KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • In this Technology Foresight Report, NTT DATA has drawn upon exhaustive surveys to analyze the IT-driven conditions that point to future trends.
  • The breakneck speed of technological innovation in AI is accelerating the growth of business.  The competition to rapidly and continuously improve services for optimal delivery walks hand in hand with the evolution of software, hardware, and data.
  • IT is increasingly linked to the physical world as business infrastructure, giving organizations the power to transcend established boundaries, expand into new industries and realize vertical integration. 
  • The rapid permeation of technology is shaking existing value systems and challenging sustainability. The people who control technology will need to participate in the coming revision of rules.
  • A new kind of AI is emerging that will be able to learn and solve problems by itself and be applied to a multiplicity of uses not limited to specific fields, unlocking new possibilities.
  • The evolution of IT infrastructure, coupled with further semiconductor technology development, will give organizations the flexibility to keep pace with change.
  • Software is no longer just a way of getting work done: it’s the driving force that grows business and opens new paths forward, by enlisting the involvement of many different stakeholders to realize new ideas and adapt to continuous change.
  • Data is vital in order to analyze current situations and decide upon strategies. Organizations need to go beyond data-driven marketing, and focus on utilizing detailed, real-time data to fuel continuous improvement and machine learning.
  • By expanding the tools that support complicated autonomous work, we not only improve the productivity of people, but also accelerate the arrival of a new world that links the virtual to the real and enables continuous, high-speed improvement. 
  • AI-based IT will open the way to the future of humankind by changing the way we do R&D and verification, and radically shortening the time it takes to solve problems.

One of the ways in which Foresight Studios helps leaders formulate strategy is through tools such as Technology Foresight Reports. From reviewing the ways technology has changed the world to diving into what’s going on now (and what’s happening next) in each area, these reports serve as a compass to point to future trends and help navigate current ones. 

IT will lead growth, transcend boundaries and establish new norms

Growth

It goes without saying that IT is essential for business growth. Even during the turmoil of the Covid-19 pandemic, new, fast-growing businesses – such as food delivery and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) – emerged and took off. Powered by smartphones, the cloud, high-speed internet and software, IT is responsible for enabling the birth and swift growth of these new businesses.

IT is still evolving. AI is a major force driving this evolution and enabling the rapid, global growth of advanced and precise services that are not dependent on humans. Expectations for technological innovation continue to drive further R&D investment.

Therefore, it is essential that business leaders understand the concrete power that IT gives to emerging ideas, and have broad knowledge and deep insight into the future direction of IT.

Transcending boundaries

Businesses deeply linked to IT will transcend existing constraints and change the way value is delivered. The growth of smart devices – including earbuds, cameras and cars – has made it possible for manufacturers to use software improvements to continuously increase the value of a product long after the sale has been made. With users constantly connected to the world through their smartphones, every business is becoming a service competing for users’ disposable time and money. IT systems that bring about this new value and competitive environment are maturing into commodities as they are organized and integrated into business enablers.

IT is a powerful differentiator in business. Companies that have secured an edge in technology development will start new, vertically integrated business models and transcend established boundaries. Overwhelming competitiveness in core areas of IT – software, IT infrastructure, data and AI – is key to broad dominance.

“From the laws of physics that surround us to the roots of life, there is still uncharted territory for humanity to explore. The world is meeting this longstanding challenge with the tremendous acceleration of IT. Any new growth strategy must begin with the search for the next paradigm shift at the intersection of technology and business.”

As IT continues to integrate with business, the next challenge is to extend the virtual world into the real world and maximize its benefits. From the laws of physics that surround us to the roots of life, there is still uncharted territory for humanity to explore. The world is meeting this longstanding challenge with the tremendous acceleration of IT.

Any new growth strategy must begin with the search for the next paradigm shift at the intersection of technology and business.

New norms

While IT has brought many benefits to the world, it has also brought problems. Cybercrime is expanding rapidly on a global scale and evolving at the speed of the IT business. The growth of social network services has increased the fragmentation of society, creating filter bubbles and echo chambers due to a reliance on algorithms, such as AI. Responding to these challenges and coordinating new systems will also be a responsibility of IT utilization. Countries are rapidly regulating the excessive collection of personal information, business use of the results and human rights violations. Responding to the world’s demands is an urgent task.

The new possibilities of an IT-driven world are creating other conflicts within society. The use of IT is essential to helping control greenhouse gases, but it is also a main culprit of excessive electricity consumption. IT has enabled decentralization through cybercurrencies and DeFi that excites people to its many possibilities, but there are also moves to regulate the magnitude of the impact, from heated speculation to security.

Society continues to struggle to meet the challenges posed by IT while maintaining continuity with traditional norms. In a world where chaos continues, those in charge of IT must be more actively involved in the development of new norms within the framework of laws.

New opportunities will be unlocked with AI, infrastructure and software

Massive AI

While services using AI such as smart speakers and automated inspection tasks have become the norm, there are still challenges with AI, such as underperforming capabilities and the need for manual collection of learning data. To solve this problem, AI will not only massively increase the numbers of parameters, but also become multimodal and self-learning.

Natural Language Processing in AI continues to improve its capabilities by increasing the number of parameters and learning large amounts of data. This massive AI is enabling the creation of new AI software with advanced capabilities in applications such as translation, summarization, image and voice.

In addition, AI is gaining new capabilities using multimodal data. Traditionally, there have been separate AI systems for different types of data, such as language or images. Multimodal AI combines these multiple data types, for example, to generate images that match verbal commands or process any type of data.

AI is also evolving to overcome the amount of human time and effort required to collect learning data. New data collection methods, such as self-supervised learning and synthetic data, are addressing this need. As technology evolves, the IT world continues to find new ways to improve and exploit AI’s capabilities. Getting this right will make utilization of AI successful.

Infrastructure

IT infrastructure is shape-shifting while continuing its nonstop evolution as a growth engine and source of competitiveness.

“Thanks to IT infrastructure, people can seamlessly work together from anywhere. Semiconductors are at the core of this trend, bringing intelligence everywhere and fueling the explosive performance enhancements of AI.”

Thanks to IT infrastructure, people can seamlessly work together from anywhere. Continuing developments in edge devices, communications technologies and servers will support this trend and provide new energy. Semiconductors are at the core of this trend, bringing intelligence everywhere and fueling the explosive performance enhancements of AI. Miniaturization and stacking continue to enable semiconductor performance improvements.

These technological developments – and the infrastructure that supports them – will be invisible to most people. Complex and sophisticated systems can be integrated into cloud services, including server network software and business expertise. As the cloud is enhanced, IT will be truly managed as a business enabler, as businesses are freed from infrastructure-related tasks.

The cloud is rapidly becoming nomadic, with data and computational power roaming more globally. As it does, IT infrastructure improvements will focus on reducing latency, expanding the use of AI and building off improvements in energy efficiency.

Software

While software has always fueled growth, that growth is poised to accelerate as software-producing technology evolves and businesses explore new ways to build their own software and use it as a source of competitiveness.

Low-code tools that minimize the need for expertise in creating software continue to attract attention. Their intrinsic value is the early participation of various stakeholders in software development. This enables organizations to gather and incorporate the opinions, experience and ideas of the people who will actually use the software. Software, as a collection of best practices created through field initiatives, will be central to enterprise value.

Of course, software development by experts is still necessary, but AI’s natural language processing can be a game changer. AI can write software based on as little input as a few lines code or comments, although the results are mixed and far from automated. Still, AI will be key to increasing the productivity of scarce technical talent.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of non-tech companies that participate in software development and use it to strengthen their own competitiveness. These companies are also using software strategically to gain entry into other business sectors. The rise of companies that have transformed their businesses into software-centric businesses is a testament to the ever-increasing value of IT.

 

The virtual and physical worlds will be bridged by data

Data

Data continues to grow and expand. It forms the basis of all kinds of value, informs and guides business decisions and is a resource for the development of new services. Ultimately, it becomes a proof point for one’s ability and initiative.

Almost everything on Earth is being translated into data. From the 3D shapes of the Earth’s surface and objects seen from space, to the records of people’s actions and conversations, data is accumulated continuously based on geographical coordinates. The aggregated data brings up a virtual planet within a map app on your smartphone. Today, with browsing and searching activity helping to guide people’s behavior, many businesses are also flocking to mapped data. Any biometric data collected by non-invasive sensors will eventually be organized on a per-person basis. Data from a particular business or domain will be consolidated and organized to a greater extent. There are more ways to use data, and with the help of AI for analysis, the barriers to using it will decrease.

Finally, data is more valuable when it is disclosed. Collecting data through early beta releases for a variety of businesses is now a common practice, but there is also a growing strategy to publish valuable data that is independently collected and highly analyzed. Of course, organizations will continue to hoard data assets internally as a resource for marketing and service improvement. However, strategies to drive standards and metrics in the business domain, demonstrate competence, and encourage the open use of data assets, will expand as a way to strengthen communities.

The physical world

The challenge of bringing the value of IT into the physical world continues. From human judgment to physical work, IT is playing a greater role and creating new value by collaborating with the physical world.

One way IT is bringing value to the physical world is by replacing human decision-making. For example, IT has proven to be faster and more accurate than humans at determining how to load trucks and route packages for delivery, bringing IT speed and accuracy to the physical world.

The value of IT extends to performing physical tasks. IT will replace skilled operations such as operating heavy machinery. Humans will only need to instruct and monitor these autonomous machines from a safe place. This allows a small number of people to manage large numbers of heavy construction machines, for example, scaling the workload up and down easily as needed.

Increasingly, IT is being tasked with delivering continuous improvement to the physical world. For example, one company is using a digital twin of its physical factory to experiment with ways of improving its production lines. This allows ideas to be tested at a speed that cannot be achieved in real life. Implementing the improvement results is still manual, but if IT can automatically reflect and bring the improved reality back into the virtual world, continuous improvement of the physical world can be realized.

As we look ahead to new ways to bring the value of IT to the physical world, organizations must first use IT to support judgment and physical labor. Further added value will come as experience is gained.

The way to the unknown future

From optimal delivery planning to the discovery of new materials, to the birth of life, IT and AI will play a leading role in opening up many areas still unknown to humans.

Many of these explorations involve problems that are difficult to solve by IT alone. For example, in delivery operations it is important to take the best route to many destinations in the shortest possible time, but as the number of destinations increases, the number of combinations becomes enormous. IT alone cannot find the optimum solution. However, because AI can learn from past results, it can instantly judge and exclude unnecessary combinations and find the best solution in a short time.

This AI exploration of the unknown will change the development of new materials, a traditionally time-consuming process. After learning the results of previous experiments and simulations, AI quickly derives the properties of the new material from the given conditions. This reduces the time required for manual trial and error, resulting in much faster development of new materials.

“AI can unravel unknowns that humans have spent years trying to understand.”

AI can unravel unknowns that humans have spent years trying to understand. For example, over the past half century, researchers have been able to determine only 20% of the three-dimensional structures of human proteins, which is an issue in the development of new drugs and the understanding of life. But with the advent of AI, which learns the three-dimensional structures of known proteins and can predict unsolved structures with high accuracy, it has cracked 98.5% of the protein structures in just one year.

IT and AI will continue to reveal business, industrial, and scientific mysteries and support the expansion of human activities.

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Originally published by NTT DATA, January 2022.

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