has always been on a steady and sustained growth trajectory and then the pandemic exploded and made the demand for data even greater. Johns Hopkins and SAS created COVID health dashboards that compiled data from a multitude of sources to help Public organisations and businesses to make informed decisions to protect citizens, employees, and other key stakeholders.
Recent announcements from several big tech giants including Microsoft, HPE, Oracle, Cisco and Salesforce states that they are focusing on developing data driven tools to help bring employees back to work safely — some even offering it for free to its customers.
The need and demand for data to make all business decisions has grown and during this pandemic, Data analytics being used in real time to make critical business and life-saving decisions, and We can expect a massive continued investment from companies into data and analytics capabilities that power faster, leaner and smarter organisations in the wake of 2020’s Global Pandemic and economic strains.
3.AI Proliferation & Conversational AI
During the Lockdown, customer service is one component that took a major blow for all companies. This Pandemic made the existing customer service out of service, a highly trained army of conversational AI bots r to answer customer queries is one way to solve that: and keep their shows running. This technology has the attention of the world’s largest tech companies.
At the 2020 GTC Conference, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made a massive bet on conversational AI with the launch of its Jarvis framework, by bringing latency in conversational AI to as little as 3ms while providing the possibility for things like 3D, Eye Contact and Lip Reading.
Indeed, even beyond communicating important health information, conversational AI will continue to see increased development as companies realize they simply don’t have the human bandwidth to keep their customers informed and satisfied during a global emergency. And this will spill well beyond the response — as businesses see how fast and accurate conversational AI is becoming, & it is very evident that this technology space has much more potential that can be leveraged by businesses.
The proliferation of AI will impact our lives from every activities of how we shop, to what we eat, how we hire and what we do for entertainment. It will be powered by masses of data that use powerful computing capabilities. AI will continue to require monitoring to make sure we use it for positive purposes and this will be a joint effort of government and industry, but no doubt its use continues to grow rapidly and we will see this scale even faster now that resources are becoming less expensive and more available to businesses around the globe.
4.Reshaping Commerce using Headless Technology
The eCommerce Industry is changing. With consumers getting used to consuming content and making purchases through various touch points from IoT devices to progressive web apps — legacy eCommerce platforms are struggling to keep up with the demands of the customer.
In a nutshell, headless commerce is an eCommerce solution that stores, manages, and delivers without a front-end delivery layer. With a headless commerce platform, the front end has been decoupled and removed, leaving only the back-end.
Developers can then use APIs to deliver things like products, blog posts or customer reviews to any screen or device, while front-end developers can get to work on how to present that content using any framework they desire.
In other words, headless commerce architecture is built for the IoT age.By moving beyond the omni-channel experience to connect everything from warehouses to storefronts to online services, companies 2021 could become more efficient, more streamlined, and possibly get an competitive edge on competitors if they adopt it a little faster .
5.RPA/IPA Will See More Growth Post-COVID
RPA and IPA (Intelligent Process Automation) that can help keep a company moving when employees are unable to be physically present in the office.
More companies are looking to dis-burden as many tasks as they can to ensure that business runs smoothly once the next global disruption occurs. This drives the RPA and IPA space.
Many investments are now happening in seeing software driven automation meet the cloud and accelerate with the help of AI. Reports show a CAGR of 30% for RPA in the forecast period through 2026.
Beyond those mentioned, tech giants like microsoft and Amazon are eyeing on this space and RPA players like Pega, Automation Anywhere, and UiPath has lot more to offer to the companies in automation space that can be repurposed to address businesses specific needs in the current situation, and also helps in maintaining business continuity now and in the future.
Conclusion
To see the silver lining, COVID-19 made things move faster. Most of these trends discussed above will continue to grow in the future. we are continually pushed to our limits through these pandemic, we believe that more companies will discover better ways to use these technologies and we can’t wait to see where we can go.
