Tech Trends 2024: What Is Really Going to Matter in the Coming Year

The series of shocks, including the pandemic and the wars in Ukraine and Israel, has had profound implications for the IT industry. They have shrouded the world in instability and driven pandemic-caused trends. Uncertainty brings multiple risks, opportunities, or both because executives are expected to modernize their organizations while building resilience against existing and potential risks.

Below, we will discuss our vision of the future and the most important tech trends for 2024. Additionally, we will briefly summarize their potential for you to be an efficient business leader and thrive in stormy times.

Key business areas and tech industry trends worth investing in 2024 and beyond

Disruptions have changed the priorities in digital solution development but have never stopped technology from advancing. Our recent experience and business insights gained from global clients prove that in 2024, organizations should focus their efforts on the following areas:

• Net-zero and environmental sustainability
• Security and collaboration in a hybrid working environment
• Business resilience in uncertain times
• Effective management of the increasing data amounts
• Immersive customer experience

Business owners and IT leaders can use the following list of the latest tech trends to prioritize and develop a technology roadmap aligned with their business strategies. So, what should you put at the top of your agenda next year?

Top 5 technology trends of the upcoming year

1. Sustainable tech solutions

We should admit that historically, IT leaders focused exclusively on utility and price. However, these days, organizations are encouraged to consider environmental aspects of business functions and build corporate sustainability. So, prepare for a push toward more eco-friendly tools in 2024 centered around tracking and reducing CO2 emissions.

New energy solutions:

Data centers hosting big servers contribute to millions of tons of pollution from the energy consumed. So, businesses should either optimize their servers or move to energy-efficient data centers or clouds, thus reducing consumption and emissions. Notably, cooling infrastructure optimization of data centers helped Fujitsu company reduce energy consumption by 48 percent. So, energy efficiency is a priority not only in terms of sustainability but also in terms of cost—especially considering that energy bills have skyrocketed.

Emission tracking software:

You can achieve exceptional results in reducing your carbon footprint through emission management and reporting tools. Such solutions can help you improve transparency for the public, clients, and stakeholders, cut bills, and better understand your energy consumption. Once you know how much CO2 your company emits, you can launch initiatives to reduce that amount.

Furthermore, driven by AI, this software can analyze the collected data to deliver actionable insights for improved decision-making. Traceability, AI, and analytics allow you to explore new markets and opportunities for sustainable growth.

2. Security, trust, and privacy

More organizations are realizing the the importance of cybersecurity, driving it to be one of the leading tech trends in 2024. This notion encouraged businesses to spend about $172 billion on cybersecurity in 2022, with a constant currency growth of 12.2%. The market will reach $267.3 billion in 2026, with a stable CAGR of 11.0% (2022 to 2026). So, what to expect here? Will this year see a move toward consolidation in the cybersecurity space?

Building trust with blockchain:

Blockchain continued to gain traction in 2023 as a trust-building technology. It has created a new platform for business relationships that combines ease of use, trustworthiness, and high security. Additionally, it provides a new basis of trust for transactions.

Besides faster transaction verification, traceability, reliability, and excellent capability of resisting fraud and cyberattacks, blockchain offers new business ideas and opportunities. For example, Shell launched a blockchain-based initiative to reinvent energy value chains and ensure sustainable energy enters its grid.

AI cybersecurity:

AI and ML bring a more proactive and preventive data and infrastructure protection approach. AI algorithms can more effectively discover anomalies and early signs of intrusion or malware attacks than most modern technologies. The programs learn from historical and real-time threat data, allowing cybersecurity professionals to identify and block attacks much earlier. This is the number one reason to incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning into your infrastructure and support this promising tech trend in 2024.

Zero trust approach:

Based on the idea of never trusting and consistently verifying, this approach uniquely addresses the challenges of securing remote workers, hybrid cloud environments, and ransomware threats. Instead of assuming every attempt to access resources is safe, the zero-trust framework takes breach and checks each request regardless of where it originates. With this security approach, each access to your data will undergo strict identity verification, preventing the most common attacks responsible for 83 percent of breaches.

3. The future of the internet and digital experiences

We see two main ideas around the next level of the internet—decentralization and immersion that will add new dimensions to user interactions and digital experiences, opening new business opportunities.

Metaverse:

We see two main ideas around the next level of the internet—decentralization and immersion that will add new dimensions to user interactions and digital experiences, opening new business opportunities.

The concept of the immersive virtual world has quickly extended beyond mere entertainment industry trends. The metaverse can generate $5 trillion in value by 2030, and the following years will define the direction of its development for the next decade.

Big companies have been spending big money here. Brands like Nike, Samsung, Coca-Cola, and Louis Vuitton are already integrating the metaverse into their marketing strategies and increasing their social presence. Meanwhile, another area to pay attention to is the creation of immersive virtual work environments, like the ones Microsoft and Nvidia are developing for collaborating on digital products. Companies are also creating replicas of real-world offices to conduct training and onboarding virtually, and this new tech trend will accelerate next year.

Web 3.0:

The next generation of the internet will use AI, blockchain, and big data to provide decentralized infrastructure with increased security and privacy and more interactive user experiences. Web 3.0 technologies offer a more personalized web, improved data searchability, and elimination of third parties to let organizations enhance transparency and trust with their customers. While it's still in its initial stages, businesses can test the waters by using existing solutions like smart contracts and blockchain-based software.

SuperApps:

We consider superapps the next pivot in app design and development. Gartner predicts that over 50 percent of the world's population will actively use superapps by 2027. A superapp is an all-in-one application that can replace all business apps, address multiple aspects, and deliver smooth collaboration, workflow, and communication. Over time, they can advance to support chatbots, IoT technologies, and the metaverse.

4. Hyperconnectivity and intelligence

Following 2021 tech trends, we will see further development of global standards in 2024 for more sophisticated machine-to-machine interactions to ensure smooth communication between smart tools.

IoT as a foundational technology for further technology advancements—ambient intelligence:

The impact of IoT on businesses will strengthen in 2024. This can be seen in the emergence of ambient intelligence technology that combines IoT, edge computing, AI, and human-computer interaction. It's set to grow at an impressive 33 percent CAGR through 2028.

IoT is interconnected devices and sensors that form a foundation for ambient computing and are responsible for how these devices interact with users. Ambient computing can enhance a business function, remove redundant operations, and introduce smart technology to your business environment. As the number of intelligent IoT products continues to rise, organizations stand to be more empowered to elevate value creation to new heights.

5G&6G:

We can expect substantial refinement of existing 5G networks and satellite-based communications and the development of 6G services. This promises a significant leap in connectivity across longer distances, added security, and a better transmission rate, with faster downloads and latency reduced to nearly zero. Far greater network availability will allow you to create new services and business models, build more comprehensive IoT ecosystems, and ensure frictionless remote office connectivity.

Quantum computing (as a Service):

This next-generation computing offers advanced methods of data processing and storage. Such computers can operate a million times faster than the most powerful processors. Tech giants like Microsoft, AWS, and Google are now engaged in breaking new ground in quantum computing.

Like cloud SaaS services, quantum computing would allow enterprises to tap into QC power using APIs. For space travel, biotech, pharmaceuticals, and big data organizations, such a service could offer immense potential and boost operations to another level.

Distributed infrastructure

Edge computing:

As 5G enables larger data transfers and data-intensive technologies grow, the global data processing requirements hit record highs. Edge computing and IoT help bypass the latency of cloud services and process data closer to your location. Although it requires new IT architectures, investment in the edge ecosystem is a beneficial alternative to resource-intensive cloud services. So, it's no wonder its market share will grow from $3 billion in 2020 to $12 billion by 2028.

Push through with tech advancements in your business

The last few years have been volatile. We have endured a pandemic and now face the economic uncertainty of a looming recession. Entrepreneurs and company leaders should prepare for the following challenges and design a roadmap to adopt the most relevant tech trends in 2024 to enhance resilience and efficiency.

The key to choosing the right technology is understanding the nature of your business and the current demands of your operations. With expert guidance from a reliable tech partner like TEAM International, you can get through the transformation effortlessly and build capabilities to absorb continuous change and make it a competitive advantage.