How to navigate the next future

As we advance into 2024, the technological landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, bringing to the forefront innovations and trends that are not only reshaping industries but also redefining how businesses interact with their customers and manage operations. 

This evolution is marked by the emergence of sophisticated digital solutions, ranging from AI powered solutions and cloud integration to advanced data management strategies.

Businesses can harness these advancements to stay competitive and efficient in a rapidly changing digital world. 

These are the most significant technological trends that are set to dominate in 2024:

The Rise AI and Context-Aware Solutions

In 2024, Co-pilots and AI driven “context-aware” solutions are two emerging concepts in the field of artificial intelligence and technology that are gaining significant traction for their potential to revolutionise various industries. 

Co-pilots are rapidly permeating across the technology space and proving highly effective as collaborative assistants. These co-pilots serve to reduce cognitive load thereby enabling workers to focus on generating solutions with greater accuracy and efficiency. Examples:

This in the technology space range from writing software to understanding and interpreting data and even into areas such as infrastructure monitoring and management. 

At a business level we see great potential for the use of AI in realising what we term as “context-aware” services and solutions. These services, when utilised by our clients, would behave differently based on the context of their engagement with their customers.

Put differently, with the adoption of AI a company now has the ability to transform its service offering from a set of outward facing API services to a richer context-aware outcome-based set of services. 

These technologies herald a future where AI powered services not only support but also intelligently conform to the needs and contexts of its users, promising more intuitive and responsive user interactions.

_{Bryan Orsmond, chief information officer of Comcorp.}

The Evolution of Cloud Technology

The software industry is witnessing a significant shift towards cloud-based solutions. This transition from fixed service solutions to flexible, platform-based models allows for greater integration and scalability. Infrastructure as code enables rapid customer focussed deployments, ensuring, amongst others, greater reliability, security and scalability of solutions. 

Cloud technology greatly assists in the area of governance too. Centralised analytics and insights provide a “single pane of glass” view into operations. The ability to monitor and adjust solutions in real-time, based on analytics, is transforming how businesses operate and respond to customer needs.

Data Management and Utilisation

In the realm of data, we see great technical advancement taking place. Data management is becoming more streamlined and integrated, thanks to providers offering services that cater to the entire spectrum of data users and processes. The concept of a data lake is central to this trend, giving organisations the ability to unify their data estates, and with the utilisation of AI, insights and data driven decisioning are now closer to users across the organisation.

The gap between business operations and data utilisation is narrowing, enabling companies to make more informed, strategic decisions based on real-time data analytics.

Identity Verification and the Importance of Compliance

Society is undoubtedly experiencing an increase in the prevalence of fraud, particularly in the space of digital identity and impersonation. Biometric solutions have come a long way in providing reliable real-time solutions to match and identify customers against reference data and help to combat such fraud. The success of these solutions depends in large part on trust and user experience though. 

Companies like Comcorp are developing solutions that balance strong customer authentication with minimal friction. This involves the use of facial biometrics through trusted channels for reliable identity verification. The focus is also on user trust and familiarity, safeguarding personal data, ensuring consent, and adhering to compliance regulations like POPI. Additional services provide the ability to correlate user identity claims across multiple data sources, thereby strengthening the authentication process. 

In conclusion, as we look towards 2024, it’s clear that trends like co-pilots, AI, advanced cloud integration, and sophisticated data management are reshaping the landscape of technology and business. Companies that stay ahead of these trends, particularly in areas like AI and identity verification, will be well-positioned to succeed in an increasingly digital and data-driven world.