Despite a topsy-turvy 2020, technology keeps pushing forward, and arguably, kept the business world running during the worst moments of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a society, we found ourselves relying on digital tools, such as Google Drive, Zoom, Slack, and many more, ensuring business continuity throughout this uncertain time.
As IT support specialists in the Greater Boston area, M&H Consulting constantly keeps our ear to the ground when it comes to technology trends and predictions, ensuring that we are always up to speed when it comes to passing expertise onto your business. In today’s blog, let’s take a look ahead at 2021 technology trends and how you can expect those trends to affect your business activities, daily operations, and long-term goals.
Expect a Rapid Surge In Technological Innovation
While technology kept us afloat during the pandemic, as with the rest of the world, much had to be delayed or pushed due to COVID-19 restrictions. This build-up of delayed projects has affected everything from the film industry to the solar industry, effectively requiring many companies to “catch up” in 2021.
It’s reasonable to expect a surge in technological advancements and innovations as more and more projects and other initiatives are finally given the green light to go ahead with research, development, and production.
This pandemic has also revealed and fast-tracked the need for cloud and other remote services, such as Amazon Web Services, Google Drive, etc., as many companies (some as large as Microsoft) have found productivity and cost-saving benefits working remotely. We are entering into a highly digitalized, work-from-anywhere society, and it’s a safe assumption to expect big changes to our normal in-office/in-work daily operations. Tech companies will and have to recognize this shift, adapt their technology, and create digital solutions for the modern remote worker and business.
Cloud Services Will Become Standard
Here at M&H Consulting, we talk a lot about cloud services and cloud storage solutions. This is because cloud-based services are on the verge of becoming an essential part of standard operations for most businesses, small or large.
With most of the business-world working from home, it is essential to ensure that your employees, managers, and team leaders have access to the tools, documents, and resources necessary to perform their daily tasks. Cloud computing services, such as the previously mentioned Google Drive and Amazon Web Services, offer companies a chance to conduct secure and highly-collaborative business operations from anywhere in the world.
What Are Distributed Cloud Services?
Company-heads and Chief Operating Officers may shudder to think about their company’s data stored within the cloud. Despite security reports, it can be intimidating to think of your entire company’s critical data and information stored within the mystical and mysterious cloud.
Distributed Cloud Services offers a solution to those conundrums, and while digital security is only getting stronger and stronger, you may want to consider enacting Distributed Cloud Services within your current company’s operations.
The distributed cloud allows businesses and organizations to distribute cloud services and data amongst specific physical locations while retaining operational control and governance from anywhere in the world, ensuring that the cloud service or data is never outside of your control. This concept also reduces latency amongst cloud applications, essential for high-speed tasks.
Digital First, Remote First Standards
You have seen it, again and again, leading into 2020, a critical part of 2020, and we predict the trend to continue throughout 2021 and beyond, the business world will become obsessed with what Gartner, the world’s leading research and advisory company, calls “digital-first, remote first.”
This model of anywhere operations, supported by many remote and cloud-based technologies, is set to become crucial for the success of businesses as they emerge from the COVID-19 crisis. If companies, small, medium, and large, seek to survive past 2021, at the very least, seamless digital enhancements to business models will have to occur, such as contactless physical services like Apple/Samsung Pay and Uber Eats.
According to a prediction from Gartner, by the end of 2023, 40% of organizations will have applied and adopted the concepts of anywhere, digital-first, operations to provide a multitude of virtual services for both employees and customers alike.
A Focus On The Internet of Behaviors (IoB)
What is the Internet of Behaviors?
Simply put, the Internet of Behaviors (IoB) is the process of systematically and algorithmically tracking individuals’ behavioral patterns while using the internet to either predict or influence further behavior. This information aids businesses in understanding the wants, needs, and behaviors of their customers or clients, allowing businesses to develop and tweak products or services specifically tailored to those needs.
In essence, the IoB also grants companies access to innovative feedback loops, allowing customers to deliver unprecedented product or service feedback through their behavior without the consumer having to consciously give feedback. The feedback is ingrained within the tracked product, service, or social-behavioral pattern.
IoB Ethical Concerns
The Internet of Behaviors comes packed with a bevy of ethical considerations and concerns that businesses and society must grapple with and resolve. While IoB allows companies to analyze behavioral data to make the best possible products and services for their consumers, it also allows room for influencing those same behaviors and interactions – a concept that many will come to find unethical.
Gartner predicts that by 2023, the behavior of 40% of the world’s global population will be tracked digitally and analyzed in an effort to influence behavioral patterns. The same wearable Apple device that tracks your exercise and eating habits may also be tracking your grocery purchases.
The question that we all, as business technology experts, must ask ourselves is, where do we draw the line? And while the IoB certainly has ethical repercussions, it can also greatly enhance total user-experience, company-wide operations, custom products and services, feedback, and customer satisfaction.
Innovation Powering the Future
2020 was rough. And, while there is a light on the horizon, 2021 looks to have its own fair share of challenges, from cloud-based services to anywhere operations, and ethical questions regarding the Internet of Behaviors. Together, we at M&H Consulting are confident that we can face these challenges alongside your business.
With expert IT services and computer support to our Greater Boston area clients, we’ll ensure that your business is set up and informed about what technological innovations you will need to thrive in 2021 and beyond. The key to technology success is to not rely on short-term solutions, instead focusing on the long-term benefits of looking forward, which is what we do best.
Categorised in: Business Transformation, Digital Age