The article was updated on July 30, 2024.
Businesses are constantly on a hunt for the latest enterprise technology trends, and for a valid reason. While not all emerging technologies will end up being the drivers of progress, identifying the most promising ones has always been make or break for many companies.
In 2024, in particular, enterprises face numerous needs to expand the processing power of their IT infrastructures and align services with new customer expectations. Along with growing security requirements and increasing costs, these demands can sometimes be virtually impossible to meet without tapping into the new available tools.
In addition to learning about current enterprise tech trends, it’s crucial for businesses across all sectors to implement them consciously to gain considerable results. In this article, you’ll find a comprehensive list of trends that may be the best fit for your business and tech challenges you can encounter, along with their solutions.
Enterprise technology trends to watch in 2024 and beyond
One of the highlights in tech this year is artificial intelligence, mainly due to the immense scope of potential applications it can cover. Here are the new uses AI has branched out in, along with several other top enterprise technology trends to keep you ahead of the competition in the years to come.
1. Adaptive AI in all areas of business
Among the current smart tech trends, adaptive AI is one of the tools with the largest range of possible applications. Vision Research Reports predict the global market for adaptive AI to hit $36.6 billion by 2033, a leap from its size of $1.05 billion back in 2023.
While AI has been typically associated with its superior information processing powers, adaptive AI ventures a step beyond analytics and presents a capacity to learn, improve, and adjust without continuous human input. It’s one of the technology trends for business that enhances both the user-facing aspects and a company’s operations.
By training itself to consider each customer’s habits and preferences, adaptive AI can personalize user experience. It can offer context-aware and up-to-date responses, which can improve not only your customers’ journey but employees’ workflow.
In terms of streamlining operations, adaptive AI is frequently the key to reducing the number of errors and smoothing sharp corners by learning from historical data — and it does so autonomously.
2. Generative AI in automation and content creation
As the name suggests, generative AI is specifically designed to create original text, audio, images, and other types of content from users’ prompts. It sits right at the top of the current tech trends, with tools like ChatGPT and Gemini already favored for information search and creation. With GenAI, you can create a campaign poster in seconds, forget about combing through millions of irrelevant stock photos, and much more.
According to Gartner, 40% of businesses have already implemented generative AI to aid at least three different areas of their operations. Predominantly, this tool is used in sales, marketing, and customer services.
The possibility to generate content, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. Depending on your business needs, you may consider leveraging GenAI for the automation of time-consuming routine tasks, enhanced fraud detection and KYC procedures, and even financial forecasting.
3. Sustainable and eco-friendly technologies at the forefront
Going green, being one of the recent trends in enterprise information technology, may not be what you’d expect, but it’s rapidly becoming a must to consider.
To paint the scope of the effort, the S&P Global Commodity Insights predict almost $800 billion to be invested into clean energy technology in 2024. Responsible businesses outside the energy sector, for their part, are expected to uphold sustainability efforts and come up with clear strategies to mitigate their environmental impact.
Considering how energy-demanding technologies like AI and cloud computing are, these efforts are not in vain. For instance, IEEE compares one interaction with an ML system to leaving an LED light bulb on for an hour. And when it comes to business rather than recreational use cases, the numbers keep surging.
Besides, governmental regulations and public approval nest among the factors that position eco-friendly solutions among 2024 technology trends affecting business. Those opting for renewable energy sources and finding ways to reduce their carbon footprint are likely to gain value in customers’ eyes. Also, such enterprises are less likely to fall victim to excessive scrutiny as environmental policies around the world grow more stringent.
4. Continuous Threat Exposure Management as a new security program
When it comes to security, technology trends and advances are a double-edged sword. While companies gain more powerful tools like AI to protect their data against attacks, cybercriminals leverage the same technologies for a completely opposite purpose. The faster such tools evolve, the sharper security protocols businesses are required to implement.
One such protocol to follow is Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM). It’s one of the younger digital technology trends on this list called to improve enterprise data security operations. CTEM encourages proactive monitoring of potential security threats and quick reaction in case a data breach does happen.
In fact, it’s a program rather than a technology. Here are 5 general stages CTEM is packed into:
- Planning: Enterprises should begin by exploring potential security threats that could target their operations. Here, it’s crucial to take the specifics of your business into consideration, because it helps identify vulnerabilities and come up with tailored defense strategies.
- Monitoring: This stage is continuous, and it begins once the safety mechanisms are implemented. CTEM calls for enterprises to stay vigilant and keep the state of their systems, networks, and equipment in check. This way, if a breach is detected, you can start mitigating the impacts faster.
- Validating: Enterprises should use various technologies to assess how effective their security measures are and audit their security systems.
- Remediating: When a weakness or vulnerability is found in the process of the previous two stages, it’s critical to act fast. This stage focuses on prioritizing and fixing such liabilities promptly.
- Responding: Having strong security mechanisms in place is a must, but enterprises should also draw on their initial safety plan to develop a response system for cases when breaches slip through the cracks. By having clear guidelines on how a threat should be identified, reported, contained, and amended, you can greatly reduce potential losses in case of a security incident.
This kind of systemic thread management has shown effective results so far, and it’s predicted to continue growing. For instance, Gartner expects enterprises that adhere to CTEM to experience a 66% reduction in data breaches by 2026.
5. Machine learning operations for businesses that implement ML
You’ve probably heard of DevOps — a methodology to connect IT operations and software development, shortening the whole development and delivery lifecycle. MLOps, or Machine Learning Operations, works by the same principle.
MLOps is one of the more recent high-tech industry trends, but it’s fast-growing. Its global market size is predicted to reach $75.4 billion by 2033. Originally pioneered by Hewlett Packard, this upcoming tech trend is now being adopted by more and more companies, including giants like Uber, Netflix, and Revolut. So why exactly is it getting so popular?
The future of enterprise applications that leverage machine learning depends on the ease and speed of ML systems’ deployment, and MLOps is here to deliver. It’s already working to help businesses guide projects from concept to production faster, flag issues along the way, and propel analytics.
6. Platform engineering as a new development concept
Among the current technology trends in business, platform engineering is the one that’s rapidly gaining traction. It encompasses a whole process of creating and maintaining internal platforms that contain all the necessary tools for development and operations. Such units are frequently referred to as “Internal Developer Platforms” or IDPs.
For developers, an IDP can erase a number of routine tasks by providing certain base-level tools and services. This makes it possible for developers to streamline operations and deliver their products faster and with less manual operational work involved.
An example of a system developed by the principles of platform engineering is Kubernetes. It’s an open-source platform that helps automate the deployment process and further scaling of a product, as well as work with containerized apps. For instance, with Kubernetes, developers can deploy application packages on several machines simultaneously.
Enterprise technology challenges to consider
The more innovation businesses strive for, the more technology challenges they should expect to encounter. Considering the trends in digital technology we’ve discussed, we have identified 4 main obstacles you might encounter when implementing these new technologies.
1. Using AI ethically
So far, we’ve been discussing AI and ML as the latest technology trends, but they come at a cost. These technologies are tailored to learn from the data they’re fed, and this can instill significant bias in AI systems. When such models are then used to make decisions about real people coming from different backgrounds, the results might be unfair and devastating, especially in sectors like healthcare.
Therefore, one of the significant enterprise tech challenges in 2024 is figuring out how to apply AI in your business ethically.
Solution: Take care to limit the length of automation your AI system can deliver. Avoid handing the final decisions to this tool, and always double-check the results. Additionally, you can boost the fairness of your AI system by involving diverse participants in the development process.
2. Overcoming staffing and talent shortages
Deciding on the new tools and approaches to try is half the job. After that comes one of the greatest enterprise software development challenges — finding the right professionals to implement the new technologies. The talent shortage is still pervasive in the industry, even more so when it comes to increasingly niche business tech trends, such as AI engineering.
Regardless of how promising your idea can be, you may struggle to bridge the skill gap and identify fitting developers. In some cases, the screening process itself can present a challenge, as it may be difficult to assess the expertise of potential hires when it comes to brand-new tools.
Solution: Consider expanding your search to candidates of diverse backgrounds. For instance, if you regularly hire office-based teams, consider supplementing them with remote members. You can get access to larger pools of relevant applicants if you give a chance to freelancers, outstaff models, developers without a college degree, etc. You may also consider re-skilling your existing tech personnel.
3. Processing and storing large amounts of data
Current business technology trends we’ve discussed largely rely on big data — huge amounts of information that companies need to store and process. Enterprises of all sizes will have to face the challenge of implementing infrastructures to manage such data effectively. Additionally, as data keeps accumulating, scalability may become extremely difficult and expensive.
Solution: Storing data in the cloud rather than locally can save the day. There is no shortage of solutions, such as AWS or Azure, offered by cloud computing companies to enterprises, and they are distinguished by higher operational speed, as well as better reliability.
4. Staying compliant with regulations
One of the enterprise technology challenges that’s growing more complicated by the day is keeping your business compliant with all the regulations. Some, like PCI, DSS and GDPR, are familiar, but there are numerous emerging laws and regulations that are oftentimes underdeveloped or outright conflicting, particularly when they target recently surfaced technologies.
Considering the monetary and reputational penalties that businesses failing the compliance challenge risk, staying on top of this may very well define the future of the enterprise.
Solution: Get help from professional attorneys, specializing in your field. By delegating the responsibility to monitor and address emerging regulatory requirements, you can ensure it’s done correctly. Additionally, consider implementing technologies like AI to help deliver context-aware answers when employees need to find information about a certain standard or requirement.
Getting ready to face the future
As they say, forewarned is forearmed. Hopefully, this article will help you set your priorities straight for 2024 and beyond and reap the benefits of the latest technology trends.
In case you need professional guidance adopting any of them or perhaps you simply want to discuss the possible opportunities for your business, book a personal consultation with one of our senior project managers.
Contact us and we’ll gladly assist you in finding the best application for innovative technologies within your organization, helping you stay ahead of the competition.
Read also: