With each passing year, real-life looks more and more like 90s science fiction novels: the metaverse, robots, artificial intelligence, and all these new technologies make us feel like we are entering the matrix.

This year, technology seems to bring great changes, that will transform our daily lives and the way we do business. Today, we want to share 6 of the technological trends, that experts consider will be the most important of 2022.

Cloud Native Solutions

The old model of migrations to the cloud “lift-and-shift” focuses on collecting all the workload of a solution and placing it into the cloud. As these solutions aren't designed for the cloud, they can't take advantage of its benefits, and all this workload requires intensive maintenance.

The new cloud-native solutions are easier to develop, try, and launch while allowing them more adaptability, flexibility, and a faster escalation process, taking advantage of elasticity and intrinsic resizing of cloud computing to accelerate the process of obtaining value. 

Artificial Intelligence 

AI has already received a lot of buzz in the past years, but it will continue to be a trend as we keep discovering new things or until we reach the stage of Self Aware Machines, which will be the peak of AI.

In 2022, we will continue to see its notable effects on how we live: Natural language processing projects itself as an important subset of AI. It will eliminate chatbots and give more power to virtual assistants in the fields of customer service.

Among other uses, Machine Learning will be used to analyze interactions, determine underlying connections, insights and detect the changing patterns of customer behavior by analyzing data in near real-time. This will be a game-changer for industries like marketing, where all the analyses will be done by machines, and the decision of how to nurture the lead will be automated in relation to the results.

Computer Vision, Generative AI, Intelligent Process Automation, and Data Analytics, among others, are subsets of AI to keep eyes on this year.

Internet of Things

The Internet of Things is the interconnection of devices and objects to a network, where all of them could interact from machine to machine (M2M) without the need of human intervention, making people's lives easier by exchanging data and information. 

We’re already using and benefitting from IoT. We can lock our doors remotely if we forget to, when we leave, or preheat our ovens on our way home from work. Alarms, refrigerators, and baby monitors are other examples of objects connected to the devices, that can send inputs to help us with our life quality.

IoT is already used in industrial applications. Many production plants have devices and sensors connected to a network, that analyzes data and generates alarms or messages, that are sent to different persons in case they need to take the necessary actions. The more advanced ones can initiate action protocols automatically to correct or treat these alarms without human interaction.

Blockchain

Better known for its crucial role in cryptocurrency systems, a blockchain is a distributed database shared among the nodes of a computer network.

As data becomes more valuable, data security becomes increasingly important. Some organizations are planning to use the blockchain system to improve digital security, especially since it can maintain a secure and decentralized record of transactions and guarantee the fidelity and security of data records.

Another example of how blockchain will affect us this year is cryptocurrencies. Many countries, like France, Great Britain, and Russia, will follow the example of Venezuela, China, and El Salvador, by creating cryptos or accepting existing ones.

NFT's transactions and ''play to win'' games are another relevant aspect of blockchain this year. Many companies are already selling NFT's or using them to ensure the authenticity of real things. Nike, Gucci, and other clothing and luxury goods brands are trading with NFT's within gaming platforms such as Fortnite or Roblox.

Low and No-code Development

So far, we have talked about technological advances, that seem right out of a cyberpunk dystopia. The following trend is much closer to us, and some even use it regularly.

Low and No-code platforms will be a big trend this year and in the near future. Microsoft estimates that over the next five years, five hundred million apps will be required due to the demands of digitalization, but professional app development costs 45,000 dollars on average, way too much for most businesses. 

Low-code solutions allow non-technical staff to create apps and automation of business processes. Driven by the organizations' urgency to accelerate digital transformation, low code development has moved towards mainstream adoption. It's projected that by 2024, 65% of apps will be low-code. This means a significant increase in the development of Low and No-code technologies and the number of citizen developers.

Remote Work and Distributed Companies

Working from wherever you want is here to stay. After the pandemic, many companies decided to send their collaborators to work from home for good. That's why Gardner has recognized remote and distributed work as a trend for 2022.

Remote and distributed work is not the same. Remote work allows people to work from wherever they like, but still very similar to an office: reunions, schedule, and the whole team working simultaneously. 

Distributed work creates teams, that work collaboratively regardless of the geographic location of their members, helping each other accomplish a task. In many cases, distributed work is asynchronous.

Within the development world, distributed companies evolve rapidly due to the difficulty of finding professional developers. This force companies to look for them in other cities and even countries. As expected, this trend will continue to increase and normalize in the future, until most development companies work with collaborators around the globe.