We're celebrating our 20th birthday this month, and we've invited industry experts, researchers and scientists to write in and paint a vision of the future, 20 years from now. Here's what Karthik Balasubramanian, SVP- ISVs and Emerging Verticals, Persistent Systems Ltd had to share about his vision of the future.
The once in 100 – years black swan Covid-19 pandemic event might have just hastened the digital evolution. Every aspect of our life as we have known it in the past 50 years is already changing. In fact, the next 20 years is going to see even more changes than the previous 200. While organizations are all set to witness this huge whirlpool of change, business leaders and technology professionals have left no stone unturned to adapt to the new normal. In the era of unpredictability, we have accelerated the adoption of various technologies, however we need to brace ourselves and look forward to technology trends and inflexion points that will power us into the future.
Yes, I mean it. Here is the basis; Computation has become cheaper over the past decade or so and is on track to become exponentially cheaper, faster and more reliable by every passing year. This is going to be driven by rapid advances in nano tech and networking speed. This is going to drive AI in everything. The consumer behavior was once touted as the reason why eCommerce was slow to pick up. The last 15 some months have made sure that our collective consuming behaviors have changed, suddenly the world is very comfortable doing everything online driving eCommerce, one study puts the extent of growth in 20-21 at a 44% Y-o-Y!!. We would soon be trusting all regular, mundane and non-experiential purchases to be made by AI driven connected devices. We as customers will only be monitoring and slowly AI will take over that role as well. AI enable Cars to drive themselves, interact with other cars, plan to avoid traffic and accidents. So, our road travel will be a lot safer, quicker and much more energy efficient.
While all the mundane tasks are taken care by AI, most things experiential would be powered by Virtual Reality (VR); For instance, the regular and non-critical doctor’s office visits would be through VR, The blue tooth LE micro devices would communicate our vitals and readings in real time for accurate diagnosis. Our political system will also get to play a role in this as well for strictly country wide setups are going to come under pressure; Patient’s the world over would be able to access doctors and providers world over, There will also likely be a drive to standardize all medical records and thresholds for medical measurements worldwide so that there is global compatibility. Also, some most of the health care treatment would be proactive as opposed to reactive, wellness care rather would be the talk in the town rather than sickness care.
The current 5G revolution in mobile and telecom space is expected to bring about disruption in the market as well as its expected to have a long-lasting impact on the market ecosystem. 5G is expected to have a deep and sustained impact on each industrial sector. The two most important changes which 5G is expected to bring are very low Latency, high connectivity and ultra-high reliability.
5G technology will fast-track our journey to the more connected world, some research reports suggest that we will be able to realize the full potential of 5G revolution by 2035. 5G revolution will have an impact on technological advancements which are way beyond the current technological capabilities. Safe to say that we will see huge investments in R&D and technology to leverage the full potential of Next G. With all this, there will likely not be much computing and storage on premise whether it is home or office, default and the only option is likely to be cloud with all bells and whistles services built on it.
Being the leader at the best product engineering services company, I want to devote the next few topics to the Hi-Tech Industry.
This is one area which is going to see explosive growth from the current USD 12-13B global market in 2020 to ~USD 45B in 2025 and >USD 150B in 2030. There is likely to be a great thrust towards measuring and reporting low code + no code numbers as a key metric for linear revenue models. The ITES sector which employs lots of BPO/KPO staff also would have rethought their model to account for the emergence of AI bots. Not just AI bots on the enterprise side and on the side of corporations, most customers will also have delegated their tasks to AI bots which they would have bought as a service to save time. So, it is in reality, AI bots interacting with AI bots.
In a recent interview Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized on the need of thinking beyond windows, In October 2020 Microsoft adopted Android for the Surface Duo. With this they tried to communicate that operating system no longer has the prime importance, and it’s all about the app model and experience. It’s evident how mobile computing has shifted the paradigm, and it’s a signal that Microsoft is looking far more broadly as far as offerings are concerned.
Organizations like Microsoft are focusing heavily on fluid framework technology, since 2014 Microsoft has shifted its impetus to ‘cloud first mobile first’ and this framework is an extension of that, similarly other product organizations like Oracle which have been traditionally focusing on products are now focusing heavily on cloud and SaaS.
The future will see the line between product and services diminish, with cloud and hyperscalers being mainstream both products and services will amalgamate, and a fusion of offerings is expected to emerge which will have elements of both products and services.
Hyper Personalization is probably a concept which would be discussed by all industries be it Retail or Hi Tech or Manufacturing. Servicing this need is going be the most important ask of the IT industry, Most services or apps will have the ability to be launched from concept to production in less than 72 hrs. On the vector of Personalization, today, we are struggling to fulfill stated needs and preferences, the next 20 years will not only satisfy stated preferences but also unstated preferences in a truly hyper-personalized manner. The popular MBA marketing books will have to be rewritten on every aspect of the 4 Ps i.e. Product, Price, Place and Promotion, all of these would be Hyper personal.
Year 2041 is going to be very exciting year, the technology journey to it will be even more exhilarating.
– By Karthik Balasubramanian, SVP- ISVs and Emerging Verticals, Persistent Systems Ltd
To read what other industry leaders and experts have to say about the future in their respective fields, visit our 20th Anniversary Microsite