What will happen in the future? It’s a question that everyone is fascinated with. While we don’t have a crystal ball (or a DeLorean), we do have an eye on what important technology is being used more often.
So here it is folks, our brief list of the most important IT trends for the year ahead.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence (AI), has received a lot of buzz in recent years and is definitely a trend to watch. Just to be clear, ‘AI’ refers to computer systems that are built to mimic human intelligence and perform everyday tasks such as recognition of images, speech, patterns and decision making. In almost every case, AI can perform tasks more accurately and faster than humans.
You may not even notice it, but AI is slowly affecting the way we live, work and play. Even though we are only in the early stages, you can see examples of AI in the Google Search engine, Traffic and GPS Maps, Ridesharing Apps (Uber, Lyft), Airline travel, Spam Filters, Mobile Banking Deposits just to name a few types.
As machines become a bigger part of our daily functions and online interactions start to make their way into every area of our lives, this is an area to watch.
Machine Learning
Machine Learning might sound complicated and that’s because it is. Machine Learning is technically a subset of Artificial Intelligence.
How does Machine Learning work? Essentially, computers are programmed to learn to do something they are not programmed to do. They must learn by discovering patterns and insights from data that they gather. To break it down further there are two types of machine learning: supervised and unsupervised machine learning.
Machine Learning is where you start to hear freaky futuristic terms such as neural networks, natural language processing (NLP), and deep learning. What these mean for us mere mortals is that computers are getting smarter, faster. This is good news for us in the IT arena, as it helps automate a lot of processes. A good example is SD-WAN, which is a software-based manager of the bandwidth and internet traffic in your business.
Edge Computing
Edge computing is the younger sibling of cloud computing and is more than the latest buzzword.
Edge computing is helpful when organizations need to bypass the latency caused by communicating information from devices to the centralized computing system. For some industries, delays in the machine’s decision-making can result in losses of revenue or customers.
An example of edge computing is smart devices with computation power that are placed on the edge of the network. These devices monitor pre-defined metrics and, if the metrics are outside of the prescribed tolerance levels (ie. during a hacking attempt) a warning signal is issued and the machines shut down within microseconds to avoid further losses.
Where edge computing differs from cloud computing is in the few seconds relay of information to a centralized data center. Current examples of edge computing are traffic signals, video bandwidth uploads and downloads, and gas and power monitoring.
Cyber Security
What would the cyber world be without the threat of hacks? Cybersecurity might not sound like an ‘emerging technology’ because it has been around for a while. But the reality is, it’s evolving just as other technologies are.
Sorry to break it to you McFly, but those hackers are not giving up anytime soon. In fact, they are getting smarter by the day. A recent CNN study showed that over 1 Million pieces of malicious software are created every day.
How do you keep up with the latest threats? Simple, you hire the experts.
Our IT security services team is able to offer once-a-minute monitoring for your business. As soon as a threat is detected, we are able to isolate and neutralize it before it spreads to the full network. Doing this can save thousands and sometimes millions of dollars.
At Affant our philosophy is always to be prepared as possible. While we can’t predict the future, we can certainly stay up to date with the latest technology trends and developments. Let us help your business get the most from your IT in 2019. Contact Affant today to see how we can help you succeed.
Founding and leading technology-oriented service organizations since 1988. Specializes in Public speaking relating to Business Management, Entrepreneurship, Communication Network Management, Network Security, Managing your Team, and IP Telephony /VoIP / IP Communication.
