Gartner Releases 2016 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies
Key trends such as pure immersive experiences, smart machines, and platform technology are presented.

Gartner Inc. recently released its 2016 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report, which identified three key technology trends that businesses should prioritize.

Gartner identified three key technology trends: pure immersive experiences, the era of smart machines with perceptual capabilities, and the platform revolution. Gartner stated that these trends will create new experiences with unparalleled intelligence and provide platforms that enable enterprises to connect with new business ecosystems.

The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report is the longest-running annual Gartner Hype Cycle report and provides a cross-industry perspective on the technologies and trends that business strategists, chief innovation officers, R&D professionals, entrepreneurs, global market developers, and emerging technology teams should consider when building emerging technology portfolios.

Mike J. “The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report is unique among Hype Cycles because it distills insights from more than 2,000 technologies into a concise list of must-know emerging technologies and trends, which significantly influences enterprise strategy,” said Walker, research director at Gartner. “In particular, this Hype Cycle focuses on a select few technologies that are expected to deliver a high level of competitive advantage over the next five to 10 years.”


2016 Emerging Technology Hype Cycle

"To succeed in the digital economy, enterprise architects must proactively identify emerging technologies and collaborate continuously with CIOs and business leaders," Walker said. "This will enable them to develop innovative business models that secure competitive advantage, maximize value through operational cost reduction, and overcome regulatory hurdles." He added, "This Hype Cycle report offers expert insights on key emerging trends and specific technologies that enterprises should pay attention to and monitor."

Pure immersive experience technology is expected to become increasingly human-centric, reaching a level where transparency is introduced between people, businesses, and objects. As technology evolves and interactions within the workplace, at home, and between businesses and people become more adaptive, contextual, and fluid, these relationships are likely to become more complex.

Pure immersive experiences, 4D printing, brain-computer interfaces, and more.
Smart machines, machine learning, virtual personal assistants, etc.
Platform technologies, neuromorphic hardware, quantum computing, etc.

Key technologies to watch in this space include 4D printing, brain-computer interfaces, human augmentation, volumetric displays, affective computing, connected homes, nanotube electronics, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and gesture-controlled devices.

Smart machine technology with perceptual capabilities offers radical computational power, almost infinite.Deep neural networks (DNNs) are poised to be the most disruptive technology field of the next decade, driven by massive amounts of data and unprecedented advancements in deep neural networks (DNNs).

This means that enterprises adopting smart machine technologies will be able to leverage data to adapt to new situations and solve problems they never experienced before. Gartner recommends that enterprises seeking to exert influence in this area consider technologies such as smart dust, machine learning, virtual personal assistants (VPAs), cognitive expert advisors, smart data mining, smart workspaces, conversational user interfaces, smart robots, commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), autonomous vehicles, natural language question answering, personal analytics, enterprise taxonomy and ontology management, data broker platform as a service (dbrPaaS), and contextual brokering.

Emerging technologies are revolutionizing the definition and use of platforms. The shift from technological infrastructure to ecosystem-centric platforms is laying the foundation for entirely new business models, which are poised to serve as a bridge between humans and technology.

In such a dynamic ecosystem, companies need to understand and redefine their strategies in advance to build platform-based business models. Neuromorphic hardware, quantum computing, blockchain, Internet of Things platforms, software-defined security, and software-defined anything (SDx) are key technologies that facilitate platform construction.

“These trends demonstrate that as companies embrace technology as an integral part of their employee, partner, and customer experiences, they will be able to connect their ecosystems to platforms in new and dynamic ways,” Walker said. “Similarly, as smart machine technologies evolve, they will become a vital part of the human experience and digital business ecosystem.”