Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2024.  Read them in this 16th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

A Look Ahead: The Technology Trends That Will Take Over in 2024

By Stephany Lapierre, CEO and founder, TealBook

As we approach 2024, the pace of technological innovation continues to accelerate and redefine all industries. In the world of tech and IT specifically, we are on the brink of groundbreaking developments that will influence how we work, communicate and live our day-to-day lives. From AI and machine learning (ML) earning greater prominence in software and services to advances in connectivity through next-generation wireless networks - emerging technologies have tremendous disruptive potential.

Next year is positioned to be pivotal for innovation, but the pace of progress presents several challenges. IT leaders and procurement professionals alike have critical decisions to make, particularly as economic uncertainty complicates budget management.

To understand where the world of technology is heading in 2024, let's analyze some of the most transformative innovations brewing today and how they will redefine the IT landscape for businesses and consumers in the very near future.  I've tapped additional industry leaders to share their perspectives on upcoming trends and their role in company success in 2024 and beyond.

LLM and GenAI use cases will follow the software engineering blueprint

When we talk about generative AI, the importance of machine learning (ML) often gets lost in translation. In their current state, LLMs like ChatGPT and Bard aren't true AI - rather, they are ML systems trained on expansive data sets. Training of this magnitude is extremely difficult, not to mention expensive. In fact, training to the tune of $50 million can still leave your AI system with glaring gaps in knowledge and output.

Instead of throwing more money at this problem, data leaders will likely understand the futility of building "one GenAI system to rule them all." It's far more reliable and affordable to rely on various AI- and ML-based systems with granular use cases. For example, one tool may offer highly nuanced outputs about music, while another focuses on mathematics. Now, instead of spending millions to train one system, you've cut your budget and timeline in half by focusing on smaller, more accurate GenAI integrations. When you think about it, this system mirrors the philosophy of software engineering: Higher abstraction, better outputs.

-Quentin Schmick, VP of Engineering, TealBook

Disaster recovery will become a vital piece of the security puzzle

Disaster Recovery (DR) and incident response planning will be a bigger part of security conversations moving forward. Why? Reactive protection, detection, and response strategies are only part of a comprehensive cybersecurity readiness posture. For reference, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework includes Identify / Protect / Detect / Respond / Recover.  Proactive preparation and business continuity strategies need to book end reactive strategies.

If the recent MGM breach has taught the industry anything, it's that even the best-protected organizations can be breached by a determined attacker. Leaders must dedicate more attention and budget to post-attack recovery strategies - in addition to prevention and detection measures - in the new year.

-Zack Moore, Product Manager, Security at InterVision Systems

Companies must embrace continuous improvement to stand out as the tech marketplace continues evolving. There doesn't have to be a silver bullet or "ah-ha" moment. Still, by consistently pushing through the grind to make products and services more stable, easier to understand and more valuable to customers, companies will naturally build a sustainable competitive advantage.

-Todd Fisher, CEO and co-founder, CallTrackingMetrics

Business intelligence is noisy. Data teams are looking for peace and quiet.

IDC research indicates that leaders overwhelmingly prefer to adopt comprehensive platforms over end-point solutions. But data practitioners often disagree, saying blanket data solutions can't answer tough questions about business metrics like productivity and profitability. Plus,  when every department feeds into one organizational data repository, the result is chaos.

In the new year, organizations will attempt to cost-effectively marry these clashing desires (solving for imminent problems vs. providing multi-faceted data capabilities). For example, we'll see many organizations adopt a modular data platform that fits an organization's holistic data needs while also tailoring its portals and solutions to individuals by department or function.

-Brett Hansen, Chief Growth Officer, Semarchy

CIOs and procurement leaders will work closer than ever next year

In 2024, we'll see a strategic pivot in procurement processes as chief information officers (CIOs) become more involved in purchasing decisions.

Organizations need sophisticated security oversight during vendor selection, especially as GenAI tools grow more popular (these technologies are promising, but they present many potential vulnerabilities). Luckily, there's no problem teamwork can't fix, and CIOs are highly experienced in risk assessment. As GenAI becomes further intertwined with various business purchases, CIOs' expertise and input will become paramount, leading to closer collaboration with procurement teams. We foresee this shift will streamline procurement processes, ensuring security is not an afterthought but a fundamental criterion in organizations' vendor selection process and overall digital transformation.

Today, there's a pretty large gap between procurement and IT. So, to initiate a higher level of collaboration, procurement teams and CIOs should focus on adopting tools that automatically collect, process, match and enrich data, preferably inside a single platform. Solutions that provide a trusted, single source of procurement data benefit the entire organization, enabling data-driven decisions in various departments - from finance to compliance and even sales. With this infrastructure, procurement teams establish a feedback loop that benefits the entire enterprise and facilitates better collaboration.

-Stephany Lapierre, CEO and founder, TealBook

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephany Lapierre is the founder/CEO of Tealbook, a highly coveted supply chain thought leader and one of the most influential minds in emerging data technologies. She has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Women in Supply Chain, and her company, Tealbook, has both been named a Top 50 company to watch by Spend Matters and won the Cool Vendor Award by Gartner. Prior to Tealbook, Stephany spent ten years building a successful strategic sourcing and procurement consulting firm focusing on large-scale sourcing optimization projects. Given her experience and visibility into the data issues crippling procurement, she has made it her mission to deliver a ‘Trusted Source of Supplier Data' to an ever-growing eProcurement space. Currently, Tealbook is the only Big Data company that provides a self-enriching and self-maintaining mechanism to fix enterprise supplier data forever.