Tech Predictions 2021: ´Automation will be inevitable in 2021´

2020 has been a hell of a year. While many are glad the year is coming to an end on account of the dreaded Coronavirus, tech wise, much has happened. On the cusp of 2021, experts are predicting that while automation will rule in the coming year, in general customers of tech will become savvy and demanding.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, data management, Cloud; these sectors are where the future of technology is making a beeline for. How are these tech sectors going to intertwine to present the new face of future technology?

As Cloud services become the answer to almost every business, data will be scattered, requiring management. At the same time, automation will rule.

Mike Tria

Automation has been seen as an emerging tool in the past, it will become essential for survival in 2021

“Automation will be inevitable in 2021,” says Mike Tria, Head of Platform, Atlassian. “As more engineering organizations migrate their infrastructure to the cloud and adopt a microservices architecture, the next challenge they’ll face is figuring out how to manage and keep pace with an unwieldy, distributed system. Whereas, automation has been seen as an emerging tool in the past, it will become essential for survival in 2021,” he says.

Data Management

While creating AI tools will be the name of the game, Sri Viswanath, CTO of Atlassian, predicts that organizations with better data management tools will emerge winners.

Sri Viswanath

Investment in data management is going to be critical in determining the success of AI systems

“In the next 5 years, increased data and privacy regulation will have a big impact on the way we design AI/ML models. As a result, investment in data management is going to be critical in determining the success of AI systems,” he predicts.

Companies that have better data management frameworks, platforms, and systems will win in building effective AI tools.

SaaS

Viswanath also predicts that SaaS companies aren’t likely to survive without a strong ecosystem.

Companies will need to be persistent in providing the highest level of security and privacy controls across the entire ecosystem at all times

“As the software industry consolidates, ecosystems will be even more important, and security will become a blind spot. The reality is that customers are using services from different providers. In order to succeed, software companies need to make sure that their products will work well with others, and that means building a strong ecosystem,” he says.

However, he adds that as ecosystems scale, vulnerabilities will emerge and go unnoticed.

“Companies will need to be persistent in providing the highest level of security and privacy controls across the entire ecosystem at all times,” he adds.

Higher Reliability Metric

As the world becomes more and more tech savvy with burgeoning digitization, customers are bound to demand better quality and more efficiency in the future. Tria predicts that software companies will be held to higher numbers of reliability.

Three 9’s as a reliability metric (or 99.9% uptime) will be laughed at in a few years. Companies that don’t treat reliability as a feature will be left in the dust

“In fact, three 9’s as a reliability metric (or 99.9% uptime) will be laughed at in a few years. As companies rely more on cloud services to collaborate remotely, customers will have higher expectations for uptime. Companies that don’t treat reliability as a feature will be left in the dust,” he says.

Looks like software and Cloud service providers must pull their socks up for 2021, because competition is about to get tougher making the tech ecosystem even more interesting than it already is.