In its ‘Disruptive Future: 2021’ NTT Ltd outlines five key disruptive technology trends that hold promise to help companies realize safety and security, support sustainable growth and reduce environmental loads:
1. All-photonics networks (APNs) will power global communications: APNs will enable end-to-end, information transmission between the terminal and the server and will allow us to operate an ultra-low power intensive sustainable communications environment.
2. Cognitive Foundation (CF) technology will connect and control everything: the centralized management and agile allocation of ICT resources will provide the ability to integrate various sensor information – voice, video or other – to support IoT initiatives.
3. Digital twin computing (DTC) will enable predictive analytics by integrating the real and virtual worlds: DTC will test different environments by freely copying, combining and exchanging various digital twins of ‘things’ and people. This information will be integrated into applications such as traffic congestion prediction systems and can make accurate predictions in the field of disease control.
4. The evolution of the ‘citizen developer’ and robotic process automation will reshape businesses: Low-code/no-code platforms built to enable anyone to create business applications using their company data – will be a significant differentiator for businesses. The ‘citizen developer’ approach is also utilizing robotic process automation to automate certain business processes, allowing employees to spend time on higher-value work.
5. Quantum computing and the edge will usher in a new era of computing: More computational work could be done locally at the edge, rather than in the central cloud which can cause delay. For example, a car’s computer vision system would process and recognize images immediately rather than sending that information to the cloud for verification.
NTT predicts that while these disruptive technologies are on the horizon, in the shorter term, these trends will drive the need for digital transformation as they enable businesses to deliver superior, more connected, seamless and positive customer and employee experiences. In fact, because of this, the company predicts that digital transformation in 2021 will be an imperative for businesses, not a choice.