2021 has certainly been pivotal for many industries. With technology advancing exponentially, ESG at the forefront of boardroom agendas and COVID-19 still impacting consumer behaviour, companies are having to adapt, shift, transform and innovate in order to serve new customer needs and trends. As we come to the end of the year, many are wondering whether 2022 will hold more of the same, or whether we’ll see any new, seismic shifts. So, we’ve asked our Partner team to share their thoughts.

For the Technology industry, we’ve asked one of our experts, Dieter Halfar, to share his insights on what we’re likely to see in the year ahead. What new trends will emerge? What is going to shift? Find Dieter’s thoughts below:

Data Fabric

2022 is likely to see the adoption of data fabric into organisations. The integrated data architecture that data fabric provides can help organisations utilise all of their data and gain valuable insights with less work. The benefits range from removing human error in data analysis, reducing the cost of data analytics, optimising data integration and automation, and time-savings.

Most data collected by companies currently goes unused – a single, integrated data fabric can use all of the data — enabling businesses to make more informed decisions in a much more efficient way.

Decision intelligence

Decision intelligence can democratise data analytics and transform the way we make commercial decisions. The combination of data, social and managerial science will enable AI to make impactful, informed decisions, from business strategy to product launch opportunities. The automation of commercial decisions may cause feelings of unease. However, it will provide a more comprehensive overall view, whilst reducing time, costs and errors.

Decision intelligence can remove the need for data specialists. It allows employees to serve themselves, reducing costs and time taken to reach a decision. It can also address the skills gap – automated decision making for scheduling, resource allocation and capacity planning.

DLTs

We will see more hype and growth in the use of distributed ledger technology and blockchain for data stored from multiple sources, where traceability and transparency matter. A big focus is on use of public ledgers to ensure sustainable supply chains across industries including food, retail and manufacturing.

The biggest challenges to solve in this area are the high complexity, energy consumption and high cost of using DLTs against traditionally centralised records. These are not to be ignored and are currently unsolved problems paramount to the success of blockchain at a large scale.

That being said, the power consumption issue on public DLT is being addressed by moving away from Proof of Work consensus algorithms and towards Proof of Stake (PoS). This is the case for one of the largest public blockchain networks, although the implementation of PoS is fraught with difficulty at present, and most likely delayed until 2023.

Lastly, we mustn’t forget the metaverse, and tokens related to the metaverse economy. This is bound to be a significant area of interest in 2022, as the concept moves from early stage implementation to increased and more mainstream adoption.

We can help you navigate and exploit these opportunities. Get in touch today to talk to one of our experts.