By Julian Nakasone, Director of IT Solutions at Logicalis
Exactly one year ago we made projections about what the main technological trends in 2018 would be. At that time we lived in a climate of political and macroeconomic uncertainty, but we still believed that the IT market in Brazil would not fail to make the necessary investments to remain competitive. We project the beginning of the adoption of networks based on intention, the dissemination of projects involving Internet of Things (IoT), the growing concern with digital security, the use of blockchain in IoT solutions, in addition to the increasing use of applications involving intelligence artificial.
Today, we estimate that these projections have been confirmed during the past year. Although at a somewhat more timid volume than initially expected, Brazilian companies continued to invest in innovation. In particular, in the 2018 edition of our IoT Snapshot survey, we found that 59% of respondents made initial investments in IoT projects (compared to 35% in the 2017 survey).
For 2019, in addition to the continuity of the technologies mentioned above, I would like to highlight the technological trends that will impact the increase in productivity of application development and / or the experience of its users. Are they:
1) Microservices
Software development using the microservice architecture (an application built as a set of functions or services that can be activated independently) is already starting to become the market norm. In 2019, there will be a large offer of functions in the “as a service” mode. IT managers who are developing new applications will benefit from these offerings, significantly increasing productivity. Possibly, there will also be a movement to migrate from legacy systems to microservice architecture.
2) AI-based software development tools
Software development tools that need little coding (low code) and use a lot of visual interface are already popular in the IT market. The evolution of these tools is the inclusion of artificial intelligence to further facilitate the production of applications. Development tools that are able to generate code automatically, based on business needs, will become more and more common. Gartner, in its projections for 2019, suggests that such tools will cause a paradigm shift in software development, making application production less dependent on expert developers and data scientists.
3) Digital Reality
Digital Reality (RD) is a broad set of technologies that digitally simulate reality. Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Digital Gemini are examples of RD technologies. Increasingly present in daily life, especially in the entertainment sector, DR will be adopted in the most diverse sectors of the market. DR has the potential to significantly increase productivity, as it makes it possible to reduce costs and risks, especially in situations where field tests are very expensive, for example in the mining and construction industries, and service sectors such as health and maintenance.
4) Edge computing
Edge computing, as Gartner has called it, is a computer network architecture where processing takes place closer to the user, improving the experience (lower latency) and decreasing communication costs (less data sent to the user). a cloud). For example, in a property security application involving video analysis (video analytics) to identify patterns of behavior (eg, suspicious movements), the cost of communication and / or the necessary reaction time may make analytical processing in the cloud unfeasible and, therefore, it would benefit from an edge computing architecture.
If, in a first moment, the edge computing architecture proposes to improve connectivity problems, in a second moment, with the emergence of 5G networks, edge computing starts to play an even more interesting role, which is to share computational resources with cloud computing (cloud), creating a hybrid architecture that we can metaphorically describe as a great fog (fog computing). The adoption of edge computing is expected to intensify starting in 2019, including the offer of major cloud providers in this regard.
5) Development processes
It is not a technology, but it is important to mention the development processes. To take advantage of microservices and edge computing, for example, companies need to reshape processes and increasingly adopt agile and Devops practices. These methodologies have already been adopted in the IT areas, and should permeate all sectors of the corporations, including business, bringing systemic gains from end to end.
Today, we estimate that these projections have been confirmed during the past year. Although at a somewhat more timid volume than initially expected, Brazilian companies continued to invest in innovation. In particular, in the 2018 edition of our IoT Snapshot survey, we found that 59% of respondents made initial investments in IoT projects (compared to 35% in the 2017 survey).
For 2019, in addition to the continuity of the technologies mentioned above, I would like to highlight the technological trends that will impact the increase in productivity of application development and / or the experience of its users. Are they:
1) Microservices
Software development using the microservice architecture (an application built as a set of functions or services that can be activated independently) is already starting to become the market norm. In 2019, there will be a large offer of functions in the “as a service” mode. IT managers who are developing new applications will benefit from these offerings, significantly increasing productivity. Possibly, there will also be a movement to migrate from legacy systems to microservice architecture.
2) AI-based software development tools
Software development tools that need little coding (low code) and use a lot of visual interface are already popular in the IT market. The evolution of these tools is the inclusion of artificial intelligence to further facilitate the production of applications. Development tools that are able to generate code automatically, based on business needs, will become more and more common. Gartner, in its projections for 2019, suggests that such tools will cause a paradigm shift in software development, making application production less dependent on expert developers and data scientists.
3) Digital Reality
Digital Reality (RD) is a broad set of technologies that digitally simulate reality. Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Digital Gemini are examples of RD technologies. Increasingly present in daily life, especially in the entertainment sector, DR will be adopted in the most diverse sectors of the market. DR has the potential to significantly increase productivity, as it makes it possible to reduce costs and risks, especially in situations where field tests are very expensive, for example in the mining and construction industries, and service sectors such as health and maintenance.
4) Edge computing
Edge computing, as Gartner has called it, is a computer network architecture where processing takes place closer to the user, improving the experience (lower latency) and decreasing communication costs (less data sent to the user). a cloud). For example, in a property security application involving video analysis (video analytics) to identify patterns of behavior (eg, suspicious movements), the cost of communication and / or the necessary reaction time may make analytical processing in the cloud unfeasible and, therefore, it would benefit from an edge computing architecture.
If, in a first moment, the edge computing architecture proposes to improve connectivity problems, in a second moment, with the emergence of 5G networks, edge computing starts to play an even more interesting role, which is to share computational resources with cloud computing (cloud), creating a hybrid architecture that we can metaphorically describe as a great fog (fog computing). The adoption of edge computing is expected to intensify starting in 2019, including the offer of major cloud providers in this regard.
5) Development processes
It is not a technology, but it is important to mention the development processes. To take advantage of microservices and edge computing, for example, companies need to reshape processes and increasingly adopt agile and Devops practices. These methodologies have already been adopted in the IT areas, and should permeate all sectors of the corporations, including business, bringing systemic gains from end to end.
Disclaimer: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
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