2022: Digital Trends, Patterns, and Focus areas
Technologies drive the trends and patterns in the business. The business maturity for a fast engagement with their customers is delivered using digital transformation. 2021 has seen lots of new ideas emerging backed by new technologies. These items will shape the trend for some years to come.
What are the new items that emerged in 2021 that will continue to emerge in 2022?
- Crypto and crypto loans — Cryptocurrencies are getting popular day by day and it became one of the investment options in the investment portfolio for many. As more cryptos are being accumulated as wealth, they are used as collateral to take loans. Business ideas around crypto loans are on the rise and we will continue to see this getting enhanced in a better way in the years to come.
- Composite SLA — We have experienced outages with many cloud providers this year. AWS had 2 outages just in December. All the cloud providers provide SLA on individual resources. However, the application is built by combining several cloud resources. The cloud vendors should provide the SLA and commitment for the combined resources rather than individual resources.
- Fintech and Business coins — Enterprises across the globe have realized the power of having their financial instrument for transactions. The majority of the companies are going big about implementing their cryptos and using the same for transactions. These implementations help businesses to create an easy engagement with the customer and thereby realizing the long-lasting relationship.
- Digital transformation improvements — OnPrem to Cloud is now changing from legacy cloud to serverless cloud. Cloud 2.0 is already being implemented by many. On the other hand, other businesses are still using on-prem and first-generation cloud offerings. This is definitely as a step backward than forward. We will continue to see momentum in cloud adoption
- Crowd Testing — Crowdsourcing is a relatively old concept and it has been used with application development and also testing. The emergent in the tools has made crowd testing simple and valuable. And pass the benefits to the customer directly rather than have a time-consuming quality control process. Time to market, early feedback on the product, customer benefits, and many benefits can be achieved here.
- Cyber Security — As applications comprise many non-human entities in modern design, it is essential to safeguard both humans and machines against threats and risks. Cyber security mesh will continue to grow as the security architecture enables the distributed enterprises to deploy and extend security where it is needed the most. All these different entities will be governed by a cyber-savvy security board.
Apart from the above, Gartner expects these 12 technology trends to act as force multipliers of digital business and innovation over the next three to five years.
How teamwork will be changing?
Teams are the true assets for any enterprise and as the nature of things changes over time, the team’s expectations also change as they evolve.
1. Functionally independent teams — As more hybrid working models like offering remote work, globalizing the team is being tried, the teams will have to be collaborative and be functionally independent.
2. ZeroOps — The functionally independent teams should be able to analyze, design, develop, operate and run the application on their own.
3. FinOps — Moving the workload to the cloud is done. We will have to ensure that every member of the team is aware of the cost involved in cloud adoption.
What old problems persist?
I wanted to highlight the issues that looked like should never be an issue anymore since we are working on these technologies for at least a decade now and there are many standards in place to check the implementation.
1. YouTube multiple layouts — YouTube is a very old app and I am surprised to see the layout not fitting properly in the Google TV. Android is a 10-year-old platform and multiple layout handling is a very common development practice.
2. Disney common error messages — Streaming TV or OTT is a common application these days and it is not good when the application does not tell the proper error reason and guide the user with the next steps.
3. Dominos 2 minute challenge — This is a great initiative and testimony for the digital transformation. However, I do not think the entire module/algorithm is designed in a way that considers the 1) current staff capacity, 2) Current wait times, 3) dedicated curbside delivery person. I am sure Dominos would work on tweaking the guarantee that reduces the pressure on the staff and increases the user experience of the customer.
What applications and new ideas were really impressive in 2021?
The app stores are flooded with too many new apps every year. As the stores are almost a decade old, we can find multiple apps for the same functionality that we are looking for. But some apps will stand unique. That may be because of the technology or a new idea. In that way, I have highlighted some of the apps which caught my attention in 2021 -
- Neighbor (Peer-to-peer self-storage) — Make your garage or basement a rental storage option.
- ClubHouse (Talking social media app) — Talk, listen, and learn along with others in realtime all by talking
- Thumtack (Gig economy) — Even though released in 2017, the true momentum started gaining just from the pandemic. Every simple job can be made available on demand. Work in your free time.
- Ikea, Amazon (AR-based assistant apps) — As the stores were closed as a precaution and safety measure, AR-based tools within the apps helped users to understand what they are buying.
- Redfin, Zillow, Xome (iBuyers) — One of the reasons for the home market to be a big boom is the iBuyer algorithm.
- Masterworks (Digital trade of physical art) — Be a digital shareholder of any valuable art from the world’s best artists.
- Seed Invest (Be a part of seed investment) — Invest at a very early stage of the startups. Earlier, you need not be an angel investor or VC to be investing. And the startups with ideas have more options for them to get the fund for their running and expansion.
- Acre Trader (Hold equity of farmland) — Be a part of the farming revolution by investing in digital trading of the farmland.
- OpenSea (NFT arts) — NFT arts in the form of images, videos, etc are getting popular and this can be bought with cryptocurrencies
What books can you read to keep up with the emerging trends?
At last, we all want to keep ourselves updated and have a self-evaluation check, and get aligned with what to expect from the technology. Books are the best way to look at things from a different perspective. It is not the direct technology books that would help in getting this learning. Many fictional books can be telling the future. In that way, I liked reading these 3 books -
- A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins
- Where will man take us? by Atul Jalan
- Cloud FinOps by J.R. Storment and Mike Fuller
Happy new year, 2022!
Share your learning from 2021 and what trends you expect in 2022!
Happy learning!
Originally published at http://shankarkumarasamy.blog on December 31, 2021.
