Covid 19 has also acted as a significant catalyst for several changes that were already in the pipeline thanks to the ever-growing digital and online lives. There is also the old adage ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ and this will be another driving force behind all things to come in the business IT support space in the days to come. Philosophically, we must also accept that the pandemic has given rise to a new world order in which many thriving businesses have already shut shop, or are on the verge of doing so. The tourism industry, airline industry, and food industry are some of the glaring examples.
With this preamble, we now look at the IT trends for the New Year 2021 and beyond.
Artificial intelligence
Undoubtedly, at the moment AI is the biggest among tech trends and is expected to gallop further as a tool to help us in understanding and interpreting the world around us. The huge volume of data is already pouring in on infection rates, healthcare, the success rate of various measures we have taken for prevention of spread of the infection and more. The flow of data is likely to increase exponentially and algorithms on machine learning will get more sophisticated and better informed from the solutions they discover for us.
Computer vision systems will monitor the capacity of public spaces for analysing interactions discovered through self-learning algorithms, contact tracing, to spot insights and connections that may not be noticed through human analysis. Such an exercise will also help us in predicting demand from healthcare providers and hospitals allowing administrators to arrive at better decisions to use available resources optimally.
Businesses may also face challenges in understanding the shift in customer behaviour patterns. Online activity will grow even faster than what we have seen in the second half of 2020 driven by socializing, shopping, meetings, virtual working and recruitment. The tools used for analysing this shift in behaviour will get more sophisticated and yet fit the infrastructure and budget of more users.
Vehicle automation, drones, and robotics
An increasing pace may be noticed with self-driving vehicles given the fluctuating volume of passengers opting for public transport taking into account local conditions. Business IT support Service providers are likely to put more emphasis on driving efficiency in public transport networks. Reduction in labour cost will also help the sector to balance the uncertainties surrounding customer demand.
In recent times we have also seen increasing deployment of robots in assisted living and eldercare sectors and these are expected to gain further importance, particularly with regard to interaction with members of societies that are exposed to higher vulnerability to infection, the elderly for instance. Instead of wholly replacing human interaction with the caregivers which is pretty much in today’s condition, robotic devices can be employed to provide new communication channels and to provide simple companionship when sending nursing staff to homes may be fraught with safety risks. Apart from robotics, drones can also be effectively deployed in areas like delivering medicines, monitoring footfall in public places to take stock of risk of viral spread.
Enhanced connectivity with 5G
More reliable and faster internet contributes to a host of activities in the digital world from quicker loading of web pages to much lesser wait time for your YouTube videos to launch. Right from 2G, the increase in bandwidth has always brought along commendable advances particularly in the field of music and video streaming. 5G is expected to grow even faster and open up more possibilities. 5G is also expected to impact services like Cloud-based services, virtual reality, augmented reality and fibre/cabled based networks can become redundant in the days to come.
Summing up
Till the early days of 2020, many of us frequently used the term ‘fast-paced world’ but the later events dealt a body blow to the pace impacting nearly every sector of life and activity around us. Millions of people across the globe have been infected by the pandemic though the numbers are still small in relation to the global population. On the other side of the fence, the fallout from the pandemic has rendered several million people jobless and businesses across the board are suffering huge losses every single day. Can 2021 at least start a process of reversal is anyone’s guess? What lessons are we learning from this pandemic and how can we contribute to preventing a repeat? Can technology do it for mankind?