Technology Trends: Looking ahead to 2022

I believe that 2022 will be as exciting as 2021 when it comes to the development of new technology trends. In 2021 we saw several trends accelerate in response to COVID-19. In this blog, I’ll reflect on some of these developments and share my predictions for what 2022 will unveil.

What will be the key technology trends next year?

2022 will continue showing progress in the technologies that we saw trending in 2021. Some of the main ones are going to be:

Blockchain & NFTs

Even though most people associate blockchain with crypto currency like bitcoin, blockchain technology offers security that is useful for many usages. We'll start seeing more and more blockchain technology utilized into financial institutes’ audit trail, risk analysis and other validation services. The blockchain technology created the NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), that unlike bitcoin or any other non- NFT crypto currency, has no set amount and does not fluctuate like the crypto currencies we know. NFTs are one of a kind and unique, which makes art collectors and investors interested in this new crypto currency. NFTs use blockchain technology so it will have an impact on data, data centers, and energy usage.

Cybersecurity & Meshing

 Cybersecurity will be as important as ever in 2022. When technology grows, new loopholes and security issues arise. We'll see more and more defensive cybersecurity services touching more aspects on our digital lives. One of these new cybersecurity services is called the Cybersecurity Mesh. This is a flexible and new architecture that integrates a distributed security service. This new architecture brings best-of-breed, stand-alone security services to workplaces, and improves the overall security processes. Using this architecture makes the identity verification, context and policies adherence more reliable across cloud and on-prem environments.

AI: Decisions & Predictions

 In 2022 we'll see more AI usage to ensure businesses value by combining a strong AI governance and engineering. We'll see more Decision Intelligence (DI), which is an approach to improve the business's decision making across the board. DI models treats each decision as a set of processes combined with analytics to support and enhance the human decisions making and later on, to automate it using sets of augmented analytics, AI and simulations.

IoT & Connected Services

 Next year there will be more connected services and IoT's. We will see IoT cybersecurity concerns growing by governments demanding IoT providers to offer SLAs to updating their security patches. We'll see companies starting to treat these IoTs as non-human entities that have all the human-based attributes so each IoT will be able to register, authenticate, have relationship, and have access granted and revoked just like any other "human" user.
In 2022 we'll also see more IoT usage in the health sector, offering better customer experience and user monitoring. As 5G is almost here, we will see more and more connected services and IoTs running on this network.

What new key technologies will enterprises be looking to adapt and why?

Remote-First & Digital-First

 Due to COVID-19, most companies and enterprises started to utilize their workforce to work remotely in a hybrid model. This situation will bring most of the hybrid working companies to develop a digital-first/remote first approaches that will have to speed up the companies’ response with rich, personalized, performant customer service that will have to scale-up to meet the fully digital online experience. We will see more tools that will re-invent the digital collaborations and processes that these companies’ employees will utilize, and at a later stage we'll start seeing the same tools and processes used by the companies’ customers.

5G technology is almost here

 2022 will be the year that the 5G technology will become mainstream in the United States - and from there it will expand to the rest of the world. 5G will provide a very reliable bandwidth connectivity which will help employers to get into the digital world. 5G will allow employees to connect from wherever they are located and to utilize remotely tools for their customers. With 5G we'll see more IoT services offered by technology providers, services such as high performance and connected medial services, video streaming and monitoring and even connected transportation.

Hybrid cloud and cloud native

Finally next year we expect to see many enterprises moving large portion of their workloads to the cloud from on-premises. These businesses will need to use the hybrid cloud to work as a hub in order to connect between their public cloud and their private clouds/on-premises services. To make this process as efficient as possible, we'll start seeing more and more companies starting to use the cloud providers' native services. This will save costs and time and will optimize and automate the business processes, allowing them to offer service level the digital world requires.

What tech will be central to the conversation in the coming year? And how will this effect businesses?

Most businesses will focus on the technology that will help them bring a better customer experience and value. We will see a lot of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) technologies, and more digital transformation and collaboration solutions, alongside the enhancement of computing capabilities. This will be done by offering quantum computing and computing resources that automate complicated processes. Cybersecurity will remain the focus as the use of remote workspace environment increases, and due to the increasing demand for digitalization and virtualization, we will see more and more digital solutions being offered by businesses. Some will say that 2022 will be the year that the "Virtual Living" era will be born.