Revolution 4.0 is surely revolutionizing the technology world. More and more jargons are entering the
market that promise to woo the younger generation and the business owners. Technology evolvement
moves in a rapid pace that obsolete current trends in quicker mode than ever before. As technology
evolves, it enables even faster change and progress, causing an acceleration of the rate of change, until
eventually, it will become exponential.
Constant learning is somewhat requires to sustain Technology-based careers. No more excuses for self-
development. Get updated with latest trend or be ready to be replaced by those who willing to reckon
the world with more knowledge on IT World. It profession is somewhat surviving steadily during this
Covid 19 pandemic, the increasing need for pursuing online business is growing and will see more
growth in coming years.
What does this mean for you? It means staying current with technology trends. And it means keeping
your eyes on the future, to know which skills you’ll need to know and what types of jobs you want to be
qualified to do. Here are eight technology trends you should watch for in 2020, and some of the jobs
that will be created by these trends.
Top Trending Technologies
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, taking the world by storm. With the emerging of 5G and more robotic
advancement the effects on how we live, work, and play are inevitable. In addition, other branches of AI
have developed, including Machine Learning, which we will go into below. AI refers to computer
systems built to mimic human intelligence and perform tasks such as recognition of images, speech or
patterns, and decision making. AI can do these tasks faster and more accurately than humans.
The number of smartphone users worldwide today surpasses three billion and is forecast to further
grow by several hundred million in the next few years. China, India, and the United States are the
countries with the highest number of smartphone users, with each country easily surpassing the 100
million user mark. These smart phone users, use AI services in one form or another every day, including
navigation apps, streaming services, smartphone personal assistants, ride-sharing apps, home personal
assistants, and smart home devices. In addition to consumer use, AI is used to schedule trains, assess
business risk, predict maintenance, and improve energy efficiency, among many other money-saving
tasks.
AI is continuously evolving to benefit many different industries. Machines are wired using a cross-
disciplinary approach based in mathematics, computer science, linguistics, psychology, and more.
Experts say automation will eliminate 73 million more jobs by 2030. However, automation is creating
jobs as well as eliminating them, especially in the field of AI: Pundits predict that jobs in AI will number
23 million by 2020. Jobs will be created in development, programming, testing, support, and
maintenance, to name a few. Artificial Intelligence architect is one such job. - Machine Learning
Machine Learning is a subset of AI. With Machine Learning, computers are programmed to learn to do
something they are not programmed to do: they learn by discovering patterns and insights from data. In
general, we have two types of learning, supervised and unsupervised. Other examples of machines with
artificial intelligence include computers that play chess and self-driving cars. Each of these machines
must weigh the consequences of any action they take, as each action will impact the end result. In
chess, the end result is winning the game. For self-driving cars, the computer system must account for
all external data and compute it to act in a way that prevents a collision.
Machine Learning is rapidly being deployed in all kinds of industries, creating a huge demand for skilled
professionals. The Machine Learning market is expected to grow to $8.81 billion by 2022. Machine
Learning applications are used for data analytics, data mining, and pattern recognition. On the consumer
end, Machine Learning powers web search results, real-time ads, and network intrusion detection, to
name only a few of the many tasks it can do.
In addition to completing countless tasks on our behalf, it is generating jobs. Machine Learning jobs rank
among the top emerging jobs on LinkedIn, with almost 2,000 job listings posted. And these jobs pay
well: In 2017, the median salary for a machine learning engineer was $106,225. Machine Learning jobs
include engineers, developers, researchers, and data scientists. - Robotic Process Automation or RPA
Like AI and Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, is another technology that is
automating jobs. Profoundly known as software robotics. RPA is the use of software to automate
business processes such as interpreting applications, processing transactions, dealing with data, and
even replying to emails. RPA automates repetitive tasks that people used to do. The data collected helps
to send reminders to customers and professionals on performing a repetitive check on certain sales,
service, promotion, training and consultation. Business analytics are solely depended on these churned
data to improve on Corporate Decision Makings. Companies are able to derive at a better short and long
term strategies base on these analytics faster than traditional analysis.
Advancement in these sector opens up more opportunities for IT professional looking to the future and
trying to understand technology trends. RPA offers plenty of well paid career opportunities, including
developer, project manager, business analyst, solution architect, and consultant. - Edge Computing
Edge computing is a distributed computing paradigm that brings computation and data storage closer to
the location where it is needed, to improve response times and save bandwidth. In modern days,
evolution to this sector has not been left behind as well, emergence of virtualization technology that
makes it easier to deploy and run a wider range of applications on the edge servers has been deployed
to a wider aspect.
Formerly a technology trend to watch, cloud computing has become mainstream, with major players
AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud dominating the market. The adoption
of cloud computing is still growing, as more and more businesses migrate to a cloud solution. But it’s no
longer the emerging technology.
Edge computing will increase as the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices increases. By 2022, the
global edge computing market is expected to reach $6.72 billion. As with any growing market, this will
create various jobs, primarily for software engineers.
Continuous increase in quantity of data we’re dealing with, we’ve realized the shortcomings of cloud
computing in some situations. Edge computing is designed to help to create a buffer storage as a way to
bypass the latency caused by cloud computing and getting data to a data center for processing. It can be
stored “on the edge,” if you will, closer to where computing needs to happen. Thus, edge computing can
be used to process time-sensitive data in isolated areas with limited or no connectivity to a centralized
location. In those situations, edge computing can act like mini datacenters.
- Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Another are of technology that gaining fast recognition are Virtual Reality (VR) and Augment reality(AR).
VR immerses the user in an environment while AR enhances their environment. Gaming industry
optimizes these two sectors and evolved rapidly from your classic Pac Man to current Pokemon Go. VR
and AR has also been used for training, as with VirtualShip, a simulation software used to train U.S.
Navy, Army, and Coast Guard ship captains.
Both VR and AR have enormous potential in many industries namely tourism, medicine, astronomy,
training, education, marketing and etc. Either could be used to train doctors to do surgery, offer
museum-goers a deeper experience, enhance theme parks, or even enhance marketing, as with this
Pepsi Max bus shelter.
Giant IT companies are seen venturing extensively in the VR market, like Google, Samsung, and Oculus,
but plenty of startups are forming and they will be hiring, and the demand for professionals with VR and
AR skills increasing steadily. Getting started in VR doesn’t require a lot of specialized knowledge. Basic
programming skills and a forward-thinking mindset can land a job, although other employers will be
looking for optics as a skill-set and hardware engineers as well. - Cybersecurity
Hacking is also another growing skills among rebellion IT Professionals who make a living from cracking
the backend of any system to entertain their intelligence ego. Hence the need for Cybersecurity is
evolving just as other technologies are. Banking and Finance stepping into more online transactions
invites more cyber crimes to take place in financial industry.
The malevolent hackers who are trying to illegally access data are not going to give up any time soon,
and they will continue to find ways to get through even the toughest security measures. It’s also in part
because new technology is being adapted to enhance security. As long as we have hackers, we will have
cyber security as an emerging technology because it will constantly evolve to defend against those
hackers.
As proof of the strong need for cybersecurity professionals, the number of cybersecurity jobs is growing
three times faster than other tech jobs. However, we’re falling short when it comes to filling those jobs.
As a result, it’s predicted that we will have 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021. Another field
of expertise needing immediate attention and professionals could consider developing themselves
further in this said area.
- Blockchain
If you have been following banking, investing, or cryptocurrency over the last ten years, you may be
familiar with “blockchain,” the record-keeping technology behind the Bitcoin network. Blockchain is
literally just a chain of blocks, but not in the traditional sense of those words. When we say the words
“block” and “chain” in this context, we are actually talking about digital information (the “block”) stored
in a public database (the “chain”).
Blockchain technology accounts for the issues of security and trust in several ways. In the simplest of
terms, blockchain can be described as data you can only add to, not take away from or change. New
blocks are always stored linearly and chronologically. That is, they are always added to the “end” of the
blockchain. Not being able to change the previous blocks is what makes it so secure.
In order to change a single block, a hacker would need to change every single block after it on the
blockchain. Recalculating all those hashes would take an enormous and improbable amount of
computing power. Blockchains are consensus-driven, so no one entity can take control of the data. With
blockchain, you don’t need a trusted third-party to oversee or validate transactions. You can refer to our
Blockchain tutorial for a detailed and thorough understanding of the technology.
With the emerge of Covid 19 and many have opted to online purchasing, securing ecommerce
transactions requires blockchain security. Giant companies such as Amazon, Lazada, Shoppee and
Alibaba heavily rely their business operations on online transactions. More and more SMEs are following
suit to the trend of online purchasing, hence more skilled and trained professionals in this sectors are
highly sort after too.
A blockchain developer specializes in developing and implementing architecture and solutions using
blockchain technology. The average yearly salary of a blockchain developer is $130,000. If you are
intrigued by Blockchain and its applications and want to make your career in this fast-growing industry,
then this is the right time to learn Blockchain and gear up for an exciting future. - Internet of Things (IoT)
Innovation on computing devices, increased the need for internet connectivity. This evolution in
technology become a surving tools for many when MCO was announced due to Covid 19 threat. Many
leveraged in IoT to complete their work from home.
The way we think and live has been changed due to internet and technology development. The Internet
of Things is the future and has already enabled devices, home appliances, cars, and much more to be
connected to and exchange data over the Internet. And we’re only in the beginning stages of IoT: the
number of IoT devices reached 8.4 billion in 2017 is expected to reach 30 billion devices by 2020.
The revolution continues as we unlock our doors remotely if we forget to when we leave for work and
preheat our ovens on our way home from work, all while tracking our fitness on our Fitbits and hailing a
ride with Lyft. But businesses also have much to gain now and in the near future. The IoT can enable
better safety, efficiency, and decision making for businesses as data is collected and analyzed. It can
enable predictive maintenance, speed up medical care, improve customer service, and offer benefits we
haven’t even imagined yet.
As we go on and on discussing about the new trends in the IT world, we can conclude the need for new
skilled professionals in IT fields has greater demands than one can imagine. It can’t be disagreed that
more and more new fields of expertise will be required to fill future demands and needs as the IT world
keep changing dynamically.
In nutshell, these eight technologies offer promising career potential now and for the foreseeable
future. And all eight are suffering from a shortage of skilled workers, meaning the time is right for you to
choose one, get trained, and get on board at the early stages of the technology, positioning you for
success now and in the future.
Sources :
https://www.simplilearn.com/top-technology-trends-and-jobs-article
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/artificial-intelligence-ai.asp
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp
