The 5th and final part of the A-Z of tech predictions for 2023 covers entries for 'U' through to 'Z':
U is for unprecedented connectivity
Broadband
"Supply chain, skilled labour, and logistical constraints have limited the speed of network deployments, but now, unprecedented government funding, an accommodating financial environment, and a mature crop of network technologies have yielded a steep demand curve for building next-generation networks, setting the stage for unprecedented capacity expansion.
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| Source: CommScope. Aoude. |
"In 2023, new demands of businesses and consumers will fundamentally redefine the way that future broadband networks will be built. For example, unprecedented momentum in smart cities, IoT, and connected experiences is driving demand at the network edge and creating specific network requirements—from extremely low latency, to symmetrical bandwidth, to the ability to sustain very high speeds for extended periods.
"These demands require a new type of network based on a new type of approach: realising energy efficiency through fibre architectures, operational efficiency through software optimisation and management, and modularity and extensibility through component standardisation. This approach simplifies installation and drives efficiency in network deployments through the use of innovative plug and play technologies."
Cloud
The approach to cloud is changing, with more companies relying on third-party help, added Gina Wong, MD – Singapore, Kyndryl. "As more enterprises shift workloads and business to the cloud, they are using different means of connectivity to the cloud than what was traditionally built in the past. We have seen a flux of companies that are virtualising network infrastructure and providing it as a service to enterprises. However, a lot of these companies do not have a good direct-to-enterprise channel. There will be an increasing demand to integrate the connectivity with managed services, and help enterprises manage the multinetworks," she said.
Companies are also moving into distributed cloud computing, Wong added. "In a distributed cloud environment, workloads are aligned with specific resource locations to meet compliance needs and performance requirements or support edge computing while being centrally managed from a public cloud provider," she explained, pointing out that a distributed model can help companies better visualise and harness data across an organisation to drive value and enable new Web 3 capabilities.
See also W is for Web 3.
Cloud waste
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| Source: Micro Focus. McNulty. |
"Currently, one third of cloud spend is going to waste, and it is challenging to control cost with multiple teams using multiple cloud vendors. To that end, leaders will become more prudent of their cloud expenditures and will look to solutions like FinOps to control cost and cut waste. With the aim of bringing financial accountability to the cloud spend model, FinOps enables distributed teams to make well-informed trade-offs between speed, cost, and quality.
"Today, there are FinOps solutions that provide a real-time, unified view of an organisation’s cloud spend across all clouds, AI-assisted instance management recommendations to help save, and features to proactively prevent costly surprises."
V is for vehicle
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| Source: Siemens Digital Industries Software. Teo. |
"Autonomous vehicles will require a constellation of advanced mechanical, electrical, and electronic systems as well as embedded software, artificial intelligence and machine learning working together to achieve true self-driving functionality," said Alex Teo, VP & MD, Southeast Asia, Siemens Digital Industries Software.
"Companies that hope to participate in the self-driving vehicle revolution - including legacy automotive original equipment manufacturers, suppliers, and new market entrants - must be able to deliver innovative features such as lane keep assist or adaptive cruise control and contend with the mounting complexity of integrating them into the systems of a vehicle. To succeed, it is critical for automakers to digitalise the entire vehicle design, development, validation, manufacturing, and utilisation lifecycle."
V is also for virtual reality (VR)
"VR has seen incredible
growth in its usage and popularity in the last few years. It could get
even bigger in 2023 as the technology shifts from entertainment- and
gaming-focused into the business spheres, helping enterprises to run
their businesses more efficiently and boosting productivity. VR can no
longer afford to be considered as something merely used for fun and
games," said Muzhaffa Kamal, CEO and Co-founder of Luucid, which
specialises in augmented reality (AR) and VR software and applications.
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| Source: Luucid. Muzhaffa. |
"The challenge for VR to really take off is in its accessibility and user friendliness. If there is greater access to good quality headsets and the entire experiential experience is simplified, there is no reason why VR will not grow even further."
Tony Wang, Co-Founder & CRO, Agora sees VR as a way to enhance video-based collaboration. "Video meetings are often a flat experience devoid of the spatial audio cues that help our minds comprehend who is talking, when, and to whom; as a result, we become less productive. VR and spatial audio can reduce the perceived gap in traditional video meetings in which some attendees are in person and some are remote," he added.
W is for Web 3
According to McKinsey, Web 3 includes platforms and applications that result in a decentralised Internet with open standards and protocols while protecting digital ownership and enabling new business models. The consultancy sees Web 3 as a key trend in its trends outlook for 2022, and scores it as a 1 on adoption, with 0 meaning no adoption, and 5 meaning the trend has gone mainstream.
"Web 3 will be the main theme for the next 10 years, just like Web 2 was for the past 10-12 years. The key difference is that it will combine AI, ML, VR, XR and Blockchain (decentralisation) to give users a more immersive experience and ownable contents/assets," said Ben Chan, Chairman, WOLOT Foundation as well as Director and co-founder, UKISS Technology.
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| Source: WOLOT Foundation. Chan. |
"Future generations of Web 3 users will expect this and business should start to get ready for this. E.g., many big brands are experimenting in the metaverse (sandbox) to try to create a new experience for users. Education is key, so businesses should start learning and experimenting with Web 3 to gain an advantage over their peers."
Chan said 2023 will see a bear market for Web 3 players. Centralised finance (CEFI) players, especially centralised crypto exchanges (CEX), will be reduced to a few major players, he said, whereas decentralised finance (DEFI) "will see bigger adoption, but with a more realistic yield expectation."
"Many real Web 3 project and Web 3 infrastructure builders like UKISS Technology are still building for better Web 3 adoption. When the bull market returns, I expect these will benefit hugely and become the next unicorns of Web 3," he predicted.
Mainstream Web 3 use cases, powered by a new wave of tools that make adoption easier and more convenient for the masses, Chan said, will include gaming and NFTs with utilities. He sees these use cases as natural entry points for non-crypto users into the Web 3 world.
"Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) may see the first real-world international use case, led by China and their trading partners," Chan added.
"Self-custody wallets that is easy and safe to use for normal users will start to emerge, helping to make mass adoption of Web 3 a reality. Singapore’s own UKISS Technology is spearheading this area of breakthrough."
In bear markets, investments fall. Bull markets see increased investments.
Olivier van Grembergen, Regional VP, APAC, Aiven, said that open source movement will receive a boost through Web 3 initiatives. Today’s interconnected economies are giving rise to increasing number of cross-border projects and employment opportunities, which will in turn engender the rise of the open
source community. These communities, or user groups, will increase the ability for developers to learn new skills like additional programming and coding languages, allowing them to reskill themselves and, in turn, give back to the open source community.
"This is a reflection of the ongoing Web 3 movement, where information is decentralised and not controlled by any one corporation or government but instead, by the wider participants in that community. It is in the community’s best interest to help other members upskill, reskill, learn, and grow so that they too can contribute to the ongoing refinement of information - in this case, open source.
"Successful developers will be the ones that truly leverage the community in a 3 era. This will also give rise to a new breed of coding specialists who are proficient in multiple coding languages and product development. This will help raise their prospects in the job market, as their expertise in product development remains a highly desirable skill set. These specialists equipped with open source skills will also be able to better contribute to the ongoing innovation and transformation efforts of their organisations."
See also $ is for digital money.
X is for eXperiences
According to the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV), making smart bets that can drive sustainable growth starts with understanding what consumers want. "For example, customers want their shopping and purchasing experiences to flow seamlessly between physical and digital spaces. Hybrid shopping, where people use both digital and physical channels, is now the fastest growing shopping method, and it’s the primary shopping method for more than one in four (27%) global consumers, according to IBV research. That number jumps to 37% for Gen Z and 38% for Millennials—and will likely continue to rise," said the authors of an IBV report on 2023 trends.
IBV's recommendations for increasing brand demand include:
- Deploying AI and automation to help target customers that will bring in the best returns. drive efficiency and deliver rapid, data-driven insights at scale.
- Identifying and orchestrating an immersive, connected, and secure customer experience.
- Enabling customers to have more control over their data with a data strategy that embraces security,
privacy, and recovery. IBV also suggests allowing customers to opt out of sharing their personal information.
On the back end, companies have begun to leverage their own internal or customer data and also data
from the community and ecosystem for a multiplier effect, said Aiven's Olivier van Grembergen, Regional VP, APAC. "The need to be able to seamlessly connect these multiple data sources will be key if organisations aim to translate the data they possess into valuable insights for growth," he noted.
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| Source: Yellow.ai. Khan. |
"Voice, being the most natural form of communication, being intuitive and fast, has the potential to deepen brand-to-customer engagements, providing instant and omnipresent brand experience, and
automating sales, engagement and support - all of which are of high priority for businesses," he elaborated.
"Voice AI is a rapidly emerging technology that enables machines to understand and respond to human speech. Voice AI systems are built on a foundation of speech recognition, natural language processing, and machine learning algorithms. By leveraging these technologies, voice AI systems can provide various benefits for businesses, including the ability to automate tasks, improve customer service, and increase efficiency. This technology is also gaining popularity among customers because it allows them to engage with products more intuitively."
Healthcare
"Healthcare organisations’ target audience members are not just patients, but also consumers. As the healthcare business model becomes more consumer-orientated, patients increasingly take control of their health journeys. Allowing patients to correspond with medical professionals via their preferred channel—phone, SMS messaging, online chat, or email—will become critical to the success of healthcare organisations," said Tony Wang, Co-Founder & CRO, Agora.
"The telehealth industry is quickly becoming a quarter-trillion-dollar sector. Some of the revenue that traditionally came from an acute facility is now moving toward healthcare in the home. Enabling high-quality video, audio and messaging for any device or platform will be critical to the success of any remote consultation service."
Public sector
Khan noted: "As the world becomes more connected, citizens are increasingly expectant of being able to engage with their governments online without much delay, with the growth of digital-native populations and the proliferation of mobile devices driving the trend. In order to meet these rising expectations, dynamic AI agents are increasingly being adopted by governments around the world."Dynamic AI agents are Yellow.ai's term for smarter chatbots which can successfully decode relatively complex conversations that the average chatbot cannot. Such conversations could involve multiple commands in a single utterance or conversations about several topics. "These agents have the ability to gather information from potential clients and provide valuable insights on business leads while removing the need to invest in physical advertising, travel for face-to-face meetings and make cold calls," Khan said.
Retail
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| Source: Impact.com. Gross. |
"Today’s consumers actively seek - and are increasingly reliant on - recommendations from online advocates they trust, and with whom they share an emotional connection. Proof of point is the success of TikTok Shop which many big tech platforms like YouTube are trying to mimic," said Impact.com's Antoine Gross, GM, Southeast Asia & India.
"TikTok Shop redefined the customer journey through 'shoppertainment', marrying video with personalised content that appeals to consumers’ interest– from product discovery led by influencers they trust to purchase and repurchase moments driven by firsthand testimonials."
Gross added that advances in live streaming have "carved a path for more personal viewer experiences", which has been particularly captivating for Millennials and Gen Z. "These provide a sense of belongingness among likeminded consumers and allow them to personally interact with live streamers, which are light on hard-sell advertising and tap into 'see-now-buy-now' moments," he said.
"Not least because of the ability for more tailored promotions and the ease with which brand guidelines can be factored into a stream setup, we expect to see marketing investments in livestreamer collaborations increase in 2023. As such, there is a huge merit in banking on the power of engaging livestreaming content – be it for big brands or SMEs that are seeking to play the e-commerce
game in the long run."
"Conversational commerce is becoming an integral part of online sales strategies for brands, as the rapid shift towards a digital-first world has conditioned customers to expect on-demand services. As a result, customers tend to react positively to brands that provide such services. Recent research has shown that customers from all age groups prefer the assistance of a chatbot to make an online purchase. Also, 65% of customers feel comfortable with the self-serve feature of conversational commerce that allows them to self-resolve issues with the help of conversational AI."
George Pepes, APAC Vertical Solutions Lead, Healthcare and Retail, Zebra Technologies, provided perspectives for both customer experience and employee experience. "Heightened shopper expectations for a seamless experience across digital and physical experiences brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic are here to stay. Previously siloed experiences around how consumers browse, learn, acquire and consume products are now expected to be seamless and interchangeable," he said.
"With consumers overwhelmingly expecting the store experience to be fast and efficient, this presents an opportunity for retailers to invest in technologies that improve the jobs for their front-line workers and profitability while improving the customer experience."
Pepes said customer experience trends in the retail sector to look for in 2023 include: smart checkout, ship-to- home, and upgraded employee tools. "While smart checkouts may not be mainstream yet in 2023, contactless payment and self-checkouts are two other highly desirable options. Another less complex but high-value area to lean into 2023 is a rock-solid ship-to-home option. Though consumers desire an easy way for currently unavailable products to be shipped to their house later, retailers often do not offer such options to cater to consumer needs," he explained.
"Lastly, a key trend identified by Zebra Technologies’ 15th Annual Global Shopper Study is that customers often have better tools and data than retail associates do. A high-ROI way to solve this in 2023 could be company-provided mobile devices for front-line workers that allow them to check inventory, prices, loyalty options, answering customer questions, executing on out-of-stock options (such as ship to home), as well as operational tasks such as shelf maintenance and training," he added.
The same study found that retail associates value being equipped with technology, with 74% surveyed agreeing that they feel valued and view their employer more positively when equipped with the right technologies to perform their duties, Pepes disclosed. "This is an important realisation especially with many retailers struggling to hire and retain workers in today’s competitive hiring market," Pepes said.
"Human-centred automation could be the solution to this labour crunch. Allowing bots and software to take over the repetitive and tedious parts of a job will free up retail associates’ time to engage in higher-value work such as assisting shoppers. By optimising workforce management, retailers can accurately forecast workforce needs, matched with appropriate skills and tenure to optimise their retail associates’ schedules and apply easy mechanisms for time off and shift swaps. Streamlining communication task management can also improve overall efficiency by optimising and simplifying task execution."
Pepes forecast that in 2023, retailers can improve their employee experience by: prescribing the right devices for the right employees, workforce analytics and smart tasking, and smart robots. "Nearly eight-in-10 retailers surveyed in Zebra’s 15th Annual Global Shopper Study said that enabling employees with the latest technology helped them serve shoppers better. Top tech requests from front-line workers include handheld barcode scanners, handheld mobile computers, mobile POS devices, company-provided smartphones, and headset or push-to-talk communication devices," he elaborated.
"Next, workforce analytics and smart tasking can lower the absolute number of front-line workers needed while improving their jobs by optimising scheduling, compliance, recruiting, training, performance management and payroll. Lastly, the adoption of smart robots will benefit both employees and employers in terms of potentially greater reliability at lower cost, increased safety, and higher productivity."
POS stands for point of sale.
Y is for marketing to you
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| Source: INCA. Altounian. |
"We should continue to witness brands positioning content creation and influencer programmes at the core of their planning to have a longer-term and more strategic view. With that comes a need to build a curated, safe, diverse pool of talent while driving efficiencies in the selection, contracting, and handling volumes of content via automation and technology," said Arthur Altounian, VP, Client Strategy & Growth for Asia Pacific, INCA.
"Livestreaming and content-led commerce in SEA will continue to grow in 2023 as it is an effective method for brands to create a genuine connection with the customer while experimenting with different ways to integrate new product offerings and promotions within a show or piece of content."
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| Source: Finecast. Lowes. |
"2023 will be the year when addressable TV moves from a test-and-learn environment to being a core part of many marketers’ strategies in Asia. The rapid growth of non-linear continues to thrive with endorsement from global players like Netflix and Disney shifting into ad-funded models – enabling and endorsing the broader growth of (the advertising) industry. There is also no doubt that marketers want to invest in mediums that provide both a deeper understanding of their audience and proven environments that garner more consumer attention," Alexandra Lowes, VP, Client Engagement and Growth, APAC, Finecast said.
Addressable TV allows different advertisements to be shown to different households while they are watching the same programme.
Z is for zoomers, those in Gen Z
"Gen Z, or Zoomers, are those born between 1997 and 2010, with the oldest members now 23 years
old, and are expected to make up about 27% of the global workforce by 2025. They are the first truly
digital generation and cannot remember a time without the Internet," said Pierre-Jean Châlon, Head of Hybrid Work Solutions and Peripherals, APJ, HP.
"With Gen Z, business leaders must adjust their expectations; what worked for the Millennials, much
less Boomers, isn’t going to work with Zoomers. Practices relating to organisational culture, employee
training and retention must be adjusted to accommodate the needs and demands of this group, while
still ensuring that workers from differing generations are taken care of.
"Employers can build a stronger foundation for this new generation of employees by putting in the
effort to better understand their workplace personas, or how they prefer to work, as well as their
opinions and reactions towards work policies being considered. Furthermore, the insight can be used
to better inform the technology and real estate investments made to help them do their jobs better.
Now more than ever, leaders need to pay more attention to the voices of their employees, whether
Gen Z or otherwise, especially when it comes to both retaining and attracting talent."
Explore tech predictions
U to Z
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