Business Changing Technologies

Most businesses will agree that keeping up with the latest technologies can be very difficult at the moment. It seems like everyday there is a new email circulating about a new technology that is going to be the next big thing.

In reality, a lot of these technologies will probably not change your business, or anyone else's, but are being sensationalised on the internet to grab your attention.

As experts in IT, our job is to filter through the fluff and understand what new technology will actually be useful to business, that our clients should watch out and prepare for. In this article, we’re going to discuss two technologies that should definitely not be ignored, as they are sure to have a significant impact on the way a lot of businesses operate in the next ten years.

5G Connectivity

Most people think of 5G as super fast mobile internet connection. This is true, but with what is being done in terrestrial and satellite 5G to provide unparalleled levels of connectivity is going to havea profound impact on the world, beyond mobile phones.

The 5G vision will not require dedicated internet lines to your place of business or residency. 5G will be integrated into all everyday devices from the consumer level, all the way to entire smart cities, with real world speeds of 500Mbps.

To put that in perspective, 4G technologies of today top out at around 60Mbps on average. 500Mpbs is like the connection you get from hardwiring a computer to fibre internet.

This will eventually be available everywhere, all the time, and everything will be connected–which presents a multitude of fantastic opportunities for future business models!

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI has come a long way since the 2001 Spielberg film of that name, with most of the development being focussed on machine learning.

If you have a large enough data set, algorithms that can learn to predict future outcomes based off historical data are now quite easily accessible–and are being actively implemented in a number of critical industries in our society.

Banks, for example, use machine learning technology on their customer’s accounts so that they can easily detect suspicious activity, as the machines have an understanding of how the customer generally spends their money, based of an enormous history of data.

As well as preventing fraud,banks around the world are embracing AIto improve customer satisfaction and remove painful or time-consuming hurdles in finance – as well as serving their own self-interests in gaining and keeping more customers.

Of course it helps that banks have a lot of capital to invest in technology, but AI technologies are most definitely changing many other industries as well. Recruitment is utilising machine learning to match candidates, retailers are adopting more and more AI communication channels with customers, there’s a gradual increase of AI technology in the automotive industry, and major shipping/transport companies are adopting AI to plan, track and manage difficult logistical operations – just to name a few!