2021 Emerging Tech in Review. It’s not really a panda burger!
We talked about emerging tech a lot throughout 2021. Series 2 of the ASM Connected podcast has been a great success and our esteemed guests have told us how far we have come and where we are going next. Futurist Matthew Griffin of the 311 Institute, who started out in distribution, even talked about as far forward as 30+ years from now. But in order to predict the future, we must look at the past, said Brett King in episode 3, so we have looked back at 2021 to see how our business has aligned with what the futurists have been talking about.
Starting off with Enterprise Content Delivery Network (ECDN). This has moved rapidly from emerging to essential and we’ve enjoyed this journey with our partner, Kollective Technology. It’s no surprise that big companies are using more video for internal communications and the need for scale has challenged many. In episode 2 of ASM Connected, Richard Potter from Microsoft discusses their focus and commitment to the hybrid and remote working future which Kollective are supporting. Together we’ve helped deliver a greater ROI for users of Teams throughout 2021.
Biometric Authentication reminds us of this year’s challenges, when making payments using facial recognition on our phones was thwarted by our face masks. It was back to entering a passcode which is so last decade. Thanks to our partner, Idenprotect, we’ve seen some great steps forward this year towards eliminating all passwords. In episode 3 of ASM Connected, Futurist, Brett King explains a whole new future of payments technology which will change our in-store experience entirely. Goodbye passwords, hello responsible proactive finance.
Virtual Reality has been building for a few years now. You may have seen a virtual reality tour of Tottenham Hotspurs new stadium before it opened in 2019 or enjoyed the TV show “Your Garden Made Perfect” which introduced many of us to the practical uses of VR during lockdown 1.0, when we all got into gardening. Oculus seem to be leading the charge, but if you listen to ASM Connected episode 5 with Futurist, Amelia Kallman, you’ll hear how Ray Bans, Microsoft and obviously Apple will all be in the race for our brand loyalty in the future. VR has been the most popular answer this year when we’ve been asking our podcast guests about their favourite tech gadgets.
Internet of Things is another buzzword we have all heard a lot about this year. Other than our connected home devices, the enterprise use cases have been slow to emerge outside of the manufacturing sector. However, it’s picking up pace and we may even see a leap directly to the Internet of Everything next year. We’ve seen significant development with our customers in IoT in the utilities and in the facilities management sector this year, but don’t rule out the progress that has been made in the retail and supply chain sectors. In podcast episode 7, Cate Trotter gave us some great insights into the massive transformation in retail. Subscribe to ASM Connected to be the first to hear the episodes with Brett Phaneuf and Inma Martinez; due out early next year, as they discuss IoT projects ranging from autonomous boats to smart cities and cars that are superior to humans.
Robotic Process Automation is the trend that has probably been talked about more than any other. We all can’t decide whether to fear it or embrace it. I think on every podcast this series we have talked about how AI, machine learning and RPA are supposed to be bringing about the leisure society, but I haven’t seen many people work less hours in 2021, so I think there is some distance to go yet. Even automating simple tasks has been a challenge for many of our customers, but we have been really impressed with our partners at Keysight Technologies, Eggplant who are leading the way in automated software testing. It’s our favourite application of automation as it’s adding value in every sector our customers work in.
3D Printing is an interesting one. The tech is not so new, but it’s the use case and application that have advanced this year. We’ve come a long way from printing that missing Lego brick to solar roof tiles, replacement human body parts, and DNA matched meat free food. In Episode 4 of ASM Connected, Futurist, Matthew Griffin shares his thoughts on 3D printing and is a huge fan. You’ll soon hear our podcast with Dr Ruchi Pathak Kaul who is changing people’s lives with the use of 3D printing as a pioneer of maxillofacial surgery.
API Security is nothing new to us at ASM Technologies. We’ve been working with the industry leaders and pioneers at Forum Systems who have worked in this emerging space for the past 18 years. Everyone is integrating via API’s now. They are like digital glue, but any interface is a threat in a zero-trust world, so the more interactions we create, the more API Security becomes significant.
Device Management sounds a little less sci-fi than some emerging trends, but don’t underestimate the important role it has played in empowering and connecting people during the Covid pandemic. Our partners at Jamf have gone from strength to strength this year with use cases across health, education, business, and public sector bringing the familiar Apple user experience to enterprise and so much more. In the first series of the ASM Connected podcast, episode 2 with Elizabeth Lucas from Jamf covers the important role this technology has played in patient visitor communication in hospitals.
Big Data Security and Analytics has been one our most active trends this year. Our partners at Grafana have been super busy as their open-source platform delivers impressively on the observability imperative. In ASM Connected episode 6 of series 1, podcast legend Dave Russell explains the complexity of the layers of big data, in a way that even we understand.
Finally, Human Insight AI is an exciting trend, even if it sounds a little more niche than the others we’ve reviewed. In fact, the human and societal impact of new tech and our curiosity about AI have been consistent threads during Series 2 of ASM Connected. Keep a look out for our soon to be released podcast with Inma Martinez where we learn how emerging technology in the transport sector is already superior to humans and is improving further to keep us safe. Subscribe here to ensure you don’t miss an episode. Our partners at SmartEye are ones to watch in this emerging trend.
We’ve really enjoyed our contribution to emerging tech trends throughout 2021 and would like to thank all our excellent customers, vendor partners and podcast guests for joining us on this journey.
You’ll have to listen to episode 4 of ASM Connected with Matthew Griffin to hear the story about the panda burgers!