5 Emerging Tech Trends Impacting the Enterprise

• By Rhea Kelly
• 09/16/19

In its latest Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, research firm Gartner has identified five key trends expected to have "transformational impact" on enterprise organizations. Why? They will "create and enable new experiences, leveraging artificial intelligence and other constructs to enable organizations to take advantage of emerging digital ecosystems," according to statement from the company.

Gartner's Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle focuses specifically on new technologies (not previously highlighted in past Hype Cycles) that "show promise in delivering a high degree of competitive advantage over the next five to 10 years." The five most impactful trends to watch this year are:

1. Sensing and mobility. "By combining sensor technologies with AI, machines are gaining a better understanding of the world around them, enabling mobility and manipulation of objects," Gartner said. Some of the emerging technologies here include 3D-sensing cameras, AR cloud, light-cargo delivery drones, flying autonomous vehicles and autonomous driving Levels 4 and 5, the firm noted.
2. Augmented human. Advances in this area "enable creation of cognitive and physical improvements as an integral part of the human body" — for example, limb prosthetics that can exceed natural human performance. Emerging technologies cited by Gartner include biochips, personification, augmented intelligence, emotion AI, immersive workspaces and cultured/artificial tissue.
3. Postclassical compute and comms. Traditionally, technology developments in this category have relied on "improvements in traditional architectures — faster CPUs, denser memory and increasing throughput as predicted by Moore's Law," Gartner explained. But "the next generations of these technologies adopt entirely new architectures." As an example, the research firm referenced the ability of low earth orbit satellites to provide low-latency internet connectivity in unserved countries and regions. "With only a few satellites launched, the technology is still in its infancy, but over the next few years it has the potential for a dramatic social and commercial impact," commented Brian Burke, research vice president at Gartner. Other emerging technologies here include 5G, next-generation memory, LEO systems and nanoscale 3D printing.
4. Digital ecosystems. Gartner defines these as ecosystems that "leverage an interdependent group of actors (enterprises, people and things) sharing digital platforms to achieve a mutually beneficial purpose. For example, technologies to watch here include DigitalOps, knowledge graphs, synthetic data, decentralized web and decentralized autonomous organizations, the firm said.
5. Advanced AI and analytics. This trend "comprises the autonomous or semiautonomous examination of data or content using sophisticated techniques and tools, typically beyond those of traditional business intelligence," Gartner said. In particular, "The adoption of edge AI is increasing for applications that are latency-sensitive (e.g., autonomous navigation), subject to network interruptions (e.g., remote monitoring, natural language processing [NLP], facial recognition) and/or are data-intensive (e.g., video analytics)," noted Burke. Emerging technologies in this category include adaptive machine learning (ML), edge AI, edge analytics, explainable AI, AI platform as a service (PaaS), transfer learning, generative adversarial networks and graph analytics, Gartner said.

The full report, "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2019" is available to Gartner clients here.