Gartner, a market research firm predicts that companies worldwide will spend $3.5 trillion on IT in 2017. To top this off, gartner also expects companies to spend more on software and services as compare to hardware. Organizations today are rushing to invest on technology powered by cloud computing model, where the technology is being hosted in the vendor’s data center and supplied as a service over the internet.

It was projected that in 2016, the spending on software will be at 6 percent, and will grow another 7.2 percent in 2017 which generates a total of $357 billion. At the moment, companies are expected to spend $943 billion on IT services, nearly 5% over 2016 spending levels. All in all, billions of dollars are at stake for these emergingtechnology trends. The concepts that made headlines over the last few years are now ready to hit the road and become the “new normal” next year.

Research firms around the world all agree that these technology trends will absolutely create an explosion this 2017:

Virtual assistants

Given that artificial intelligence, cloud services, to internet of things will play a significant role in creating most of the technology trends this year, there is this one area that really excites the market and this trend is called the virtual assistants. We have heard of Siri,Cortana, and Google, and some might say that this technology is not relatively new but developers are employing it to bigger areas. In 2016, Apple opened siri to third-party developers, so you can ask siri to make a payment to someone using venmo. You can also use cortana using windows 10 with a number of microsoft apps too. The virtual assistant market is expected to reach $12.28 billion by 2024.

AI and advanced machine learning

The world has witnessed how big artificial intelligence and machine learning did last 2016. Companies like Google and Microsoft incorporated all kinds of artificial intelligence in their cloud services. Even startup businesses began revolutionizing their applications for travel and retail purposes. "The more advanced techniques move beyond traditional rule-based algorithms to create systems that understand, learn, predict, adapt and potentially operate autonomously," Gartner says. It was estimated that artificial intelligence will grow from $420 million in 2014 to $5.05 billion by 2020.

Intelligent things

The world of artificial intelligence will collide with the internet of things this 2017. The IoT basically connects all things to the internet and let them talk to each other to perform tasks for our convenience. These items are powered by sensors, chips, and applications which makes total sense if will make use of machine learning. Experts await that from having stand-alone intelligent things like smart watches, self-driving cars, and appliances, soon we’ll have collaborative intelligent things model that communicate with one another. It is estimated that 6 billion connected things will be seeking support from AI platforms by 2018 and will grow its market value from $157.05 billion in 2016 to $661.74 billion by 2021.

Virtual and augmented reality

These technology trends are absolutely some of the biggest game-changers both for work and entertainment. Virtual and augmented reality started its appearance in the market last 2015 and secure its significance last 2016. Companies around the world are crafting their own versions of the VR gear like Microsoft, who just released their HoloLens in 2017. The worldwide revenues for the augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) market will grow from $5.2 billion in 2016 to more than $162 billion in 2020.

Digital twins

What would happen if you combine artificial intelligence, with internet of things, and VR/AR? Well, experts call this technology the digital twins. This technology basically replicates something in the real world powered by sensor data. Digital twins will give workers an avenue to interact with real devices floating around the real world. With digital twins, people can watch IoT objects, identify possible challenges, asses solutions, even the possibility of creating new products using this technology. You’ll hear more about this in the coming year. Though, experts are having a hard time giving this a figure at the moment, but it is expected that 3 to 5 years from now, millions of things will be exemplified by digital twins.

Blockchain and distributed ledgers

2015 introduced us to the big bitcoin phenomenon and it turns out that blockchain, the technology which created bitcoin could be far more valuable than the coins themselves.Blockchain technology distributes a database across numerous distant computers. It could also be used to monitor digital coins and other transactions. Different vendors are creating new blockchain applications for the healthcare and financial industries. It expected that this technology will grow from $210.2 million in 2016 to $2.3 billion by 2021.

Conversational systems

Have you entered a website that offers chat support then actually use it? There is a great possibility that you might be talking to a chatbot. This technology lets you interact with different applications by texting. Experts believe that this is the beginning of applications doing actual tasks for us and in the future all smart objects will have some form of conversational interface. The signs for this to actually happen are visible. Even the largest technology leaders are building charbots for its applications. There is forecast that this technology will lead to a $600 billion market by 2020.

Mesh app and service architecture

You need IT systems to let online devices talk to us and one another. There is a technology called "Mesh App and Service Architecture" or MASA that lets you do just that. This system can support applications that can communicate to each other, collaborate, work, and even learn. This technology is getting a lot of attention at the moment. Experts predict that this market could generate up to $661.74 billion by 2021.

Adaptive Security Architecture

With so much technology around, threats could grow and mature with them. Don’t bediscouraged, soon, smarter computers and devices will be able to identify a threat and will be able to protect themselves. In line with this, security experts will use artificial intelligence to create adaptive security architecture. It is predicted that this technology will be valued at $7.07 billion by 2021.

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