The year ahead: what’s new for 2022
We are used to beginning the year with a rash of predictions. Why should 2022 be any different?
If we have one certainty this year, it is that uncertainty will continue. That being said, there are a number of things we can predict with some confidence: digital transformation will continue apace, hybrid working will be further embedded, the ecommerce space will expand, and technology will be at the forefront of it all.
The backdrop?
Climate change, further Covid outbreaks, global supply chain challenges, inflation, rising interest rates and – perhaps – a greater level of regulation on tech companies.
Regarding digital transformation, we all know the extent to which Covid hitting in early 2020 accelerated this exponentially. However, digitally enabled operations increased further in 2021, and the overall economic climate, which has seen the UK economy remain 1.5% below its level at the end of 2019, means that it’s digitally transform or die for many organisations in 2022.
The ever-evolving nature of work means that HR now commands a louder voice in the boardroom. Moreover, wellbeing and diversity & inclusion will remain priorities, as organisations look to attract the best talent with the best offers and the most welcoming environments.
People will do more and more purchasing online; whether it’s someone doing their groceries or B2B customers putting in an order, fewer and fewer interactions will take place primarily face-to-face.
What connects these areas?
Data, and specifically, technology’s role in providing and analysing it. We need the right data, and we need a level of trust from customers if we’re to get it. This can be trickier than you think; while the pandemic saw an increase of trust in institutions, this didn’t last, with the bubble bursting between spring 2020 and the start of 2021. Having said that, business fared better than government, media or NGOs and is now the most trusted institution in 18 of 27 countries surveyed by Edelman for its annual trust barometer.
As well as trust, quality will be paramount in 2022. At a recent TEN event, 62% of respondents said that lack of trust in the quality and integrity of their data was the single biggest barrier they faced in making their organisation data-driven. It’s not that businesses can’t get enough of it; they’re swimming in it, though not always in one ocean; it can be in a selection of disparate ponds aka siloed within applications, and not being effectively used.
According to Gartner’s Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2022, CEOs will prioritise growth, digitalisation and efficiency this coming year. The importance of growth is a given and efficiency is hardly a surprise given the economic contraction seen in the last two years. It’s digitalisation – perhaps the key factor in driving growth and ensuring efficiency – that concerns us here. Some tech buzzwords from Gartner’s predictions to begin: composability; interoperability; hyperautomation; cybersecurity mesh architecture; cloud-native platforms; distributed enterprise; AI engineering; lastly, autonomic systems.
Many of these innovations were mooted by Gartner for 2021, so in some ways the year ahead is not breaking that much new ground. For example, the last two years have taught us the importance of having a composable business – a trend in 2021 – that can rearrange itself and adapt based on circumstance; this year, the importance of that being embedded into composable APIs is simply a distillation of last year’s trend. Many of the other trends are part of medium to long-term transformation that has been ongoing for some time now.
With that in mind, let’s focus on two of this year’s new trends: distributed enterprise, and autonomic systems.
Gartner describes distributed enterprise as
“a virtual-first, remote-first architectural approach to digitise consumer touchpoints and build out experiences to support products”.
It is predicated upon two of the major changes that we’re already alluded to: remote working and consumers not being available in traditional, physical environments. It can encompass digital dressing rooms and drone usage. A prediction from Gartner:
“By 2023, 75% of organisations that exploit distributed enterprise benefits will realise revenue growth 25% faster than competitors.”
Moreover, given the move to what Forrester are calling an “anywhere-work strategy”, in which younger workers in particular want to distribute their time between home and office, it’s not difficult to see why organisations are seeing the appeal of architecture that prioritises digital-first wherever the interaction is taking place. Consumers don’t want a different experience depending on whether or not the operator with whom they’re interacting is in their bedroom or downtown. Similarly, whether the consumer is at home or in a store, they want an optimised and consistent experience.
Autonomic systems, according to Gartner, are
“self-managing physical or software systems that learn from their environments. But unlike autonomous or automated systems, they can dynamically modify their own algorithms with no software updates.”
“Dynamically modify” is the game-changer here, as this will facilitate speedy responses to any sort of change, permitting scalable management of the sort of distributed environments discussed above. To underline further the level of autonomy, here is another Gartner prediction:
“By 2024, 20% of organisations selling autonomic systems or devices will require customers to waive indemnity provisions related to learned behaviour of their products.”
Should that not be clear, what it means is that tech companies are saying that the level of learning is so advanced with these systems and devices that it will be solely the responsibility of the client to ensure that they are doing what they want them to do over time. This will be possible due to the advanced level of autognostics (self-knowledge) exhibited by the devices. Furthermore, this prediction obviously suggests a high level of confidence from tech providers.
In some ways, there’s nothing new to see here overall: advancing technology has always driven economic development; it’s just that it’s been accelerating exponentially in the last two years, as globally business looks to transform following the most intense crisis. We have seen in the last two years how crisis can be the motor of innovation, and the digital revolution is so central to business now that it shouldn’t be any sort of bubble. It’s only going to increase.
