The A-Z of tech predictions for 2023: K to O

Weird, wonderful or very likely to come true? Tech predictions for 2023 cover the full spectrum of possibilities. In the 3rd of a five-part series, here are thoughts from industry experts for topics starting from 'K' to 'O':

K is for Kafka

"Real-time data management becomes an even bigger priority for organisations looking to manage
and consolidate data sources and workloads," said Olivier van Grembergen, Regional VP, APAC, Aiven. 

"More organisational and customer data (will flow) through Kafka clusters, prompting a need for greater visibility among which teams have access to streaming data. At the same time, being able to access and re-use existing data will fuel further innovation, refinement of business processes and better
customer services.

"With greater Kafka adoption, the conversation around data governance, security and compliance within Kafka will follow too. Solutions are already starting to emerge, including our very own Klaw (formerly Kafkawize)."

K is also for (expert) knowledge

As more enterprises go cloud-native, industry cloud platforms will become popular, van Grembergen predicted. "More enterprises in Asia Pacific are slated to adopt cloud computing solutions in the coming years, with reports predicting that the cloud computing market in the region will hit US$191.8 billion by 2024. We will see a continued shift towards deeper specialisation," van Grembergen said.

"Essentially, the building of specialist industry cloud platforms on top of existing managed cloud services, to help accelerate problem solving and bring everything closer together as businesses seek a more flexible, agile way of managing workloads and accelerating innovation. 

"The growth and commoditisation of industry cloud platforms will drive more standards and open source adoption, especially in relation to managed services. The true value of these industry cloud platforms will be delivering deeper industry expertise, and the next layer of fabric when it comes to delivering hyper-specialisation technology."

L is for legacy

Source: Workday. Leach.

"We will see a focus from CIOs and line of business (LOB) to strategically reduce organisational silos that had previously created 'technology islands' within their organisations. This came to a head during the pandemic as it led to additional operational and security risks, especially for legacy applications that couldn’t integrate, had security gaps, limited support, and often installed on legacy fixed premise infrastructure," said Damian Leach, CTO, APJ, Workday.

"As such, legacy systems will continue to be decommissioned as organisations recognise they must modernise to the cloud to stay competitive. Delaying the decision to do so is far more costly in the
long run."

M is for metaverse

Source: Siemens
Digital Industries
Software. Teo.

"2023 will see the age of the metaverse which permeates not just lifestyle entertainment and financial investments, but also the industrial universe. For manufacturing businesses to remain competitive and navigate risks amidst digital transformation, manufacturers should make use of the industrial metaverse with physics-based digital models to make decisions faster and with increased confidence," said Alex Teo, VP & MD, Southeast Asia, Siemens Digital Industries Software.

Teo shared that Siemens Xcelerator and NVIDIA Omniverse are integrated, enabling manufacturers to create closed-loop digital twins with real-time performance data. 

"Web access will bring more visitors into the metaverse. In 2023, we will see more virtual worlds vie for your attention on the browser. One of the biggest blockers to the proliferation of the metaverse is accessibility. VR adoption is still in its infancy and many users are unwilling to download dedicated apps when their attention could be spent elsewhere with significantly less effort (read: friction)," observed Tony Wang, Co-Founder & CRO, Agora.

"This presents a conundrum for metaverse developers, as the potential for more genuine online interpersonal interactions is an oft-touted value proposition for spending time in virtual worlds. Although some examples of web-based 3D virtual worlds are out there, we expect that 2023 will see established and new players offering browser access to their metaverse destinations to grow their user bases."

N is for non-fungible token (NFT)

Source: WOLOT Foundation.
Chan.

"The first generation of NFTs is profile picture (PFP)-related, e.g. BAYC; this era is over. The future of NFTs lies in real utility and use cases. 

"Basically, an NFT is a convenient and effective way to verify ownership of certified identities and articles.  This can have vast areas of utilities from club ownership (think gated communities), certificates, financial documents, tickets, etc.," said Ben Chan, Chairman, WOLOT Foundation. 

BAYC stands for Bored Ape Yacht Club. The Bored Ape series of NFTs were highly coveted and sold at very high prices. 

O is for observability

"Companies like Splunk, IBM, Cisco and ServiceNow have all made big bets on observability. ServiceNow, for instance, made several acquisitions from Lightstep last year to Era Software (in October 2022) to unify observability throughout its platform, while Cisco shared its big bets on observability at (2022's) Cisco Live event," said Daniel Newman, Principal Analyst of Futurum Research in a blog post.

Source: Micro Focus.
McNulty.

"The complexity of the cloud increases as organisations’ IT management adopts more services on cloud as this leads to multiple moving parts to manage – and this can be costly for organisations," cautioned Stephen McNulty President, Asia Pacific & Japan, Micro Focus. "The cost of incident escalations has proven to exceed US$1 million, for instance."

According to McNulty, such costs are avoidable. "With more organisations seeking to digitally transform or entering the next phase of their transformation journeys, IT leaders will rightfully place greater attention on observability. Observability delivers the necessary information that IT leaders need to know about every resource – every server, every application – in the organisation’s IT estate, to communicate and remediate any issues.

"Solutions such as AIOps will become increasingly popular in 2023 as they help achieve observability by increasing performance and productivity, while also reducing costs. We will therefore see an increase in uptake for such solutions."

Explore tech predictions

A to E

F to J

K to O

P to T

U to Z