Gartner Predicts More AI And Sustainability In 2023 Trends

It’s that time of the year again.

We are now inside the final month of the year so everyone is rushing to finish projects before the holiday slowdown and thoughts are turning to what will be the important trends next year.

As always, Gartner has provided a good summary for the tech industry. Their latest analysis looking ahead to 2023 lists ten important technologies worth watching next year - they are:

1. Digital Immune System
2. Applied Observability
3. AI Trust, Risk and Security Management (AI TRISM)
4. Industry Cloud Platforms
5. Platform Engineering
6. Wireless-Value Realization
7. Superapps
8. Adaptive AI
9. Metaverse
10. Sustainable Technology

Not everyone will agree with the trends or the ranking, but it’s a good summary of where we should be paying attention because some of these technologies are dramatically changing in front of our eyes. I’m most interested about emerging technologies that are also developing some real use cases in industry.

For this reason, I do agree that the Metaverse is going to be an important trend, but as I wrote in a recent article, it’s almost impossible to find any real commercial examples of businesses that are using it. I think this will change as we start to accept that the metaverse can be used without VR – so it becomes more common to engage in virtual worlds (like a virtual office) without necessarily also using Virtual Reality at the same time.

I think we will see more examples of Adaptive AI out in the real world. This will also be partly driven by the present wave of economic uncertainty sweeping the world. Inflation is high, interest rates are high, and the expectation of a recession is also high in most major economies. In this type of business environment companies need to focus on efficiency and staying close to what their customers really want. The ability of adaptive AI to constantly learn and train itself will be extremely important for any company that wants to use this type of technology to predict what their customers will do next.

The industry cloud platforms mentioned by Gartner go beyond just launching new cloud services. It is very much focused on the expansion of the Software as a Service (SaaS) model across many other industrial areas. I do agree that this will become important and we will see many more services being offered and paid for only as they are consumed. Customer service is one good example of a business process that now requires a significant investment in property and people and is now available as-a-service.

I also think that sustainable technology will be important next year. Sustainability and other ESG-focused promises have long sounded like marketing initiatives, but this is starting to change. Customers, employees, and investors are all taking a long look at the sustainability of businesses before engaging. Companies that want to attract great employees, continue to keep their customers happy, and be able to attract investors now need to take sustainability seriously – if technology can help with these objectives then it is a trend worth watching.

You can read the complete Gartner list of strategic technology predictions for 2023 here.