What’s cooking in 2020?

Every year many exciting and chaotic trends are shaping our future. These days businesses need to look ahead and identify the most important trends to stay relevant. 2020 will be no exception. Read on to see what we predict will be some of the most insightful trends of the new year!

Big Year for AI
Artificial Intelligence is becoming more and more involved in tasks that humans have been doing for a very long time. 2020 will be an essential year for businesses to effectively incorporate AI into their current infrastructures. This shift will open up multiple opportunities to eliminate repetitive actions in a workplace, increase efficiency, reduce costs, improve customer experiences, and more.  In Predictions 2020: Artificial Intelligence, Forrester states that 53% of global data and analytics specialists are in the process of or are already upgrading the implementation of AI. In the upcoming year, we will watch people working with AI closer than ever before to interpret human emotions and interactions to better adopt AI systems into the workplace.

Autonomous Future
Robotics Process Automation (RPA to keep it simple) will be one of the key investments for enterprises in 2020. The usage of AI technologies allows companies to perform various tasks with faster realisation and minimal investment which, in turn, will allow companies to execute business processes more effectively. According to UiPath report, the RPA sector is growing at roughly 65% compounded annually since 2016. By the end of 2019, the global RPA software revenue is expected to reach over $1.3 billion and Forrester predicts that the RPA market will grow to over $2.9 billion by 2021 with more than 4 million robots optimising administrative, sales, and office related tasks. This optimisation will not replace humans. However, it will bring changes into workplace laws, existing infrastructures, regulations, and social attitudes which will lead to new opportunities where true human strengths can be valued.

Cybersecurity
Over the past few years, the world has witnessed some of the largest privacy and data breaches and cyber-attacks that have been ever experienced. This has led consumers to an increased awareness about their personal data safety. Businesses and consumers became more aware of what data is being collected and how it is being used. According to Accenture’s report, data security breaches have increased by 11% since 2018 and 67% since 2014. Governments all over the world have responded by creating new and stricter regulations regarding storage and handling of valuable consumers’ data. Legislation is paving new ground rules for businesses regarding data collection and security. In 2020, one of the main goals for companies is the focus on cybersecurity as many companies have reported data security as their top priority for the upcoming year. AI and machine learning technologies will also play a major role in cybersecurity through the creation of threat scenarios accompanied with appropriate actionable insights, detection and prediction of cyber-attacks, as well as probable defences against them, and, of course, providing remote advanced and proactive security.

5G Network
Yes, you heard it right! Last year, the 5th generation of mobile connectivity became available in certain cities, but it came with limited functionality and a high price tag. In 2020, the 5G data network will become more affordable and available in different regions so everyone can join this new super network.  IoT and smart machinery companies will start to adapt their networks to have internet availability everywhere which will allow machines and robots to transfer information faster and more securely. During the re:Invent Conference, hosted by AWS in Las Vegas, Andy Jassy, the AWS CEO, introduced a new service called WaveLength which shows that Amazon technologies are “at the edge of the 5G network” and brings services closer to users’ devices. Amazon also partnered with American Telecommunication Company, Verizon, to improve the spectrum and speed of 5G networks for better connectivity of IoT devices in manufacturing and faster streaming on cell phones.

Cloud Computing
With the launch of cloud services, big tech players such as IBM, Google, Oracle, and VMware have already begun to transform modern businesses. Dave Bartoletti, VP of Principal Analyst at Forrester, predicts that the public cloud sector including SaaS, PaaS and IaaS will grow over $295 billion in 2020. Containerization is already starting to grow, with an expected container market of $2.7 billion in 2020, representing an increase of 40%. In fact, Cloud Foundry reports that more than 50% of organizations are already in the development stage of using containers, with Kubernetes leading the way in container deployment strategies. While the shift to cloud computing certainly won’t be instantaneous, the shift to this serverless computing is only expected to gain momentum. As of December 2019, Amazon announced Local Zone, a new cloud computing infrastructure, that brings AWS compute, storage, database and other services closer to consumers. Currently, AWS Local Zone is available by invitation only, however, we expect more Local Zones to be prevalent in many other areas next year.

AI technologies, 5G networks, cloud computing are definitely some of the trends we’ll be keeping our eyes on for next year. What do you predict will be the big trend of the new year? Let us know in the comments below!