Global spending on digital transformation is predicted to jump 20 per cent annually to $1.8 trillion next year, according to Statista.

As reported by The National, Covid-induced market disruptions and widespread adoption of hybrid work models have accelerated the process. Many businesses are more inclined towards developing in-house technologies to reduce their dependence on third-party service providers and ensure they are less affected in case of future supply chain disruptions, industry experts said.

“Digital tech initiatives remain a top strategic business priority for companies as they continue to reinvent the future of work … focusing spending on making their infrastructure bulletproof and accommodating increasingly complex hybrid work for employees going into 2022,” said Jon-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner.

Generative artificial intelligence

One of the most powerful artificial intelligence techniques coming to market is generative AI. It involves a set of machine learning methods that learn about content or objects from their data and use the knowledge to produce totally new and more realistic products, according to The National.

The hand of a humanoid robot operates a switchboard during a demonstration by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence. Photo: Reuters

Connecticut-based technology research and consulting company Gartner expects generative AI to account for nearly 10 per cent of all data produced, up from less than 1 per cent today.

This technology can be used for a range of activities such as creating software code, accelerating new drug development and targeted marketing. However, industry analysts cautioned it can also be misused for scams, spreading political disinformation and creating forged identities.

Digital finance to become mainstream

Digital finance innovations, such as cryptocurrencies and central bank-backed digital currencies (CBDCs), will boost financial inclusion and improve cross-border payments.

In October, the International Monetary Fund said it was looking at both the risks and opportunities that digital currencies pose.

Central banks across the world are increasingly assessing the potential of digital currencies amid a growing interest in cryptocurrencies and other online payment channels.

A Christmas tree in front of racks of illuminated mining rigs at the Minto cryptocurrency mining centre in Nadvoitsy, Russia. Photo: Bloomberg

The number of countries developing CBDCs has dramatically increased as consumers shifted to digital payments during the coronavirus pandemic, a report by Moody’s Investors Service said.

“For many consumers and businesses that made the switch to digital payments, there is probably no going back, even if the pandemic-related concerns about the tactile nature of cash were to recede,” Eswar Prasad, a professor of economics at Cornell University and author of the book, The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance, told CNBC.

Autonomic systems

As businesses continue to transform, traditional programming or simple automation will not scale enough.

Autonomic systems are self-managing physical or software systems that learn from their environments. Unlike automated or even autonomous systems, autonomic systems can modify their own algorithms without an external software update, enabling them to rapidly adapt to new conditions in the field, much like humans can.

“Autonomic behavior has already made itself known through recent deployments in complex security environments, but in the longer term will become common in physical systems such as robots, drones, manufacturing machines and smart spaces,” said David Groombridge, research vice president at Gartner.

A robot displays Covid-19 protection instructions at Expo 2020 Dubai. AFP

EV charging network interoperability

Electric vehicles are fast gaining popularity as government incentives and subsidies drive their adoption.

But charging is still a problem as public EV charging networks usually have a low level of interoperability – it involves different access methods, payment types and accounts.

UK-based Juniper Research said it will begin to break down in 2022.

An electric car is charged at a roadside EV charge point in London. Photo: Reuters

The world’s biggest EV maker Tesla is already opening its supercharger network and other large charging networks are expected to follow, to make the technology mainstream.

“End users will gain significantly … they will have better, more comprehensive charging network options, making EV ownership more viable,” Juniper said.

“More EV charging networks will enable interoperability and work to develop common ways to access and pay. Vehicle manufacturers will offer aggregator apps that enable easier charging options,” it added.

Quantum computing

Quantum computers represent a massive acceleration in computing speed and performance. It is expected to deliver extraordinary advances across a multitude of industries including pharmaceutical development, nuclear energy, materials science, renewable energy, climate change mitigation, sustainable agriculture and more.

The world's biggest economies – the US, Russia, China and Japan – as well as tech titans IBM, Alibaba, Google and Microsoft, are all battling for supremacy in the field. Companies such as Visa, JP Morgan and Volkswagen are also experimenting with early-stage quantum technology.

In May, Google said it aims to build a commercial-grade quantum computer by 2029 that can perform error-free complex calculations in tiny fractions of a second.

In March, Abu Dhabi said it will build its own quantum computer, the first in the country, which will be able to process information at much faster speeds than classic technology.

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai and Daniel Sank, senior research scientist at Google, with one of the company's quantum computers in the Santa Barbara lab, California. Photo: Reuters

Hyperautomation

Hyperautomation is a framework and set of advanced technologies for scaling automation in the enterprise; the ultimate goal of hyper-automation is to develop a process for automating enterprise automation.

Advanced technologies used in hyper automation include the following:

Process mining and task mining tools for identifying and prioritizing automation opportunities.

Automation development tools for reducing the effort and cost of building automation. They include RPA, no-code/low-code development tools, iPaaS for integrations, and workload automation tools.

Gallery workers pose with the Ai-Da Robot at the Ashmolean Museum in the UK. Ai-Da is an ultra-realistic robot with artificial intelligence capabilities. Photo: EPA

Business logic tools for making it easier to adapt and reuse automation, including intelligent business process management, decision management, and business rules management

AI and machine learning tools for extending the capabilities of automation. The range of tools in this area includes natural language processing (NLP), optical character recognition, machine vision, virtual agents, and chatbots.

The aim of hyper-automation is not only to save costs, boost productivity, and gain efficiencies through automating automation but also to capitalize on the data collected and generated by digitized processes. Organizations can plumb that data to make better and timelier business decisions, according to SearchCIO.

Cyber security mesh

Cyber security mesh is a strategy that independently secures each device with its own perimeter. Most of the traditional security practices use a single perimeter to secure an entire IT environment, but a cyber security mesh uses a more rounded and all-inclusive approach.

As reported by Stefanini, with cybersecurity mesh, companies will be able to secure any digital asset anywhere, allowing them to address threats that have arisen thanks to the pandemic-driven shift to remote work.

By 2024, organizations adopting cyber security mesh to integrate security tools to work as a cooperative ecosystem will reduce the financial impact of individual security incidents by an average of 90 percent, Gartner predicted.

Workers on a 5G tower at Shougang Park, one of the sites for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. Photo: AFP

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