Gartner predicts that these 12 technologies
will "become a starting point for innovation and the foundation of digital
business in the next three to five years."
In this article, we will explain each
technology in an easy-to-understand manner. We've covered three things to work
on first. Everyone involved in management, business strategy, and DX, please
take a look.
[Caution] Cloud native platform
“The cloud-native platform is a technology
that builds new resilience, resilience, and agility application architectures
that enable rapid adaptation to digital transformation.
Cloud-native platforms improve the
traditional “lift-and-shift” cloud approach that leverages the cloud to
complicate maintenance".
Source: Gartner Japan Co., Ltd. website
Even in these days when cloud computing is
being called for, about 40% of companies operate servers on-premises (a method
of setting up a server in-house) due to resistance to managing personal
information outside the company. The biggest challenge on-premises is the
maintenance period. Once the maintenance has expired, you will not be able to
install new memories or products of the same type.
Therefore, each company is switching from
"on-premises" to "cloud". However, since the application
was not originally developed to adapt to the cloud, additional refurbishment
costs for migration will be incurred.
Therefore, in the future, we recommend that
you develop on the premise of the cloud from the beginning and then use the
"cloud native platform" that uses the cloud server. This frees
internal IT personnel from tasks such as infrastructure construction and server
maintenance, allowing them to focus on service development that accelerates
their business.
[Attention] Total experience
“Total experience is a business strategy that integrates employee
experience, customer experience, user experience, and multi-experience across
multiple points of contact to accelerate growth.
Total Experience gives you comprehensive
control over your stakeholder experience and enhances customer and employee
trust, satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy (recommendations)”.
Source: Gartner Japan Co., Ltd. Homepage
In addition to UX (user experience) and CX
(customer experience) that you often hear, EX (employee experience) and
multi-experience (≒ VR and AR) are
collectively called "total experience".
UX and CX are all focused on direct contact
with end users, but EX tends to be postponed. All experiences are connected, so
low employee engagement, such as "overtime work" or "not
rewarding," can go around and ultimately reduce the value you provide to
your customers.
However, there are some caveats with EX.
Even if the introduction of cloud services increases productivity, makes it
easier to work with remote work, and lowers the turnover rate of employees, it
is meaningless unless it leads to the provision of value to customers. Let's
connect the improvement of EX to the improvement of UX / CX and increase the corporate
value.
[Attention] Composable application
“Composable applications are built from business-centric modular
components. Composable applications make it easier to use and reuse code,
shorten the time to market for new software solutions, and unlock corporate
value”.
Source: Gartner Japan Co., Ltd. Homepage
"Composable application" is an
approach to ensure quality even for development teams with a mixture of members
of various skills and languages, such as inexperienced people and overseas
engineers.
Until now, the mainstream style was to
proceed with development from scratch no matter what was made. Therefore, the
output varied depending on the skills of the members in charge, and the quality
could not be standardized.
On the other hand, the "composable
application" is a style in which parts are first created, parts are
assembled like a Lego block in a virtual space on the cloud, and development is
advanced while simulating whether or not it works properly. Since communication
costs are reduced, it is easy to collaborate with overseas, and efficiency can
be improved by diverting parts once made to others.
Let's take a brief look at the remaining
nine technologies.
Data fabric
“The data fabric integrates data that exists across multiple
platforms and business users for greater flexibility and resilience. The data
fabric covers the data of multiple applications as a whole and makes the data
available where it is needed, without being constrained by a single platform or
tool”.
Source: Gartner Japan Co., Ltd. Homepage
The data fabric can also learn what data is
being used with built-in analytics. Its true value lies in its ability to
recommend more diverse and superior data, and data fabrics can reduce manual
data management by up to 70%.
With the tightening of cookie regulations,
there is an accelerating movement to store customer personal information and behaviour
history in the company's CDP (Customer Data Platform) and centrally manage it.
However, due to the convenience of pulling data from any platform or system, it
was necessary to manually align and store the data format and granularity.
The "data fabric" is an approach
that eliminates inefficient data management tasks by pre-arranging data formats
that can cover multiple applications.
Privacy enhancement computation
“The Privacy Computation (PEC) ensures the security of personal data
processing in unreliable environments. This is becoming more and more important
due to the evolution of privacy / data protection laws and growing consumer
concerns.
The Privacy Computation uses a variety of
privacy protection approaches to help you derive value from your data while
meeting your compliance requirements”.
Source: Gartner Japan Co., Ltd. Homepage
When the data stored in the CDP is passed
to another system for business use, it is necessary to process it into data
that does not identify an individual from the viewpoint of privacy protection.
However, if the information is deleted, the value of the data itself will be
lost.
Therefore, the "Privacy Enhancement
Computation" is an effort to safely utilize data while encrypting and
dividing it, instead of deleting information.
Cyber security mesh
“Cyber Security Mesh Architecture (CSMA) provides a composable
security approach based on identity, building scalable and interoperable
services.
Cybersecurity meshes enable best-of-breed
and stand-alone security solutions to work together to improve overall security
and bring control points closer to the assets that are inherently protected by
those solutions. You can also quickly and reliably verify your identity,
context, and policy compliance, whether in the cloud or not”.
Source: Gartner Japan Co., Ltd. Homepage
Until now, security tools have been introduced
with different services such as for on-premises, cloud servers, and business
terminals, and maintenance has been troublesome. The "cyber security
mesh" is to integrate these and manage them efficiently.
In the unlikely event of an accident such
as an information leak, a common security tool can quickly identify the cause.
In 2022, security vendors will announce integrated solutions.
Decision intelligence
“Decision intelligence is a hands-on approach to improving an
organization's decision making. Use intelligence and analytics to inform,
learn, and improve decision making to model decision making as a series of
processes.
Decision intelligence supports and enhances
human decision making and, if possible, automates it through the use of
enhanced analytics, simulation, and AI”.
Source: Gartner Japan Co., Ltd. Homepage
"Decision-making intelligence"
uses AI for the dashboard checked on SFA / CRM to predict future sales and
support sales activities and staffing decisions.
Specifically, there is information such as
"Customer A is expected to purchase this much in the near future, so if
you open this much, your profit will be like this in two months. On the
contrary, if you do not open it, you will lose this much opportunity." It
is an image that appears on the dashboard.
Hyper automation
“Hyper-automation is a disciplined, business-driven approach to
quickly identify, validate, and automate as many business and IT processes as
possible.
Hyper-automation enables greater
scalability, remote operations, and disruption of business models”.
Source: Gartner Japan Co., Ltd. Homepage
As the name implies,
"hyper-automation" is the idea of expanding the scope of
automation. For example, we will expand the scope of automation by
incorporating optimal tools for each business process, such as RPA (Robotic
Process Automation) for the sales department and OCR (Optical Character
Recognition) for the management department.
However, if management becomes complicated
due to the mixture of automation tools, it will be overwhelming. Let's proceed
with the introduction while assessing the priorities from a company-wide
perspective.
AI
engineering
“AI
engineering automates data, model and application updates and streamlines AI
delivery.
By
combining AI engineering with strong AI governance, you can operate AI delivery
and ensure continuous business value”.
Source:
Gartner Japan Co., Ltd. Homepage
In most
cases, AI so far has "created a model and finished". However, that
does not provide continuous value, so the idea of operating and nurturing the
model itself is necessary. The technology for that is "AI
engineering".
Generative
AI
“Generative
AI learns about deliverables from data and produces new, innovative outputs
that are similar to the original but never repeat.
Generative
AI has the potential to create new forms of creative content such as videos,
and accelerate R & D cycles in a wide range of fields, from pharmaceuticals
to product creation”.
Source:
Gartner Japan Co., Ltd. Homepage
In order to
utilize AI, it was necessary to prepare a large amount of sample data and train
it. "Generative AI" is a technology that allows AI to synthesize even
sample data by itself and proceed with learning without permission. Even if you
don't have a lot of data, you will have more chances to utilize AI.
Distributed
enterprise
“Decentralized
enterprises reflect digital-first, remote-first business models, improve
employee experience, digitize consumer and partner contacts, and enhance
product experience.
Decentralized
enterprises can effectively meet the needs of remote employees and consumers
who are driving the demand for virtual services and hybrid workplaces”.
Source:
Gartner Japan Co., Ltd. Homepage
With the
epidemic of the new coronavirus infectious disease, digitalization has
progressed at a stretch even in store-type businesses. "Distributed
Enterprise" is an effort to improve the customer experience and employee
experience by integrating offline and online customer data.
Autonomic
system
“An
automatic system is a self-managed physical / software system that learns from
the environment and dynamically rewrites algorithms in real time to optimize
behavior in complex ecosystems.
Autonomic
systems create a range of agile technology capabilities that can support new
requirements and situations, optimize performance, and defend against attacks
without human intervention”.
Source:
Gartner Japan Co., Ltd. Homepage
Until now,
software installed on business terminals had to be manually updated and
managed. On the other hand, the "autonomic system" is a mechanism in
which the system rewrites the program by itself to optimize the performance
based on the past update information.
Lastly
Investing
in technology is essential to continue to provide value to our customers five
to ten years from now. If any of the trends introduced this time match your
company, please try to incorporate them.