IT Trends 2023 – Sustainability is the big keyword

According to Gartner, technologies alone will not be enough in 2023. The pursuit of sustainable technology will play an overarching role in the coming year. This will make IT services even more efficient. Leaders must invest more in innovative and sustainable solutions that will enable greater operational resilience and financial performance. The IT trends represent opportunities and risks for companies and are intended to help achieve reliable and sustainable business growth.

Top 10 dominant IT trends for the coming year 2023:

• Digital immune system
• Applied Observability
• AI trust, risk and security management
• Industrial cloud platforms
• Platform engineering
• Wireless value realization
• Super apps
• Adaptive AI
• Metaverse
• Sustainable technologies

# IT Trend 1: Digital immune system

After the Corona pandemic, the coming year also harbors new dangers and many uncertainties such as the supply chain problems due to the war in Ukraine, recession and inflation as well as the ongoing shortage of skilled workers. In order to master this, technology can be the key to many strategic goals, with the optimization of IT systems being a central focus with three focus goals:

• Reliability
• Better, data-driven decisions
• Maintaining the value of AI systems in production

A digital immune system should increase the resilience of products, services and systems. According to Gartner, immunity is a way for CIOs to achieve high business value and customer satisfaction while minimizing risk. What's interesting is that, according to Gartner, 76% of teams responsible for digital products are also responsible for revenue generation. However, traditional approaches to software development make it difficult to create systems that are scalable, secure, and stable.

The “Digital Immune System” concept brings together analytics and AI to improve the testing of these tools and then also includes end-to-end security across the entire supply chain. This results in applications that are more resilient and help avoid failures. By using some of these technologies, companies are able to reduce downtime by up to 80%, which in turn will translate into more stable revenue.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is an example of a possible solution. Multi-cloud & on-premise environments can be made more resilient with a comprehensive solution.

# IT Trend 2: Observability through artificial intelligence

Data is the key – the gold of the future. These should be analyzed and processed using artificial intelligence and as much as possible learned from them. Data can be the yardstick for important business and IT decisions. The hype about artificial intelligence is not new; it is now everywhere. Intelligent algorithms appear every time we search the Internet, shop online, navigate while traveling, or manage our schedules and complete countless tasks.

No-code AI solutions and as-a-service platforms will continue to make artificial intelligence more accessible. With technology infrastructure and budget no longer a difficult barrier to entry, those with good ideas will develop new AI-powered products and services that simplify or improve our lives. An example of a no-code AI solution are Microsoft Power Apps.

# IT Trend 3: Data Protection & Security Management

Artificial intelligence creates new risks for companies. Adapted conditions must be created in the areas of trust, risk and security management. Investing in Gartner trends can prevent risks. Gartner has researched that only 50% of AI models ever go into production due to a lack of trust in the data and issues with security and privacy.

It is important to note that this new data protection law will come into force on September 1, 2023.

# IT Trend 4: Cloud

The trend is increasing, more and more companies are using cloud platforms to achieve business value. There are various options – for example Microsoft Azure:

The advantages of a cloud solution are clear:

• Companies gain flexibility,
• Innovativeness
• & the value creation time is shortened.

# IT Trend 5: 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. Platform engineers provide an integrated product, often referred to as an “internal developer platform,” that covers the operational needs of the entire application lifecycle.

# IT Trend 6: Wireless

The wireless trend is based on Gartner's prediction that around 60% of companies will integrate more than five wireless technologies by 2025. This with the aim of meeting every working environment. However, wireless networks go beyond individual devices. This means that your network is not just a cost to the business, but that it can evolve into something that actually adds value or differentiation to your business.

# IT Trend 7: Great Apps

Pioneering work will be required in 2023! – They enable the change of business models, reinvent relationships with employees and customers and accelerate strategies for opening up new virtual markets.

The development of super apps makes new ways of customer communication possible. They combine features of an ecosystem, apps and platforms into a single application. This gives customers, employees and partners access to various core functions and independently create mini-apps. This makes a personalized and contextualized digital experience within a single app a reality.

The key is that a super app can consolidate and replace multiple apps for use by customers or employees. A great app is, for example Microsoft Teams.

# IT Trend 8: Adaptive artificial intelligence

Shifting from rigid AI engineering pipelines to adaptive AI systems. Adaptive AI systems aim to continuously adapt themselves in production. For example, they use real-time feedback and learn based on new data so that they can quickly adapt to a changing environment.

# IT Trend 9: Metaverse – the Internet of the future

It's currently very vague and unclear, but Metaverse is probably best described as an immersive digital world. Nobody really knows what immersive online environments will look like in the future. Many are skeptical about the Metaverse. Gartner still assumes that a complete metaverse will be device-independent and not owned by a single provider. In five years, over 40% of large companies worldwide will use a combination of Web3, AR cloud and digital twins in Metaverse-based projects to increase revenue. One way to use Metaverse is through avatars and chatbots to improve customer service. Other usage scenarios include the use of gamification for training or augmented reality for the shopping experience. Gartner also found that 51% of Generation Z expects to use augmented reality in some form in the next two years.

We will also see that the Metaverse is both mobile and post-mobile. We will still access it from anywhere in the world and on any device. But the default device won't always be a smartphone. New ways to access, experience and interact with content include headsets, smart glasses and even full body suits with haptic feedback. Companies that want to ensure they are not among the laggards now need to think about two things:

• How will they use these opportunities to develop products and services that provide a more immersive and rewarding experience?
• And how can they use the available platforms and tools to make their internal processes more engaging and efficient?

This is likely to result in companies building collaborative remote working, training, onboarding and project management.

# IT Trend 10: Sustainable technologies

Gartner's top trends end with sustainability and the role IT can play in it. It's not just about the environment and climate change, but the people behind the companies, the social aspects of an organization, a better work culture, progress in diversity, equality and inclusion of employees and their training are crucial.

Technology plays a very central role when it comes to ecological sustainability. This particularly applies to solutions for energy reduction in IT services, the use of analyzes and the traceability of renewable energies. Companies should consider these points, define what is possible for their organization and develop a roadmap.

Do you also want to advance digitalization, but don't really know what options there are and how IT trends can be integrated into your competitive advantages? – Then write to us about ours Contact and we look for individual solutions and optimization potential.