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From Privacy to AI Implementations, What to Expect This Year

Organizations need to navigate new technologies and processes to ensure their businesses continue to grow.

• By Jonathan Grandperrin
• January 28, 2022

The importance of understanding how to work with data has become paramount in the past few years. The amount of data continues to grow, so it comes as no surprise that firms like Gartner are emphasizing today’s data and analytics leaders’ involvement in digital transformation steps, with 24 percent of them leading and 47 percent heavily involved in their organization’s initiatives.

For Further Reading: Executive Q&A: How Data Privacy Regulations Are Changing Marketing Choosing an Organizational Structure for Your AI Team  Finding Talent on the Periphery

As we move into 2022 and beyond, organizations will need to navigate new technologies and processes to ensure their businesses continue to grow even as they face new challenges. Here are three predictions of what we expect will have an impact on how businesses operate in the future.

Trend #1: Privacy concerns will shape big data management

As organizations reinvent themselves using a hybrid work model, privacy and security are becoming increasing challenges. As we continue to navigate remote environments through 2022, data governance and software compliance processes will need to keep up.

Organizations will need to find ways to prevent major privacy mistakes commonly made day-to-day, such as leveraging public networks at work, using personal accounts to share corporate information, and reusing passwords. Minimizing these risks will lead data management decisions throughout 2022 and beyond.

We will also find new services that are laser-focused on this emerging issue, such as new tools for managing data accessibility and monitoring activity. However, these new offerings and implementations are contingent on two factors: company size and industry.

Big companies won't be as impacted because of existing procedures and their prior investments in privacy and security. However, small and midsize companies may struggle to balance compliance and internal productivity. These are the companies that will need to take steps forward. IT and data managers will need to rethink their existing processes and create security and data systems that enhance remote work, fit their company needs, and can scale over time.

Trend #2: AI will be implemented in software development for better data

As AI continues to revolutionize many industries -- improving productivity, data quality, and performance -- the benefits are immense; however, the biggest challenge continues to be implementation.

With the AI market expected to grow significantly by 2024, next year is bound to be the stepping-stone toward an AI-centric software market. For one thing, AI will alter the way code is written, updated, and released. In that sense, DevOps will continue to increase the automation and responsiveness of the systems development life cycle.

Moving into 2022 and beyond, AI will play a bigger role in data management, but it will have to be recognized as part of the complete environment. In that sense, software developers will need to learn how AI will fit within their own tasks. With AI empowered to make changes to itself, the focus for developers will shift to a more creative, strategic level, focusing on providing insights and driving core business operations.

Developers will have to focus on the aspects of the software that are not easily automated, such as finding ways that multiple software systems can work together. They’ll likely shift away from the practice and process of development to building highly customized solutions for a wide range of challenges.

Trend #3: New roles defining renewed customer personas

For many years vendors that specialized in technology that accelerated data use have myopically focused on data analysts, architects, engineers, managers, and others. The unsung hero was always the developer -- until now.

As developers focus more on improving integration of applications with data management platforms and move into decision-making roles for many organizations, they will become a key persona to consider. It is in this context that the developer relations department will gain further recognition and become the perfect bridge between technology and people.

With this new territory comes a business approach that will be new for many. This approach is about people first, connecting with them instead of just selling. It is done with transparency, honesty, and reciprocity. This is a change in attitude that will help developers become more successful. Moving forward, the role development relations will play in the industry will focus on creating interesting, educational content (such as product documentation, technical tutorials, conference presentations, or videos on YouTube) while creating deep relationships with the community to truthfully support their new needs while improving products/services.