The tech trends to watch in 2022: Gartner

Gartner has announced the technology trends that it sees as important for organisations to explore in 2022.

These trends are focused on enabling organisations to “to find growth through direct digital connections with customers”, according to Gartner research vice president David Groombridge.

“CIOs must find the IT force multipliers to enable growth and innovation, and create scalable, resilient technical foundations whose scalability will free cash for digital investments. These imperatives form the three themes of this year’s trends: engineering trust, sculpting change and accelerating growth,” he said.

There are 12 trends in total that include emerging technologies, such as AI, as well as expanding on more established tech, such as those that enable remote work.

Here are the trends to follow in 2022: 

Generative artificial intelligence (AI)

Generative AI involves machine learning absorbing data about content or objects, which is then used to create new, original artifacts.

It can be used in coding, drug development and targeted marketing, Gartner said, as well as scams, fraud, political disinformation, forged identities. 

By 2025, Gartner expects generative AI to account for 10 percent of all data produced.

Data fabric

Data fabric is the flexible and resilient integration of data across platforms and users. It allows for a simplification of infrastructure and a reduction of technical debt, Gartner said.

It can cut data management efforts by up to 70 percent with inbuilt analytics.

Distributed enterprise

75 percent of organisations that enable a distributed enterprise with see 25 percent faster growth than competitors, Gartner said.  

 A geographically dispersed workforce “requires CIOs to make major technical and service changes to deliver frictionless work experiences, but there is another side to this coin: the impact on business models,” said Groombridge.

“For every organisation, from retail to education, their delivery model has to be reconfigured to embrace distributed services. The world didn’t think they’d be trying on clothes in a digital dressing room two years ago.” 

Cloud-native platforms (CNPs)

Gartner said migration will no longer enable true digital delivery and organisations should be looking to CNPs to provide ‘scalable and elastic IT-related capabilities’.

The company predicts that 95 percent of digital projects will have CNPs as the foundation by 2025, up from 40 percent today.

Autonomic systems

Autonomic systems learn from their environments and can modify their own algorithms to adapt to new conditions.

“Autonomic behaviour has already made itself known through recent deployments in complex security environments, but in the longer term, will become common in physical systems such as robots, drones, manufacturing machines and smart spaces,” said Groombridge. 

Decision intelligence (DI)

Decision intelligence is a discipline that involves developing an in-depth understanding of decision making and applying that to an organisation’s own decision making processes.

Gartner said that a third of large organisations will be using decision intelligence for structured decision-making in the next two years.

Composable applications

Composable applications enable the adaptability vital for ‘fast, safe and efficient application change’, Gartner said.

It added that a composable approach will enable 80 percent faster implementation of new features than the competition. 

“In turbulent times, composable business principles help organisations master the accelerated change that is essential for business resilience and growth. Without it, modern organisations risk losing their market momentum and customer loyalty,” said Groombridge.

Hyperautomation

“Gartner research shows that the top-performing hyperautomation teams focus on three key priorities: improving the quality of work, speeding up business processes, and enhancing the agility of decision-making,” said Groombridge. 

“Business technologists supported an average of 4.2 automation initiatives in the past year, too.” 

Privacy-enhancing computation (PEC)

PEC is about protecting information at the data, software or hardware level and is becoming more important as privacy legislation is continuing to develop.

Gartner expects 60 percent of large organisations to use one or more privacy-enhancing computation techniques by 2025. 

Cybersecurity mesh

“Data is strung throughout many of this year’s trends, but it is only useful if enterprises can trust it,” said Groombridge. 

“Today, assets and users can be anywhere, meaning the traditional security perimeter is gone. This requires a cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA).” 

Gartner said that by 2024, a CSMA approach will reduce the financial impact of security incidents by 90 percent. 

AI engineering

AI engineering is an integrated approach for operationalising AI models.

“For fusion teams working on AI, the real differentiator for their organisations will lie in their ability to continually enhance value through rapid AI change,” said Groombridge. 

“By 2025, the 10 percent of enterprises that establish AI engineering best practices will generate at least three times more value from their AI efforts than the 90 percent of enterprises that do not.”

Total experience (TX)

Combining customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX), user experience (UX) and multiexperience (MX), Garnter said that TX will increase revenue and by improving confidence, loyalty and advocacy.