Vara Kumar is the Co-founder and CPTO at Whatfix. Vara co-founded Whatfix with Khadim Batti in 2014 with the vision of empowering individuals and organizations to work symbiotically with technology to maximize their potential. Based in the US, Vara leads the company’s strategy and vision for product development and adoptions, technology development, and innovation – helping accelerate successful integrations for partners and customers. He is passionate about building technology that users love.
Since 2020, technology-driven disruptions have accelerated. Disruptions are expected to become more rapid as today’s technologies combine with tomorrow’s in innovative ways. The time is right to rebuild the world better than it was before the pandemic. In 2022, the world will go through a transition. There will continue to be a growth in digital footprint in every organization, a decrease in IT talent, and a requirement to support remote work. These are 9 technologies which will give companies a competitive advantage to thrive in a digital-first economy.
User-friendly technologies that make users more productive and efficient:
With the continued growth of technologies, there is a need for technologies to help users be effective and efficient at work. Cloud software is becoming integral to workplaces across a wide range of industries, and digital adoption platforms are transforming the way users learn, work, and improve their skills. Gartner recently recognized this software category as a means to boost productivity for companies. DAP solutions are now essential for digital transformation. Since applications undergo multiple updates, the number of applications required by one user increases, causing admins, users, and trainers to spend more time training each person based on their job role for each application. Additionally, RPA technology is revolutionizing the way employees spend their time at work. RPA is used by many businesses in order to increase efficiency and employee satisfaction.
Citizen Development will drive innovation:
2022 will see the growth of low-code/no-code solutions and the rise of citizen developers. Companies of all sizes have been able to modernize thanks to the democratization of enterprise technology. As a result of the increased demand for custom software solutions to support digital transformation, citizen developers have emerged, which has also led to an increase in low-code development. Gartner predicts that half of all low-code clients will be from outside the IT organization by the end of 2025. Low-code technologies that enable application innovation and integration will become increasingly important as companies embrace the principles of a composable enterprise in the long term. With the right tools and safeguards in place, citizen developers can accelerate innovation and boost productivity for your organization. The transition from IT to citizen developers will accelerate.
Upsurge in Adoption of DevOps: DevOps has become more important than ever as enterprises embark on the path of digital transformation. It has become imperative for the existing IT firms to bridge the gap between the development team and operations team. The benefits of DevOps go far beyond fostering a collaborative culture. They make software delivery faster, improve customer satisfaction, enhance time-to-market, and more. As cloud services increase, more devops will be required to handle more complex deployment scenarios. In addition, cloud-native security will become increasingly important as companies embrace Kubernetes, serverless, and other cloud technologies. Therefore, new tools and processes will be needed to protect assets, making DevSecOps indispensable.
Taking Collaboration to The Next Level: When the pandemic forced organizations to decide whether to adopt remote work or shut down, setting up communication and collaboration tools became the order of the day. Gartner statistics indicate a 44% increase in enterprise collaboration tool adoption since 2019. Growing adoption of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), partnerships between OEMs and technology providers for developing technologically advanced products, including autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, etc., and the desire to establish enterprise communication channels are driving adoption of collaboration software. Businesses will continue to rely on collaboration software solutions to improve employee engagement and company culture. Technology will further evolve to support remote work.
Businesses will become more privacy-aware: Currently, we are in the infancy stage of data protection and privacy. In order to prevent fraudulent activity, businesses want better visibility into the online activity of their clients. Insights and contexts provided by Privacy Management allow administrators to automate privacy policies and protect sensitive data. Transmitting and sharing private data across borders and oversharing private data pose major privacy risks. Privacy Management will help identify and prevent these risks. As organizations become more mature on privacy, more technologies will be developed to simplify privacy management.
More smartphones and tablets, fewer desktops: With more people using laptops and tablets to get work done during the pandemic, our technology usage patterns have already changed. As organizations adopt remote- and hybrid-working styles, 6.2 billion laptops, tablets, and smartphones will be used globally by 2021, according to Gartner. This is largely due to the widespread adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud office platforms and IT administrators focusing more on protecting data, apps, and identity to enable BYOD scenarios. Mobile browsers will become a lot more powerful in 2022, and features like extensions will become more widely used. By 2022, PC growth is likely to continue slowing & enterprise adoption of tablets/mobile will increase.
Expanding IoT Adoption: With spending expected to increase in 2021, companies focusing on IoT are expected to have a successful year. As Internet of Things creates a global network of billions of people around the world, India, at the cusp of a digital revolution, will be able to harness the power of IoT. Smart operations use cases with a high return on investment (ROI) as well as IoT projects in the region will drive IoT adoption in 2022. According to a Zinnov report, India’s IoT investments will reach $15 billion by 2021, up from $5 billion in 2019. As a result of IoT, the physical world is already becoming more automated. Vendors and users have ample opportunities across the entire technology stack and use case spectrum.
Accelerated adoption of Cloud computing: Despite the last few years’ turbulence, cloud computing remains a priority for businesses looking for business continuity, cost efficiency, and future scalability, which has shown potential power during the pandemic. The uses of cloud computing are virtually endless, from warehouse managers looking to simplify their shipping operations to retail bank CIOs building new online banking applications. Services will become more intelligent and auto-scalable. AWS Cloudfront, for example, has auto-scalability whereas AWS Redshift does not (Scaling is manual). This will further reduce the workloads of development teams. There will definitely be a greater focus on migration for cloud computing in 2022, as well as ESG considerations.
AI and ML will boost the technology-driven industry: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have played a major role in the tech industry by improving business intelligence, enabling critical decision making, and creating innovative products and services. By using AI and ML, organizations are automating cybersecurity and reducing risk. The use of voice input will increase in 2022. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will become more common skills among developers.