
Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2019. Read them in this 11th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Jonathan Fries, VP Engineering and Digital Transformation, Exadel
Tech Trends Emerging for 2019
As 2018
draws to a close, we've seen yet another incredible year of growth and change
in the technology space. As we enter the new year, we're taking a step back to
look at some predictions for what we think are going to be a couple big trends
in 2019 so you can stay ahead of the game.
Artificial Intelligence for the Rest of Us
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (ML) are certainly hot topics for
companies of all sizes and verticals. Figuring out ways to leverage AI to
deliver better products, improved customer experiences and operate more
efficiently is top of mind for many organizational leaders. The challenge,
however, is finding the talent to execute on these sorts of initiatives.
Indeed, to use many AI solutions you need data scientists and machine learning
experts. Finding, acquiring and retaining the right person can be a big
challenge.
So, what we see being a big trend in 2019 is "AI for the rest of us."
Essentially, we expect to see an emergence of new artificial intelligence and
machine learning tools that produce some of the benefits of AI without
necessarily having to have all the AI skill sets in your organization.
One early example of this comes from Google, who has put together a product for
job postings and job searches that's basically a packaged AI solution. In this
tool, Google is applying artificial intelligence to match job seekers and what
they're looking for with the job postings and doing so in an effective way.
Google gives us access to the ML models that they have trained on large amounts
of data. We get access to the learning and AI capabilities they produced
without needing big volumes of data or ML experts of our own.
Amazon is
offering a couple of tools along the same lines, they have just announced
Forecast, Textract, and Prsonalize at re:Invent, all of which provide specific
machine learning models pre-built for specific technology problems.
In 2019, we
expect to see more and more tools that take AI out of the hands of data
scientists and put it into the control of developers and business leaders to
find real value from big data insights.
Infrastructure as Code for Cloud Flexibility
Cloud has obviously been a big part of many organization IT strategies in 2018.
But one of the challenges organizations face - or at least a concern moving
forward - is how your application's dependence on a cloud solution will work
long term.
Imagine building an application that is depending on one specific cloud
provider - and that provider, drastically raises prices, or changes their tech
in a major way. It could leave you in a tough spot.
First and
foremost, there is value in Infrastructure as Code (IaC), whether you are
trying to be cloud agnostic or not. By defining an environment in a way
that makes it easy to deploy, redeploy, or duplicate saves a lot of man hours
in the long-run. When infrastructure becomes part of your code, it can
also be huge cost savings for your organization.
Secondly, and specifically as a trend in 2019, we see more organizations
leveraging the idea of IaC that will allow them to operate in amore cloud
agnostic way.
This can give them the flexibility to use best
cloud provider available - whether it's Azure or AWS or Google Cloud -- at any
given time and for any given product. Using tools like Terraform enables
organizations to even use different cloud solutions without a lot of duplicated
effort or wasted code. Though it does
have up-front costs to make it versatile enough to work with multiple
providers.
We live in exciting times where technology is changing and adapting at
breakneck speeds - and 2019 is shaping up to be no different. With AI and
machine learning leading the way, and cloud delivering big value, we can't wait
to see what the new year holds.
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About the Author
Jonathan Fries is VP
Engineering and Digital Transformation at Exadel (www.exadel.com). Jonathan has 20 years of
experience in software development and technology management. He brings a
wealth of experience from product companies and consulting firms. This
experience includes day-to-day development, product and project leadership, and
strategic guidance of technology projects from conception to launch. Jonathan
works with clients to guide their technology vision. In his project
interactions, he oversees the planning and execution of all aspects of software
development.