Welcome 2018
The millennials will enter into adulthood in few days from now. Across World the newest adults of the millennium will be exercising their right to choose leaders at the national or local levels, make economic and social decisions for themselves, start playing for their senior National teams, decide how they would like to start their professional lives and most importantly will give voice to their opinions on every platform. In that scenario Gartner's prediction about fake news being one of the biggest trends of 2018 becomes relevant. As things stand, by 2022 the majority of us will consume more false information than true information! At the moment, it's hard to predict what regulations might appear, what real-time fact checking might occur, and how the technology giants will address the fake news problem. But by 2020 AI driven creation of counterfeit reality or fake content will outpace AI's ability to detect it, creating digital distrust. As a result more people will turn off their devices because they won't know what's real and what's not. Or they will accept living in the fake, counterfeit worlds. It sounds bizarre and alarming at the same time and that is perhaps one of the biggest challenge that the newest adults of the millennium will have to overcome as we prepare to welcome 2018!
Continuing with trends, Gartner predicts that 2018 will witness visual and voice search proliferation. By 2020, early adopter brands that redesign their websites to support visual and voice search will increase digital commerce revenue by 30%. We've known for years that we love talking to machines, searching and transacting with graphical interfaces and immersing ourselves into video. It will get more intuitive from now on. It's not the preference that's important, it's the state of the technology that will matter. How will AR help this process is something that we will have to keep a close watch on. And that is where the next biggest trend will originate from. It is anticipated that by 2020, 5 of top 7 digital giants will self-disrupt to create their next leadership opportunity. Gartner has not named those giants specifically - but we can assume that they will be from Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook and that they will continue to innovate as best and fast as they can. Will there be a new digital giant emerging next year? The prediction says yes, but it is not known what that will be!
Elsewhere, businesses in 2018 will be making high-stakes decisions on which cloud vendors demonstrate the greatest understanding of their businesses, their industries, their needs, their opportunities, and their desires to exploit the cloud to become highly capable digital enterprises that are smarter, more aware, more growth oriented, and faster moving than ever before. And as a consequence, the true measure of strategic differentiation in the cloud will be how well those cloud vendors can map their offerings to their customers - the business priorities of big, mid-size and small companies in every industry and across every region on the planet. From vanilla of today, companies of all size will ask for customized cloud offerings just as consumers today are expecting for all services online. In particular, the winners in the cloud wars will need to master the art of helping corporate customers undertake, accelerate and complete their digital transformations with customer centric messaging and behavior across their technology centric organizations leveraging AI in everything they do.
While all that is happening, next year $200 billion worth of IT deals will be up for renewal of which digital and automation will slice off a third of the contract, and nearly half the incumbent IT providers will lose part of the work, highlighting the challenge faced by the IT companies as they chase growth. Per estimates by Information Services Group, 5000+ deals will expire across geographies and verticals in the next two years, and these renewals would affect the course of the IT industry for the next decade. About 48% of these contracts are in EMEA, 41% are in the Americas and 11% are in Asia-Pacific. Business models to offerings will disrupt, the fittest in IT may survive or may take up a newer mode of existence!
There are many technology trends on the rise, but the real game-changer for 2018 may well be something unexpected that isn't on our radar yet. But it is clear that there will be an increase in apps that will make it easy to repurpose content across multiple platforms. For example we have already seen many apps perfect the photo editing process with filters and sophisticated features. In 2018 video editing will become a lot easier through the phone, simplifying the process of creating advanced videos. The internet of things can be found in almost any industry now, everything is becoming smart. Whether we are in a car, at home, in the office or shopping, we are interacting with smart technology. This trend will continue to become more pervasive in 2018 as the proven technology moves from popular segments into other areas. AI continues to be at the forefront of technology discussions, conferences and development. There will be a major AI breakthrough in 2018 that could change how businesses evolve and interact with customers. Machine learning has been getting into all technologies. All platforms are adding it to make life and software more intelligent and advanced. It will take over mindless, repetitive and time-consuming tasks. It can make drivers better drivers, doctors better doctors, IT professionals better SLA compliant and students better educated.
Blockchain, which is the distributed ledger used for cryptocurrency, is making waves in many industries, including payments, contracts, cloud storage, real estate and brokerage. It's set to do even more in 2018 as more industries may start to understand its benefits. Video is becoming the most popular and influential form of digital content for businesses today. As our attention spans decrease, marketers are heavily relying more on creating video content. In 2018, VR, AR and 360-degree videos will be the tech trend to utilize since they can be great for showcasing a virtual tour of business or preview products and services. At the same time with the rise of Ad blockers and gradual decline of print and electronic readers and viewers, influencer marketing as the most effective form of advertising will become a big trend in 2018. However, the ease with which companies can engage in influencer marketing, combined with its powerful network effects and viral nature, will soon call for regulation.
From "WannaCry" to the Equifax breach, 2017 has been consumed by negative news about companies failing consumers in ways that consumers are just starting to understand. With Supreme Court's landmark ruling on Right to Privacy to Facebook and Google testifying at open congressional hearings, the public conversation will move to privacy and a renewed focus on Cyber Security. GDPR will be the biggest regulatory compliance to be taken by EU and soon to be replicated elsewhere. The Right to be Forgotten by a citizen is perhaps the biggest statement that a citizen can make against the State or any of its agencies. Meanwhile, enterprise applications of messaging bots seem poised to have a tangible impact on the software space, as more companies invest in developing their own consumer-facing bots. More advanced bots leverage AI to provide enriching and interactive user experiences. Companies can embed these bots on their home pages, or they can rely on native platforms like Facebook and Slack for distribution. In 2018 expect to see companies across all industries, including hospitality, dining and travel, create bots for customer support, sales and marketing services.
Innovation in 2017 was led by Amazon for offering even more, even faster and smarter and promising still more, followed by Google for developing a photographic memory, Uber for accelerating autonomous driving, Facebook for launching the right ads at the right moment, Netflix for making surfing fun again, Spotify for enticing artists with data, Chobani for stirring it up in the grocery store, Twilio for giving apps a voice, to name a few. Innovation in India was not far behind being led by Zoomcar for finding new uses for idle cars, Byju's for taking conventional education mobile and into the countryside, Noora Health for helping mothers help their babies, Rivigo for loading trucks with algorithmic efficiencies, WaterQuest Hydroresources Mgmt for locating vital underground rivers, Livspace for customizing home design, UpGrad for training entrepreneurs, SkyQuest for giving inventors a marketplace and so on. With entrepreneurship and digitization at an all time high, India is going to be one of the Innovation leaders in 2018.
Finally, with the Winter Olympics in February, Commonwealth Games in April, the biggest sporting spectacle - FIFA World Cup - in June and July, Asian Games in August, World Cup Hockey in Bhubaneswar in Nov and several other sporting events, 2018 will be a big sporting year and may well be the biggest sporting year for Indian fans seeing our best sportsperson across events winning bucketful of medals as they prepare for the Big O in 2020. We may also see a new World Cup Football winning country outside of the holy trinity of G-8 - will it be Ronaldo's Portugal or Bruyne's Belgium or an African Nation - we will know it in less than 200 days. Till then wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Wonderful 2018. Let us all do our best to contribute to peace, prosperity, poverty alleviation and pollution control in 2018 in the Real World! #Welcome2018