Gartner releases top ten strategic technology trends for 2024

Beijing, October 17, 2023

Gartner today released the top 10 strategic technology trends that enterprises need to explore in 2024. Bart Willemsen, research vice president at Gartner, said: “As a result of technological change and socioeconomic uncertainty, we must act boldly and strategically become more resilient, rather than resorting to ad hoc measures. IT leaders are uniquely positioned to develop strategies that Technology investments help businesses maintain strategic planning for success during these uncertainties and pressures.”

“IT leaders and other executives must assess the impact and benefits of strategic technology trends, but this is no easy task due to the ever-increasing pace of technology innovation, such as generative AI,” said Chris Howard, distinguished research vice president and research team leader at Gartner. While AI and other types of AI bring new opportunities and drive several trends, achieving business value from long-term use of AI will require a rigorous approach to widespread adoption and attention to risks.”

Important strategic trends in 2024 include:

Democratized Generative AI

The convergence of large-scale pre-trained models, cloud computing, and open source is driving the democratization of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI), making these models available to workers around the world. By 2026, Gartner predicts that more than 80% of enterprises will use APIs or models for generative AI or deploy generative AI-enabled applications in production environments, up from less than 5% at the beginning of 2023.

Generative AI applications can allow enterprise users to access and use a large number of internal and external information sources, which means that the rapid adoption of generative AI will greatly promote the democratization of enterprise knowledge and skills. Large-scale language models enable enterprises to connect employees to knowledge in a conversational format through rich semantic understanding.

AI Trust, Risk and Security Management

The democratization of AI has made the need for AI Trust, Risk and Security Management (TRiSM) more urgent and clear. Without guardrails, AI models may quickly produce multiple negative effects that are out of control, offsetting all the positive performance and social benefits brought by AI. AI TRiSM provides solutions for model operations (ModelOps), proactive data protection, AI-specific security, model monitoring (including monitoring of data drift, model drift, and/or unexpected results), and third-party model and application input and output risk control tool.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, enterprises adopting AI TRiSM controls will improve decision-making accuracy by filtering out up to 80% of erroneous and illegal information.

AI-Augmented Development

AI enhanced development refers to the use of AI technologies such as generative AI and machine learning to assist software engineers in application design, coding and testing. AI-assisted software engineering increases developer productivity, allowing development teams to meet the growing demand for software from business operations. These AI-infused development tools can reduce the time software engineers spend writing code, allowing them more time to carry out more strategic activities, such as designing and composing attractive business applications.

Intelligent Applications

Gartner defines “intelligence” in intelligent applications as the learned adaptive ability to respond appropriately autonomously. In many use cases, this intelligence is used to better enhance or automate work. As a basic capability, intelligence in applications includes various AI-based services, such as machine learning, vector storage, and connected data. As a result, smart apps can provide an experience that continuously adapts to the user.

There is already a clear need for smart applications. In the 2023 Gartner Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Business Executive Survey, 26% of CEOs believe that the most damaging risk to corporate organizations is talent shortages. Attracting and retaining talent is a top HR priority for CEOs, and AI is considered the technology that will have the greatest impact on their industries over the next three years.

Augmented-Connected Workforce

The Augmented Connected Workforce (ACWF) is a strategy for optimizing employee value. The development trend of ACWF is driven by the need to accelerate and expand the scale of talent. ACWF uses intelligent applications and workforce analytics to provide daily environments and guidance that support workforce experience, well-being, and skill development. At the same time, ACWF can also bring business results and positive impacts to key stakeholders.

By the end of 2027, 25% of chief information officers (CIOs) will use enhanced connected workforce initiatives to reduce time to compete in key roles by 50%.

Continuous Threat Exposure Management

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is a pragmatic and systematic approach that enables organizations to continuously and uniformly assess the accessibility, exposure and exploitability of an organization’s digital and physical assets. Scoping CTEM assessment and remediation based on threat vectors or business items rather than infrastructure components can uncover not only vulnerabilities but also threats that cannot be patched.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, organizations that prioritize security investments based on CTEM initiatives will reduce vulnerabilities by two-thirds.

Machine Customers

A robot customer (also known as a “customer bot”) is a non-human economic actor that can autonomously negotiate and purchase goods and services in exchange for payment. By 2028, 15 billion connected products will have the potential to become customers, with billions more likely to grow in the following years. This growth trend will generate trillions of dollars in revenue by 2030 and will eventually outpace the emergence of digital commerce in importance. Opportunities to facilitate these algorithms and devices and even create new types of customer robots should be strategically considered.

Sustainable Technology

Sustainable technology is a framework of digital solutions designed to achieve environmental, social and governance (ESG) outcomes that support long-term ecological balance and human rights. The use of technologies such as AI, cryptocurrency, the Internet of Things, and cloud computing is raising concerns about related energy consumption and environmental impact. Therefore, it becomes even more important to improve efficiency, circularity and sustainability when using IT. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2027, 25% of CIOs will have their personal compensation tied to their impact on sustainable technologies.

Platform Engineering

Platform engineering is the discipline of building and operating self-service, in-house development platforms. Each platform is a layer created and maintained by a dedicated product team and supports user needs by interfacing with tools and processes. The goal of platform engineering is to optimize productivity and user experience and accelerate the realization of business value.

Industry Cloud Platforms

Gartner predicts that by 2027, more than 70% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms (ICP) to accelerate their business plans, compared with less than 15% in 2023. ICP integrates underlying SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services into a complete suite of products through composable capabilities to drive industry-relevant business results. These capabilities often include industry data weaving, libraries of packaged business functions, composition tools, and other platform innovations. ICP is a cloud solution tailored for specific industries to further meet the needs of enterprise organizations.

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