User Review
( votes)It’s become both a cliche and a battle cry: the only certainty of 2021 is that nothing is certain. This, of course, has made predicting how business software and the technology industry at large will change this year exceptionally difficult. One thing we know is that remote work or hybrid office-and-remote work will have a measurable effect on how software and services change. The needs of businesses, who have been forced to adapt to a new work environment, have fast-tracked certain changes in the software they rely on. This year, we will see major adjustments in the world of AI, BI, and DevOps as vendors race to help businesses operate more efficiently and effectively wherever and however they work.
AI will transform data security while adding optimization
The transition to remote work has spawned security vulnerabilities, as data is no longer being stored within specific networks and device parameters. This year, advanced AI technology will work to resolve these issues by being heavily embedded in data security. AI will take available data and augment the rules with trend patterns to detect potential security risks, sometimes before they happen. With this smart technology, AI systems will become more common in tracking suspicious activity and learning from patterns to combat complex hacks and phishing attacks. However, it will be critical that businesses make sure their privacy polices are stringent to protect personal data embedded in search engines, social networks, business applications and more. In the meantime, the AI research community is investing in differential privacy and confidential computing to enable privacy-first AI techniques.
Enhancing data security is not the only thing AI will assist with, either. Given the rapid digitization among businesses in 2020, AI will also aid in maximizing revenue. It will be embedded in new and existing roles and workflows, becoming a powerful resource to help businesses sell more and scale. The possibilities of optimization will be redefined as AI becomes more embedded in business software. Malware detection, root cause analysis, outage prediction, adaptive authentication, and more will all be powered by AI to revolutionize business.
Business Intelligence will enable storytelling, work with AI, and more.
Accelerated by AI technology, business intelligence is seeing rapid adoption and increased use in 2021. With BI becoming an essential catalyst for business growth—and digital modernization skyrocketing—businesses’ BI needs are shifting. This year, organizations will see more conversational analytics within BI services. Storytelling (automated insights) will determine the most important insights for businesses and will highlight key findings. The smart system will also be able to build digestible narratives for users and automatically generate presentations to eliminate tedious busy work. Additionally, AI’s integration within BI will enable analytic literacy among less technical users.
In 2021, embedded BI and self-service BI will allow end users to manipulate data, generate advanced analytics, and make interactive filtering more adopted. Rather than having static reports, users will be able to drive more actionable insights, and will be able to integrate business apps that have analytical aspects. AI will come into play within self-service BI by providing businesses with AI enhancements to automate search-engine reporting, insights, augmented data preparation, unified business analytics, and more. With enriched storytelling and embedded BI, unified business analytics will help companies leverage success.
DevOps will be influenced by AI, privacy regulation, and low code.
Application development will be shaped by multiple factors this year, enabling significant growth in AI, low-code adoption, and more. AI will be embedded in most application development to increase efficiency and increase capabilities. AI will play a role in everything from data modeling and auditing, AI entity and workflow suggestions, data cleansing and maintaining integrity, to search functionalities across an application ecosystem with NLP, intelligent data extraction, automated testing, and more. Along with AI creating ease-of-use, low code will enable app development for people with low or non-technical backgrounds. In 2021, low-code adoption will accelerate precipitously because of changing business conditions. Low-code will empower business developers to build and update applications (adding functionalities or workflows) faster, without compromising the quality, complexity, or scale. For this reason, low-code app development and low-code platform adoption will skyrocket.
Data privacy will also play a larger role in the world of DevOps this year. With recent privacy regulations passing and remote work increasing data privacy and security risks, developers will need to be more cognizant of privacy policies for services they integrate with and whom they share information with. Increased regulation will change the types of applications developers look to build this year.
As companies rapidly digitize their operations, AI, BI, and DevOps will mold to fit growing needs. While some worry that smart technologies such as AI will replace jobs, we’re moving towards a future where these enhancements aid workers instead. While nothing is certain as we move into uncharted territory, whatever odds are thrown their way, businesses will be able to scale and reap the rewards that new AI, BI, and DevOps developments provide for the new year.
