Looking Ahead to 2020: 8 Enterprise Technologies That Will Be Impactful

As 2019 comes to an end, we try to predict which new technologies will be the "next big thing" in the new year. Here's a look at the technologies that are expected to have an impact on businesses in 2020.

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Enterprise 5G Network

All of the top wireless carriers in the U.S. are planning a massive 5G rollout that will provide nationwide coverage by the end of 2020. In addition, the number of 5G-enabled mobile devices on the market is growing, including phones from Samsung, LG, and Moto. Although Apple has yet to release a phone with a 5G wireless chip, a product update with the technology is expected in mid-2020.

5G will also play a role in branch office connectivity, and many believe that 5G data services are well suited for short-term, distributed or highly mobile offices due to the rapid deployment and redeployment advantages of mobile broadband. Therefore, 5G will play an important role in enterprise wide area networks in the new year.

Overcoming obstacles to IoT

Although the Internet of Things (IoT) has been discussed in enterprise IT management and architecture circles for many years, its promise has yet to be fully realized. The main reasons for the slow adoption of IoT are three major obstacles: security, management, and connectivity.

While IoT devices, sensors, and wearables are generally low cost, they are not inherently secure enough for large-scale deployment on enterprise networks. In addition, early IoT deployments quickly proved that managing hundreds or thousands of autonomous devices was difficult when using traditional enterprise monitoring tools. Finally, current wireless connectivity options limit the practical deployment of IoT.

Fortunately, these barriers to IoT are decreasing. New laws in California and Oregon are putting pressure on IoT device manufacturers to better protect their products. In addition, infrastructure tools such as AIOps platforms not only provide significantly improved device monitoring capabilities, but also help monitor them if they have been compromised. Finally, 5G will become the preferred wireless transmission method for remote IoT sensors for the foreseeable future.

Data analysis

Collecting data is easy, but sifting through it to provide meaningful insights is much more complex. Fortunately, the science and practical use of data analytics made huge strides in 2019, with analytics being used in IoT deployments and in networks in both private and public clouds. In fact, it can be said that the first transformative applications of big data analytics in most enterprises will gain real momentum starting in 2020.

AI-driven automation

Taking data analytics one step further is the field of artificial intelligence (AI), which forms future predictions based on one or more data analysis results. Chatbots are an example of a highly dependent AI in 2019, and starting in 2020, AI will gradually penetrate more of our daily applications and services. Automated assistants, automated infrastructure monitoring, and automated physical and data security services are already a reality, and you will see them soon.

IT Automation

While some forms of automation have been implemented in enterprise IT departments for years, the number of automated processes will surge in 2020 as new technologies become increasingly sophisticated. The benefits of IT automation will become apparent in 2020 and beyond.

Unified security posture

Security experts and vendors are almost unanimous in their agreement that a proper "defense in depth" security strategy can be greatly improved when tools work together by sharing threat intelligence. Starting in 2020, the era of independently operated firewalls, malware, and cloud security intelligence will become a thing of the past, replaced by tools that provide open APIs for intelligence sharing. Then, a unified security management platform will be used to provide security insights for all tools deployed across the entire infrastructure.

The emergence of plug-and-play deployment

While the management of infrastructure devices, applications, and services is becoming increasingly complex, the deployment of the aforementioned technologies is becoming easier. Enterprise products are moving away from proprietary deployment processes and architectures and toward open standards. As a result, putting new technologies into enterprise networks or public clouds is not as complex as it once was, and many enterprise-level infrastructure components have adopted zero-touch or plug-and-play deployment models. For increasingly geographically dispersed enterprises, having the ability to quickly deploy plug-and-play devices and services will save a lot of time in the enterprise from now on.

Edge computing

To be honest, edge computing will probably remain hype in 2020. That said, edge computing is a technology that IT departments must pay close attention to. The benefits of edge computing are reduced application latency and data transfer costs to the cloud, two drawbacks of the typical cloud architecture used today. While vendors and operators will spend much of 2020 improving their ability to deliver edge computing services to customers, it is the job of the enterprise to determine where the new technology can be used to reduce costs, promote business growth, or create a competitive advantage.