Gartner Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2023

Technological advancements aren’t showing any signs of slowing down, on the contrary, we have seen a landmark couple of years and will most likely continue to see this progression. Due to the threat of recession and having to manage the impact of inflation business leaders are looking for actionable strategies for thriving in this economy. 

As a result, Gartner has once again conducted extensive research to best advise executives on where to focus their tech implementation and adoption strategies for the next couple of years. The results: Gartner’s Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2023. 

According to the analyst firm, these 10 trends are meant to “Bring clarity to your tech priorities”, while providing an overview of the trends, key actions, and their opportunities. 

Let’s look at the trends! 

Gartner Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2023 

Digital Immune System 

A digital immune system (DIS) combines a range of practices and technologies from software design, development, automation, operations, and analytics to migrate business risks. It works in a similar way to our own immune system, by protecting applications and services from animalities, such as software bugs or security issues, by making applications more resilient.
With DIS organizations can prepare to mitigate potential customer and user experience that is resilient to failures. 

Key actions for building a strong digital immune system: 

• Form executive-sponsored teams to create and execute a DIS strategy 
• Create dedicated communities of practices (CoPs) to share lessons learned, guiding principles, reusable assets, standards, tools, and any AI-based insights realized 
• Encourage collaboration on DIS opportunities, and reward resilience improvements across the organization 
• Foster a collaborative culture between development, security, and operations teams to ensure ongoing support for these initiatives 

According to Gartner, by 2025 organizations that invest in building digital immunity will increase customer satisfaction by decreasing downtime by 80%. 

Applied Observability 

Applied observability is the applied use of observable data in a highly orchestrated and integrated approach across business functions, applications, and infrastructure and operations teams. It works from data emitted by an organization, using AI to analyze and make recommendations, which allows an enterprise to make faster and more accurate future decisions. If you apply it systematically it can help you reduce the latency for response and optimize business operations in real time. 

Key actions for applied observability:

• Treat your observable data as your most valuable monetizable asset
• Drive productive decision-making with the shortest possible latency by reframing the focus of the organization from monitoring and reacting to applying observability 
• Pave the way for organizational adoption of applied observability, by focusing on the spectrum of business, application, and infrastructure layers. 

Gartner predicts that by 2026, 70% of organizations that successfully applied observability will achieve shorter latency for decision-making, enabling competitive advantage for target business or IT processes. 

AI Trust, Risk, and Security Management (AI TRiSM)

AI has been making headlines in recent years, as technological investments are making it more accessible and powerful than ever before. With its rise it also brings the risk of being harmful to our society, this is what the recent U.S. blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights is addressing. The Bill mostly focuses on AI’s proliferation in human services and is aiming to protect society from its harm. Reminding developers and users of AI models that they need to build safeguards into their AI models and strategies. A strict approach to AI TRiSM is needed. 

Gartner defines AI TRiSM as a framework that supports AI model governance, trustworthiness, fairness, reliability, robustness, efficacy, and privacy. It includes solutions, techniques, and processes for model interpretability and explainability, privacy, model operations, and adversarial attack for its customers and the enterprise. 

Key AI TRiSM actions to consider: 

• Setting up an organizational task force 
• Maximizing business outcomes through robust AI TRiSM
• Involving diverse experts
• Prioritizing AI explainability & interpretability
• Tailoring methods to use cases & components 
• Ensuring data and model integrity & reliability 

According to Gartner, by 2026, organizations that operationalize AI transparency, trust, and security will see their AI models achieve a 50% result improvement in terms of adoption, business goals, and user acceptance. 

Industry Cloud Platforms 

Industry cloud platforms are designed to meet the specific needs of vertical industry segments inadequately served by generic solutions. They create value for organizations by incorporating cloud services traditionally purchased separately into reintegrated but customizable industry-relevant solutions. 

Key industry cloud platform actions to consider: 

• Target industry cloud platform to complement your existing portfolio 
• Engage business technologists and fusion teams to create enterprisewide understanding and support for the industry cloud journey 

Gartner predicts that, by 2027 more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms to accelerate their business initiatives. 

Platform Engineering

Platform Engineering is the discipline of designing and building toolchains and workflows that enable self-service capabilities for software engineering organizations in the cloud-native era. They offer adaptable and relevant industry solutions and accelerate cloud adoption by pointedly appealing to business consumers beyond the early users of cloud infrastructure and platform technologies. 

Key platform engineering actions: 

• Start with internal developer portals 
• Embed security into platforms
• Look for a customizable platform, that can meet your needs

Predictions made by Gartner state that, by 2026 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams as internal providers of reusable services, components, and tools for application delivery.

Wireless-Value Realization

Value from wireless technologies now involves extending digital services to include a wide variety of new contexts and customers. Gartner uses the term wireless-value realization to describe the range of ways in which next-generation wireless technologies will soon deliver new and improved services and reduce capital costs.

Key actions: 

• Design an intelligent infrastructure strategy, starting with selecting the right technologies and vendors 
• Educate business peers on the new potential use cases for wireless technology, such as location and sensing 
• Drive standardization of connectivity and security elements that, as interoperable components 

According to Gartner, by 2025, 50% of enterprise wireless endpoints will use networking services that deliver additional capabilities beyond communication, up from less than 15%. 

Superapps

Superapps provide a wide range of services and functions, allowing users to perform various tasks within the app instead of using multiple separate ones. Superapps are trending because Gen Z and the generations following them are demanding mobile-first experiences that are powerful and easy to use. Superapps can provide a highly personalized and contextualized digital experience inside a single app. 

Key actions for superapps: 

• Offer an easy developer experience and convenient developer tools for partners to build, register and submit miniapps for potential monetization. 
• Define security and data protection requirements for miniapps
• To attract and support development partners to ensure a mutually beneficial business model 
• Identify the core, high-engagement features in your superapps that will drive a critical mass of end users

 According to predictions made by Gartner, by 2027, more than 50% of the global population will be daily active users of multiple superapps. 

Adaptive AI 

Adaptive AI systems are gaining popularity within society, thanks to Chat GPT. Adaptive AI systems aim to continuously retrain models or apply other mechanics to adapt and learn within runtime and development environments. Its value lies in the ability to rapidly develop, deploy, adapt, and maintain AI across different environments in the enterprise. 

Key actions for a successful adaptive AI journey: 

• Create the foundations of adaptive AI systems by complementing current AI implementations with continuous intelligence design patterns and event stream capabilities 
• Make it easier for business users to adopt AI and contribute toward managing adaptive AI systems by incorporating trust within the decision framework. 

Gartner predicts that, by 2026, enterprises that have adopted AI engineering practices to build and manage adaptive AI systems will outperform their peers in operationalizing AI models by at least 25%. 

Metaverse

 The metaverse allows people to replicate or enhance their physical activities, either by transporting or extending physical activities to a virtual world or by transforming the physical one. It can help executives expand their digital transformation strategy.

Key actions:

• Explore opportunities where the metaverse technologies could optimize digital business or create new products and services 
• Build metaverse products and solutions through a pipeline of innovation 
• Identify metaverse-inspired opportunities by evaluating current high-value use cases 
• Develop technology strategies that leverage the built-in infrastructure and participants 

According to Gartner, by 2027, over 40% of large organizations worldwide will be using a combination of Web3, spatial computing, and digital twins in metaverse-based projects aimed at increasing revenue. 

Sustainable Technology

Sustainable technology refers to systems that minimize environmental impact or use clean energy sources. It is a framework of solutions that increase the energy and material efficiency of IT services; enable enterprise sustainability through technologies. 

Key actions for sustainable technology: 

• Increase the energy and material efficiency of IT infrastructure and workplace services 
• Prioritize technology investments based on sustainability issues most material to your enterprise strategy

 Gartner predicts that, by 2025, 50% of CIOs will have performance metrics tied to the sustainability of the IT organization. 

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