Gartner showcases strategic technology trends every year, with a vision to mark significant impacts in the future. Each trend brings both opportunities and risks to an enterprise’s strategic direction, supporting the development of applicable roadmaps to achieve business continuity and long-term goals.
In its latest report, Top Strategic Technology Trends 2024, Gartner highlights the tech trends which can help businesses in prioritizing investments in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Each trend falls into categories that focus on protecting your investment, leveraging tech that benefits the business and its developers, and accelerating and delivering real value.
Here are Gartner’s top 10 strategic tech trends for 2024:
1. AI Trust, Risk, and Security Management (AI TRiSM)
AI TRiSM focuses on actively managing AI models to let the businesses enhance bias control in decisions while increasing fairness in AI-driven applications.
AI TRiSM smoothly controls moving more of their AI projects into production, achieving better business value, and experiencing an enhanced model precision and consistency in comparison to the ones who aren’t using the same.
“By 2026, enterprises that apply TRiSM controls to AI applications will increase accuracy of their decision making by eliminating 80% of faulty and illegitimate information.”
2. Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)
CTEM represents a vital security strategy that synchronizes the evaluation of vulnerabilities with distinct business initiatives or key threat areas addressing both patchable and unpatchable exposures. Here CTEM ensures that the exposure and remediation priorities of the businesses are confirmed or validated by weighing in the attacker’s view and testing security control effectiveness.
“By 2026, organizations prioritizing their security investments based on a CTEM program will realize a two-thirds reduction in breaches.”
3. Sustainable Technology
This is a digital solutions framework employed to facilitate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives, which promotes the sustainable harmony of the ecosystem and the protection of human rights over the long term. Involving ethics boards and key stakeholders when selecting technologies will balance optimization with enhanced organizational sustainability.
”By 2027, 25% of CIOs will have compensation linked to their sustainable technology impact.”
4. Platform Engineering
Platform engineering is a way to build and operate self-service internal platforms, improving the experience of developers and speeding up business value delivery. It enhances the developer’s ability to leverage reusable components to single handedly manage, run and develop applications.
“By 2026, 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery.”
5. AI-Augmented Development
AI-augmented development refers to utilizing AI technologies including generative AI and machine learning (ML) to facilitate software engineers in curating, running periodical tests and delivering the applications as the final outcome. These AI development tools empower software engineers to cut down on their long hours of writing code, allowing them to channel their efforts into higher-level tasks such as designing and crafting engaging business applications.
“By 2028, 75% of enterprise software engineers will use AI coding assistants, up from less than 10% in early 2023.”
6. Industry Cloud Platforms (ICPs)
ICPs facilitate in addressing industry-relevant business outcomes by blending the power of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services into a complete product with collective & enhanced potential. Being defined as industry specific customized cloud proposals, ICPs can also be tailored according to an individual’s organization’s needs. The tech stack can benefit IT leaders in gaining adaptability and agility to stay in sync with the advancements within their business’s industry.
“By 2027, more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms to accelerate their business initiatives, up from less than 15% in 2023.”
7. Intelligent Applications
These are consumer or business applications equipped with artificial intelligence and other data excerpted from various mediums including transactions and external sources. It is quite popular as generative AI can facilitate applications in becoming smarter and effective. AI can be quite useful as it can offer predictions or recommendations instead of a set of designated or traditional features. It also encourages tailored applications according to user’s requirements, improving business outcomes and advancing data-driven decision making.
“By 2026, 30% of new apps will use AI to drive personalized adaptive user interfaces, up from under 5% today.”
8. Democratized Generative AI
The ability to create contemporary content such as images, speech, text etc. and the same being available all around will help in democratization of access to information and skills. Therefore, democratizing access to generative AI offers the potential for automating a wide range of tasks, enhancing productivity, cutting down on the costing and offering contemporary growth opportunities across the organization.
“By 2026, more than 80% of enterprises will have used generative AI APIs, models and/or deployed generative AI-enabled applications in production environments, an increase from fewer than 5% today.”
9. Augmented Connected Workforce
A well equipped strategy aimed at maximizing the value contributed by human employees through the creation of a connective network that enhances the utilization of intelligent technology, workforce analytics, and skill enhancement to expedite and expand talent development. Augment connected workforce as a strategy accelerates advanced digital skills needed for working across all sorts of jobs.
“Through 2027, 25% of CIOs will use augmented connected workforce initiatives to reduce time to competency by 50% for key roles.”
10. Machine Customers
Being one of the most disruptive technology trends, machine customers are nohumann economic actors that are capable of making purchases of goods and services in exchange of monetary payments. Surprisingly, for the first time ever, companies will be capable of generating their own customers!
“By 2028, machine customers will render 20% of human-readable digital storefronts obsolete.”
