2019: Recap On Tech Updates That Made Headlines

Bringing into focus the good things that came out of 2019 in the IT sector that can make you look forward to 2020 with more excitement!

By Radhika Udas On Dec 30, 2019

The phenomenon of year end blues is a real thing and psychology accounts for it. A rush of winter breeze, bunch of holidays, family visits and decoration would be contributors to lightening your mood but sometimes, the opposite happens.

Psychology reasons this with factors such as less sunlight, fear of ending the year and missing things or people that aren’t around anymore. Taking cue from this, your workplace could also be experiencing a gloom with most of your co-workers on leave and the slow pace of work affecting your productivity.

What do you do when you find yourself heading towards blues? You recall every good thing that happened in the year.

Here is all the ‘Good News’ IT sector gave us in 2019:

Big data finds Kubernetes

What most IT experts express as an extremely valuable asset in the IT sector, Big Data doesn’t disappoint. The year began with major announcements in big data analytics and growth, such as making use of big data in banking and analysis on how it would change the IT industry.

Big companies such as Google Cloud and SalesForce acquired companies for data analytics and visualisation shows the growing need for managing Big data.

Development in terms of technology indicates that the application of big data across cloud systems was joined by the use of Kubernetes. Originally designed by Google, kubernetes is an open source container- orchestration system that automates the deployment of applications. It has been of tremendous help to data engineering teams for micro services.

Stronger momentum in AI growth

Artificial Intelligence and machine learning have stolen maximum limelight in 2019. There have been so many new AI excellence centres and AI courses being set up across the globe and especially in India. Facial recognition systems, AI based monitoring tools, automation and the move on firms to AI based systems, are some of the major events that outshined in 2019.

Few examples:

The Indian police has turned to AI based facial recognition in catching criminals and finding missing children.
Uber, Ola, Swiggy have also used AI based tools to understand customer preferences and monitors rides/ delivery.
A lot of organisations have automated their regular tasks with AI such as filtering applications. There has been a lot of development in the automated vehicle industry which used machine learning and AI to gather data for response.

This only highlights AI’s deliberation at reaching a revenue of $118.6 billion by 2025 as reports predicted.

Companies investing in IoT like never before

In the words of Jared Newman- “And just like any company that blissfully ignored the Internet at the turn of the century, the ones that dismiss the Internet of Things risk getting left behind.” 2019, however, has been a year where companies have actively indulged in bringing IoT into their workspace and developing more on that base.

Microsoft announced its acquisition of Express Logic that provides real time operating system called ThreadX. They have done this with the expectation of increasing their IoT device coverage which includes highly constrained devices.

SAP launches their Leonardo IoT platform which easily combines IoT data with data from business processes. This is remarkably good for organisations that are headed towards digital transformation.

Cisco, is another high profile company that has placed trust and effort in IoT development with its plan of acquiring Sentryo to improve device visibility and security of their control systems. They also revealed that they will be moving to edge based networks in this year.

The character arc of IoT will be shaping better for the coming year with companies taking interest in it like never before.

Laws for data privacy on the way

It has been a rather difficult year for companies that store highly sensitive user data such as Facebook, Google, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc. Along with major breaches on social media, even medical and government organisations have been vulnerable to cyber attacks and loss of data.

2019 has pushed the need for a data protection bill aggressively. Indian government manages to bring a cabinet nod for the Personal Data Protection Bill which is being challenged in the parliament currently. The bill works towards the privacy of data of individuals and sets a framework on how organisations will be allowed to access their data.

Once passed, this bill would define what qualifies as a breach and action that will be taken against it. That’s fantastic news for citizens!

In conclusion…

What has proved to be a start of new developments in 2019 gives a base for 2020 to grow upon. The enthusiastic exploration of Data, AI and ML will fast track digital transformation for companies and regular lifestyles alike. The interest and investment of companies in certain technologies like IoT and automation can create a stronger connection for devices and also human beings. Lastly, with so many emerging technologies and their vast capabilities, legal framework of privacy laws will keep in check the sanctity of the society.