The main technological trends of 2017

In a reality where technology is bursting and transforming the market in a continuous and constant way, the “2017 Tech Trends Report” developed by Future Today Institute painstakingly describes the emerging technological trends that will influence over the coming months in areas as diverse as business, education, politics or government, among others.

This report is a powerful tool for organizations, a kind of early warning signal that will allow them to take advantage by integrating these new trends into their strategic thinking in order to more effectively and efficiently adjust their planning, operations and model of business. Avoiding these trends can lead companies to a risk situation as it could compromise their competitive advantage and future growth by not being able to react to the transformations that technology is driving in the market.

The “2017 Tech Trends Report” is extensive and therefore requires a thorough dedication. However, below we will detail five of the most important aspects:

1. Key Importance of Artificial Intelligence. AI will be integrated into almost every level of decision-making in organizations and becomes a key element in most of the trends described in the report. The reason is none other than its many facets of application and the varied and abundant benefits reported: automatic learning, human process automation, cybersecurity monitoring, real-time learning, and so on.

2. Cognitive Computing. The biggest example is IBM’s Watson platform, a cognitive system that is already helping doctors, scientists, engineers, lawyers, and other professionals heal diseases, customize customer service, improve data analysis, or uncover trends and patterns that help companies gain competitive advantages. Thus, in 2017, cognitive computing will leap forward after the launch of IBM’s Cognitive Horizons network, a collaborative and elite network dedicated to accelerating progress in the field of cognitive computing.

3. Massive adoption of bots and virtual agents by large brands, especially focused on customer service and marketing interactions, automating the most frequent and simple queries that clients make, so that agents can focus In the most complex queries that require human interaction and more creative responses.

4. Innovation will reach unprecedented levels, as it grows at an exponential rate in which one technology lays the foundation for the next. The strongest evidence of this is that this report reflects 85% more technological trends than the previous year’s report.

5. Increased growth of Big Data as organizations become more aware that all that information is crucial to driving economic growth. Thus, companies will demand more and better analytical tools, and also new professional experts hitherto unknown as the “data scientist”.

These are just some of the 158 technology trends unveiled by this report for 2017. No doubt, just a glance at the surface of a year that promises to be exciting in the field of technology.