What's Hot in 2023?🔥 Top 8 Technology Trends You Should Know

2023 is here, and it’s crucial to be prepared not only for all possible challenges but also for the opportunities that companies might create if they are well aware of the latest tech trends. A great way of doing so is exploring the landscape of the technologies to invest in 2023.

This article covers 8 technologies to invest in right now, which are good to know for adaptive planning and building comprehensive digital strategies.

The Emerging Technologies in 2023

When businesses face challenges and crises, they heavily rely on technologies and accelerate their adoption on all levels to survive and ensure their adaptability, efficiency, and competitiveness.

Despite all the issues and black swans of 2022, like post-pandemic adaptation, Russia’s war against Ukraine, the energy crisis, and rising inflation, IT spending worldwide are projected to total 4.6 trillion U.S. dollars in 2023, an increase of 5.1% since 2022, according to Gartner’s forecast. It’s a golden opportunity for tech companies with years of experience and domain expertise to become reliable partners for businesses worldwide and help them deal with concerns and market challenges successfully.

So, what are the new upcoming technologies to invest in right now? In short, expenses to maintain existing on-premises software will last, but the new ones continue to shift to cloud services. Companies will require AI power more, focusing on AI trust, risk, and security management (AI TriSM) framework adoption to deal with critical AI-related issues.

Growing demand for reaching net-zero emissions will drive the transition to sustainable business and technologies in 2023 and beyond. Cybersecurity and data protection will concern businesses more following the increase of worldwide threats, requiring innovative cybersecurity practices and forcing investments.

Let’s have a look at these technologies in more detail.

1. Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions have already been adopted across a wide range of industries and have become a competitive advantage and a crucial part of boosting business efficiency. The global AI solutions market is thriving and expected to rise over the coming years, reaching around 126 billion U.S. dollars by 2025, according to Statista.

Among the AI software, hardware, and services solutions categories, the share of the last two will expand faster, with expected AI services compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22%, whereas the CAGR for AI hardware will be 20.5%. In the AI software category, AI platforms and application development are the leading segments showing a stable trend until 2025.

AI adoption statistics

Here are the key industries willing to adopt AI in 2023:

• High tech and telecom – product/service development and service operations.
• Financial services industry – risk and service operation management.
• Healthcare and pharma – product/service development.
• Business, legal, and professional services – marketing and sales, service operation.
• Automotive and Assembly – manufacturing, marketing, and sales.
• Customer goods and retail – marketing, sales, supply chain management, manufacturing functions.

Services operations optimization has remained the most common use case of AI for most industries for years.

Artificial Intelligence is a leading emerging technology with various solutions and services across sectors. Among the best new technologies to invest in, it will continue impacting the IT market, global economy, and society even more intensely based on market forecasts.

2. Cybersecurity Management and AI TriSM

Scaling and evolving security threats are vital points with which the tech world has struggled for years, and, unfortunately, it’s an unfolding trend. Not only mitigation but prevention of cybersecurity risks, malicious attacks, and other vulnerabilities is the main task for all companies nowadays.

Organizations prioritizing that could expect additional annual revenue growth. Still, those who don’t work on it will lose customers as digital trust becomes a significantly important decision factor for B2C and B2B clients. They expect total customer data protection, effective cybersecurity measures, trustworthy AI-powered products and services, and companies' transparency in AI and data usage policies.

According to McKinsey’s report, among the executives responsible for risk and technology, most companies still don’t have comprehensive digital risk mitigation strategies and have a lot to work on.

Companies have to react and advance their cybersecurity strategies to become more protected. That’s why the global cybersecurity market is expected to rise from 155.83 billion U.S. dollars in 2022 to 376.32 billion U.S. dollars by 2029, having a CAGR of 13.4%.

AI is one of the emerging technologies in 2023 that the leading cybersecurity market players rely on in developing their solutions. But the level of AI-related risks, such as transparency, interpretability, and explainability, remains high, so it drives AI trust, risk, and security management (AI TriSM) adoption.

AI TRiSM

AI TRiSM is a framework supporting AI model governance, fairness, trustworthiness, efficiency, reliability, robustness, and privacy. It includes a set of solutions, techniques, and processes for model interpretability and explainability, privacy, model operations, and hostile attack resistance for its customers and the enterprise.

What does it take to adopt this emerging trend? Implementation of the AI TRiSM in the project requires a cross-functional team including not just AI engineers but also legal, compliance, security, and data analytics professionals. Still, it is worth it, bringing a 50% boost to the AI models results in terms of adoption, business goals, and user acceptance according to Gartner.

Investment in cybersecurity solutions and other solutions helping to mitigate digital risks is a wise decision for organizations that want to stay competitive in the market and provide high-quality products and services to their customers in 2023 and beyond.

3. Superapps

Superapps are a technology becoming essential to millions of people’s daily lives worldwide. The global superapps market will rise rapidly, with more than 50% of the worldwide population daily active users of even multiple superapps by 2027, as Gartner predicts, having a CAGR of 23.8% through 2028.

Superapp is a platform with single sign-in and access to the mini-apps ecosystem. Each mini-app has its unique function and can be added or removed by the end user from the main interface, creating a personalized user experience. The current functions within apps could vary from shopping, instant messaging, booking venues, tickets, and ordering food or taxi to mobile banking, medical services, etc. In the future, it might amplify to the more advanced options like chatbots, the Internet of Things (IoT), or even metaverse solutions.

To be able to build a handy superapp, it’s crucial to keep the balance between functional diversity and consistency, helping a wide range of end users with different user scenarios to fulfill their needs seamlessly and delightedly.

The market for super apps is geographically more developed in the East, represented by tech giants such as WeChat, Alipay and smaller companies like Grab, Go-Jek, Line, etc. As for the West, the superapps market is less developed, with apps having more limited functions; where Snapchat is the leader of superapps, and Facebook and WhatsApp are also widened their functions to become competitive in the market.

This is the evidence that superapps market is growing and will gain even more investment and become one of the top upcoming technologies to invest in, bringing more value and the best “all-in-one experience” for the end users.

4. Datafication

Data is everywhere. Each of us generates a vast amount of data daily that power companies’ decision-making process. That’s why we are moving towards an even more datafication-focused future.

So, what is datafication?

Datafication is a process of turning previously unmonitored human daily basic activities, currently digitalized, into data that could be appropriately collected, stored, and transformed by organizations into valuable insights and effective data-driven decisions.

Companies that want to progress fast along the way of becoming actual data-driven units within the next few years must work on enhancing the following capabilities:

• Comprehensive data strategy prioritizing data transformational use cases and vetted data experts;
• Cloud-based infrastructure, architectures with real-time analytics and more flexible data store support, versatile database/data-model toolset for unstructured data querying support;
• More powerful edge-computing devices (for example, IoT sensors), advanced-connectivity infrastructures (like 5G), in-memory computing for faster and more effective computations for intensive analytics work;
• Implementation of standard data models and using data-sharing platforms to make data collaboration and exchange easier inside and outside organizations;
• They are keeping an eye on data security throughout the organization and raising customer awareness about their data-protection rights to keep digital trust.

Data-driven approaches aren’t new emerging technologies, but they ensure continuous performance improvement, and create differentiated customer and employee experiences.

All in all, it helps companies be innovative, flexible, and well-prepared for rising market challenges.

5. Quantum computing investments

Quantum computing is a disruptive technology that has entered the market lately, and it’s expected to grow from 712.2 million U.S. dollars in 2022 to 4,758.0 million U.S. dollars by 2029, with a CAGR of 31.2% within the forecast period. Despite the vast potential and promising deliverables, it still has some limitations in the wide adoption.

The two main limitations are:

1. Undefined “magic number” of quantum volume – the measure of the necessary combined quantity and reliability of the quantum bits (qubits) that drive a quantum computer’s computing capacity and make them useful and effective for solving real-world problems.
2. Real-time quantum error correction – qubits are rather delicate and unstable. They could break down or decohere, creating a high volume of errors that can quickly overwhelm the quantum computer’s system before it produces reliable results.

Organizations that will try to find handy and scalable solutions to overcome these two challenges can help the future of quantum computing.

Another direction companies are working on is the implementation of current quantum computing capabilities in real projects around a wide range of fields:

• Cybersecurity and risk assessment – quantum cyber vulnerability scanning and risk assessment;
• Cryptography – quantum-safe cryptography protocols;
• Air and maritime cargo logistics – implementation of quantum computing algorithms into some optimization applications;
• Quantum chemistry and materials science – the simulation and modeling of molecular, atomic, and subatomic systems;
• Sensors’ creation – highly responsive and accurate quantum sensors have the potential to replace existing sensors used in monitoring applications in many domains, such as oil, gas, mineral deposits industries, the construction industry, weather forecasting, and seismology.

Where is quantum computing already used?

The quantum computing market will enhance over the next few years due to the deep interest and investment from the top corporations and governments in the United States, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, China, India, Japan, etc. For instance, the US government wants to build a comprehensive ecosystem to accelerate quantum applications discovery, grow and educate a quantum workforce, develop critical infrastructure, and standardize cutting-edge R&D.

6. DevSecOps

DevSecOps is a game-changing practice that significantly transforms cyber and risk management in project development, enabling the delivery of secure systems at pace. Global DevSecOps market size was 2.59 billion U.S. dollars in 2021 and is expected to expand to 23.16 billion U.S. dollars by 2029, having a CAGR of 31.50% during the forecast period of 2022-2029.

DevSecOps service integrates security tools and processes within the DevOps pipeline. It provides automation of core security tasks by adding security control from the early stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). It also allows constant monitoring and remediation of security defects across the application lifecycle.

Key DevSecOps benefits

• Continuous security – DevSecOps applies the ‘secure by design principle by using the automated security code review and application security testing;
• Increased efficiency and product quality – security issues are detected and resolved within development phases, which increases the speed of delivery and augments quality;
• Enhanced compliance – the systems of security, audition, monitoring, and notification are automated and continuously monitored, which facilitates enhanced compliance;
• Increased collaboration – thanks to the integration of development, security, and operations, DevSecOps builds a culture of openness and transparency from the early stage of development.

DevSecOps is here to stay and become an essential part of each tech company's responsible and effective project delivery. It brings evolution to the software development methodology, improving SDLC and collaboration between development, security, and operations teams, assuring a high level of project automation, risk management, and security. To gain these outcomes, companies will invest in fast DevSecOps adoption within the next few years to fit the new market standard.

7. Sustainable Tech

According to Gartner's recent survey of CEOs and senior executives, environmental sustainability appears among the top 10 strategic business priorities for them, and it’s a significant shift from 20th place in 2015 to 8th in 2022. Also, senior executives consider sustainability a competitive differentiator with the same level of importance as brand trust. Regarding the investment, sustainability of the product is in the 3rd place, after the functional performance and general quality for the 80% of CEOs seeking green technologies to invest in as a new opportunity to improve products within 2022 and 2023.

Gartner’s top manager’s research highlights that business sustainability is a must for getting investment and achieving success now, and it will be even more critical in the future. To follow this growing trend, companies must use technologies and service providers that help them enable sustainable business.

How to invest in green technologies and make a profit?

Cloud sustainability, advanced grid management, and carbon footprint measurement are the three emerging environmental sustainability technologies that will get wide adoption within the next three years, giving more opportunities to companies.

Cloud platforms AWS sustainability, Azure, and Google Cloud are essential drivers of sustainable transformation. They provide tools enabling users to build and implement solutions helping their organizations to meet their sustainability goals.

8. Industry Cloud Platforms

Speaking of cloud services, they bring even more capabilities and innovative transformations to the vertical industries, such as healthcare, automotive, retail, logistics, media, etc., as part of the industry cloud platforms.

What is an industry cloud platform?

Those platforms combine the best technical and business solutions from cloud service providers, software vendors, and integrators to help organizations address their key industry-specific challenges gaining competitive advantage and differentiation.

Cloud services bring even more capabilities and innovative transformations to vertical industries, such as healthcare, automotive, retail, finance, logistics, media, energy, etc. Azure, AWS, and Google.

For example, AWS financial services help banking, payments, and capital markets implement secure, resilient global cloud infrastructures, aligning with financial market regulations and best practices. Industry leaders like Barclays, Coinbase, Nasdaq, Robinhood, Stripe, and DBS Bank run their financial services using AWS.

The main benefits of leveraging an industry cloud platform:

• Mature tech solutions providers with deep domain expertise and fast cross-industry innovations adoption;
• Industry-relevant data fabrics architecture;
• A modular approach with composable tooling and often preconfigured capabilities;
• Modernization of outdated processes and automation of manual tasks.

The level of industry cloud implementation still varies within the market. However, it’s an evolving process thanks to easy access to handy industry-focused solutions helping quickly address niche challenges and offer business more capabilities and value.

Crunch predictions for 2023

The technological landscape is changing drastically; that’s the only thing we know for sure. Technologies and tools are riding the hype wave for a couple of years, and others are only gaining momentum. Working on various software development projects, we have gained expertise in implementing the most disruptive technologies like AI, ML, security, data science, and cloud computing.

Crunch experts always help clients to navigate changes and choose the most suitable and reliable tech solutions. As for 2023, we predict a dramatic shift to more robust cybersecurity policies and massive cloud adoption. Even though the cloud has already become a buzzword, its power in the shape of industry clouds and substantial modernization sources will only grow. Cybersecurity is another priority for organizations worldwide to protect their assets from threat actors and scale infrastructures safely.

These aren’t the only technology trends we’ll expect to come in 2023, but our team will gladly assist you with implementation in your projects.

Final thoughts

The good news is that the technology market keeps growing no matter what challenges we face, moving hand in hand with businesses to effectively address their urgent needs and long-term goals. An overview of eight new technologies to invest in in 2023 will give you some ideas on how to use them to enhance your business strategy and become more resistant.