Author: Yashveer Ramparsad
Publish Date: 05/01/2021
2021 - Let's get this year started, shall we..
2020 perhaps will go down as a year that everyone would like to forget , a year of loss, a year of separation, a year of economic distress to millions. But much can be said about us humans and will to thrive under pressure. Through all that loss there have been many silver linings, people believed in themselves to push themselves out of their comfort zones and took it upon themselves to improve their situations, the human spirit grew on many levels, people gained a new appreciation for the outdoors and what they actually have. A new norm of work from home, a new drive for innovation and technology kicked off. In this pandemic then, there has been our greatest desire to move forward. So what's next, what does 2021 hold?
A look forward?
The largest way of life change is the work from home strategy that many companies have adopted. I do not see that changing in the future, whilst there are services that had to return back to the norm (I'm looking at you doctors and lawyers in particular), the by and large technology community have either the full time work from home or rotation strategy, this might not change much looking forward.
A larger reliance on Cloud services.
With the work force at home, the reliance on the necessary tools to
perform the daily duties will have to now transition to Cloud services
such as AWS, Google or Azure. These scalable readily available services
can seamlessly deploy applications that the workforce require on demand.
This trend of cloud infrastructure will most likely increase over this
year.
Digitization
Moving
toward a more digital way of performing tasks. We watched this change
whilst we all were on lock down. Restaurant menus were digitized,
receipts at tills were digitized, even mall entrance points went from
push to receive a ticket to wave your hand to achieve the same. This
trend will continue to grow as people find more and more ways to avoid
the physical touch element for tasks that really do not require it.
Crypto advancements
One
cannot now, not avoid Cryto technology as a means to drive innovation
and digitization. With the 3rd quarter of the year seeing an increase in
the financial worlds interest into the technology (from an investment
point of view), this has inevitably spurred movement into more white
papers on the uses of the technology. There have been many forks (splits
from main chain) and each fork has targeted something new. Ethereum for
example is slated to streamline payments, digital asset management and
peer to peer trades.
One
of the most interesting chains to me is the centralized client health
profile. Think of it as never having to use a manual client card, go to a
doctor in another region and they have your information in a flash, add
to it and send it on its way. It has the potential to change the manner
in which records are stored and distributed.
Fitness
Apple
at their year end event introduced Apple Fitness+, a way to take your
trainers with you wherever you go. This might not seem like much, but
with so much of this year in disarray leaving a fair amount of people
without a manner to stay fit, fitness was the next area to receive the
online and virtual treatment. It honestly is a contender to replace
those expensive gym fees right in the Corona free haven called home. I
don't think it target those hardcore gym fanatics, but it certainly will
target the group that unfortunately for what ever reason are unable to
make the trip to gym.
AR/VR
Areas
that have been of particular interest to me for a long while are these
2. An immersive experience that can bring the world to life in a
different way. Visualizing designs and interacting with them.
Interactive science presentations for students. NASA currently uses
these technologies to assist in training exercises. Certainly think this
area is going to grow in 2021.
Whatever
the advancements will be, it is going to be another exciting year for
us all and simply cannot wait to get started on new projects that will
help so many people out there. Till next time, this is Yashveer signing
off.