Digital Transformation Imperatives in 2022

The first two decades of this century have seen phenomenal growth in the use of technology across all aspects of business and life.

The Covid-19 pandemic — the likes of which has not been seen in more than a century — has further accelerated the digital transformation of businesses and governments globally over the last two years. The exponential impact of this change will be seen in the coming years.

Below are the key technologies contributing to this enormous shift in 2022 and beyond.

Cloud

Cloud services have already moved from the renting of compute and storage capacity to delivering platform-based services — e.g. Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML), Big Data (Data Lakes), Internet of Things (IoT), and Blockchain — across industry verticals.

We will see more industry vertical-based platforms and services in 2022, with hyperscale providers (Amazon, Microsoft and Google) trying to differentiate themselves in an increasingly commoditised market.

SaaS Marketplace growth on hyperscale platforms will accelerate, making them a leading channel to market for SaaS companies. Traditional application service providers will pivot further towards managing applications in the cloud, with dwindling application development and system integration revenue.

Multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud solution adoption will steadily increase in 2022, as preventing vendor lock-in, retaining flexibility and control, and taking a best-of-breed approach increases in importance — especially for pre-cloud companies.

Edge

Edge computing has moved from the early days of streamlining content delivery to mainstream business use cases, due to the explosion of data generated by businesses on industrial shop floors, in retail shops, and at branch sites.

The limitation of moving and processing this data centrally in data centres or public cloud within acceptable timeframes and costs hampers business decision-making and competitiveness.

Edge computing in 2022 will be driven by the rapid deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure, smart devices, wearables, and the rise of autonomous vehicles, AR/VR devices, and gaming use cases.

Automation

Remote work using digital tools and workflows has accelerated the need for businesses to streamline old processes and, in many cases, to adopt modern processes that lend themselves to the use of automation technologies.

Automation of workflows across front and back offices will explode in 2022. Key areas of growth in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Cognitive Automation using AI/ML across industries will multiply as businesses compete in the post-pandemic world.

5G

The promise of a ubiquitous, real-time economy through 5G wireless technology is an exciting development for businesses. Earlier wireless technologies revolutionised consumer applications and devices but were not fit for purpose for running critical business applications.

This will change with 5G services, offering upwards of a 10x increase in data throughput from 4G, ultra-low latency of less than 1 millisecond, and five-nines reliability.

5G will drive enterprise-level use cases especially for manufacturing, healthcare and smart cities — e.g. autonomous vehicles, remote surgeries, smart factories, and immersive reality (AR/VR/Mixed) — besides gaming and entertainment.

Private 5G networks will be an area to watch, giving domain expert providers the flexibility to put together solutions while mobile service providers enable their technology stacks to address the enterprise market.

IoT

Internet-connected devices will increase exponentially due to advances in connectivity options, the rapid development of inexpensive sensors, multi-edge and cloud management software, and a myriad of data and insight management platforms reducing time to value.

In 2022 we should see the maturing of leading use cases including Vehicle Fleet Management, Asset Monitoring and Tracking, Process Automation, Predictive Maintenance and Smart Cities (e.g. connected utilities, parking meters, traffic lights), with new edge analytics solutions.

There will be rapid adoption in Covid-19-related use cases in healthcare (e.g. in-home patient monitoring, vaccine transportation, remote testing) and supply chain (e.g. inventory tracking, environmental tracking, predictive forecasting, and advanced robotics and analytics).

Blockchain

Blockchain is one of the most exciting technologies with a lot of long-term potential. Bitcoin remains the biggest blockchain-based cryptocurrency which, over the last decade, has reached a market capitalisation of close to US$1 trillion — making it the seventh-largest enterprise globally if it were a company. NFTs were the story of 2021, with $15 billion in turnover across all blockchain platforms.

NFT use cases in 2022 should move from the attention-grabbing digital art virtual ownership to the broader market of physical assets such as real-life paintings, land and even houses, with possibilities of fractional ownership.

The biggest trend to watch in 2022 is the rise of Web 3.0 technologies (Web3). Blockchain is the fundamental building block of Web3, which endeavours to build a new internet from the ground up — giving users full control of their own data and making the web decentralised and more secure.

This is in response to Web 2.0 (the current generation of the internet), which is driven by user-created content but controlled by a few globally centralised entities.

Web3 development projects are increasingly using a unique organisational model: the Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO). DAOs don't have a traditional organisational structure or governance; instead they are self-organised using blockchain-based smart contracts. Participants make investments using tokens which give them equity in the project, and work in a decentralised manner.