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The company’s technology advisory director shared predictions on the rise of generative AI, the exploration of metaverse potential and companies embracing zero trust cybersecurity.
Management and tech consultancy BearingPoint has shared five tech predictions for the upcoming year.
The company surveyed more than 1,200 technology consultants to predict the areas tech companies will focus on this year.
BearingPoint’s technology advisory director, Greg Lehane, said emerging tech such as AI matured rapidly in 2022, while VR technology became more mainstream.
BearingPoint technology advisory director Greg Lehane. Image: Mark Colfer/BearingPoint
He also noted that high-profile attacks have drawn more attention to cybersecurity, while companies continue to push forward in digital transformation.
With all of this in mind, Lehane has shared BearingPoint’s top five tech predictions for 2023.
Generative AI will shake things up
Multiple AI projects rose to prominence last year, as companies released early access demos to the public.
Various text-to-image generators became popular for their ability to create new art from a sentence, such as Stable Diffusion and OpenAI’s DALL-E 2.
OpenAI also released an advanced chatbot called ChatGPT, which has been praised by some and criticised for inaccuracies by others. Earlier this week, Microsoft shared plans to add ChatGPT to its Azure cloud services.
Lehane believes the advancement of these types of generative AI technology will “significantly disrupt approaches” in terms of content creation, data augmentation and work automation.
“Ethical concerns related to automation of tasks, increased efficiency and creation of new job roles will need to be tackled as this technology will have an inevitable impact on work practices – sooner than you might think,” he said.
“As this field continues to mature rapidly, stakeholders will need to assess if generated content can be trusted as authoritative in leveraging its exponential potential.”
Metaverse potential will be explored
VR technology continued to progress last year, with Meta revealing a new headset and Irish company Engage XR launching an enterprise-focused metaverse.
Lehane believes the sector could develop in future, with various benefits for those businesses that explore its potential.
“While the vision for the metaverse is clearly not yet fully baked, it is worth considering the wide scope of potential in mixed reality, immersive digital environments and real-time communications that can be used to bring people together and to explore new products and spaces,” he said.
One sector that Lehane said is exploring the benefits of VR tech is sport. For example, BearingPoint has been working with Leinster Rugby to help get the sporting group ready for the metaverse.
“By entering the metaverse, Leinster Rugby expect to identify new commercial opportunities and new ways to communicate and engage with their passionate supporter community,” said Lehane.
More firms will use cloud-native platforms
Lehane said we have entered the “era of rapid digitalisation”, as it is now possible to quickly build applications that improve security, handle fluctuations in demand and reduce downtime.
Many sectors in Ireland are pushing forward with digital transformation, while the Government wants 90pc of Irish SMEs to be digital by 2030.
The BearingPoint director noted that more companies are starting to embrace cloud platforms to help improve their business and expects this trend to continue in 2023.
“While tech start-ups in Ireland have embraced the cloud-native approach for years, in 2022 we saw a significant shift in posture with our enterprise and public sector clients who are also now developing and implementing cloud adoption and migration strategies,” he said.
“Governance of hybrid cloud and on-premise IT estates continues to be a key consideration for larger scale organisations in Ireland, along with necessary investment in skills development and talent acquisition.”
Growth in embedded data and analytics
As companies become more focused on using data to inform their decisions, Lehane said access to real-time information has become “critical” for business leaders.
He said organisations that plan to utilise data-driven insight will need to invest in “strong data management and governance practices”, while working to develop “industry-specific data models”. Lehane also said companies will need to “take careful consideration to use cases”.
“We are seeing that industry involvement is now required to improve the models in ensuring that metrics are valuable in driving action,” Lehane said.
Zero trust at scale
Last year saw various developments in the cybersecurity sector, from attacks targeting countries such as Ukraine and Costa Rica, to warnings about state-sponsored attacks posing a threat to vital sectors.
Various companies suffered high-profile attacks and data breaches as criminal gangs such as Lapsus$ claimed responsibility for a wave of cybercrime.
With cyberattacks threatening various sectors, Lehane believes many enterprises will embrace “zero trust at scale”, which involves a strict enforcement of authentication within a business.
Lehane also said companies will move to cloud-native options to handle this push for zero trust at scale, due to challenges with retrofitting on-premises systems and and the short-supply of cybersecurity professionals.
“CISOs will have to look outside the organisation for help, with some governments now also providing centralised support,” he said.
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