09/12/2020

Be in the loop about these 8 tech trends for 2021

 

It is challenging to make any assumptions about 2021, but it made one fact very clear. And that fact is that technology has influenced almost every aspect of our lives.

Predicting technology trends will help us to cope and adapt to many challenges we face. From moving to remote work to the way we communicate and connect in public places, technology can be the guiding force behind changed reality. 

No matter if you manage a software development company or you are a software developer who wants to stay up to date, or you own a startup or an organization, with a perspective to be competitive in today’s market, you should have an eye for these revolutionary technologies. 

Here is an overview of potential technological trends throughout 2021 that our colleagues from Simple Task thoroughly thought through intending to help us recover normality or make it easier for us to understand and navigate our day to day lives. 

 

 

•  AI/ML

Without a question, Artificial intelligence remains a vital theme when it comes to choosing innovations that can transform the way we live, function, and play shortly. 

How can we understand that term a little bit better?

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence able to perform tasks such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

 

The 2 best-known subfields are Machine Learning and Deep Learning.

We can describe Machine Learning as algorithms that analyze and learn from the data. They can do predictive tasks like regression and classification.

Deep Learning is a set of machine learning algorithms that use complex neural networks capable of learning from experience.

Machine Learning is a brand of AI, Deep Learning is a branch of Machine Learning and they are tight together.

From computer vision technologies that track the ability of public areas to analyze experiences discovered by touch tracing programs, self-learning algorithms, and observations that will go unnoticed by manual human research. 

The healthcare industry stands to benefit the most from advancements in AI. The ability to continually analyze different types of diseases and potential treatments could eventually lead to a cure for cancer.

From new drug discoveries to creating artificial limbs that learn from the body’s nervous system and react accordingly, AI-based healthcare technology contains the power to help people live longer and healthier lives.

Artificial Intelligence takes precision medicine to the next level and increases the accuracy and prediction of outcome for patients.

It can also make treatments more affordable and accessible to those who may not be able to receive those treatments due to cost and health insurance at this time. There are many challenges ahead for precision medicine to be perfect, but artificial intelligence can help drive us closer to those goals.

 

 

• AI Chatbot

 

 

Technology nerds and enthusiasts have always dreamed of having a conversation with artificial intelligence or AI. 

Having a bot is a legitimately new addition to most of the business’s to-do lists nowadays. Right from shopping to doing business online, these bots powered by Artificial Intelligence have drastically transformed commerce and our everyday lives.

So, what is a chatbot?

A chatbot or a conversational UI is any interface that imitates chatting with a real human. It can be as simple as a chat window on a website or a complex interaction with an AI in a smart device or even a voice-activated chatbot. Whatever the medium it is, if there is a two-way conversation, you are interacting with a chatbot.

Chatbot technology is great because it can replace hundreds of customer service resources by redirecting customers to the proper destination. Not only that, but customers can directly ask their queries or easily search for products that ultimately leave you with a happy customer.

How much this trend involved, we can say from our personal experience. We worked on a project where we developed an AI-powered chatbot platform, which can automate your support and customer engagement.

 This chatbot immediately answers most frequent questions, informs 24/7 your employees, assist your HR experts, and boosts your performance. Not only that, but it reduces your support cost and provides an interactive, fun, and personalized experience for employees. It goes even further in assisting. This chatbot rides along with the Web visitor during their online journey and gives the visitor access to information that assists in making an informed decision and purchase.

If you still haven’t thought about this option for your business, maybe it is the right moment to start thinking about it, because Chatbot technology is evolving more & more to deliver what’s best for users. 

 

 

• Blockchain & Bitcoin

   

  

  Source: www.unsplash.com

   

Although Cryptocurrencies are not the latest web development technology, the usage of them became significantly active within the past decade and major payment systems decided to accept Bitcoins and other currencies.

What should we expect in 2021? 

In 2020 the number of blockchain wallet users reached 60 million.

It is clear for many, that blockchain currency trading could not be ignored by the official authorities. Since Blockchain technology requires hardware and software support, legal regulation, and infrastructure for trading, web technologies are likely to cover all those aspects.

Blockchain operations should be secure, protected from hacker attacks and tech errors. Major banks are planning to develop algorithms for protecting valuable user data and keep crypto trading as safe as one with regular currency. 

If the blockchain world becomes more trusted and accessible for people, it will cause revolutionary changes in the way people pay taxes, interact with governmental services, and build a professional relationship.

Earlier we mentioned bitcoin, but what is bitcoin stands for?

In a world where everything is becoming digital, why wouldn’t we have digital money?

The term “bitcoin” can sound completely different in the ear of an amateur or a non-tech person. We tried to simplify the understanding of the significance of a rapidly growing trend such as bitcoin. 

The first question that pops our mind is if bitcoin is money?

Bitcoin is digital money, and you can buy things using it. It exists only on computers all over the world. It is called money because it performs three fundamental tasks for us: a store of value, medium exchange, and unit of account. 

The fun fact is that 97% of Fiat money already exists only in electronic form.

Bitcoin is an open network where anyone can participate and to stop it you need to stop the internet, and now even Bitcoin has its internet. Maybe bitcoin is the alternative to the current financial system?

We can define bitcoin as a protocol, which has its own set of rules. It has a concept of Mining, where miners are performing mining and the protocol creates new bitcoins. But bitcoin’s real breakthrough was solving the double-spending problem without using a third-party.

Bitcoin mining needs a lot of resources, but you can always buy Bitcoins from the market. There are different ways to buy it, for example, using Crypto exchanges, P2P exchanges, crypto wallets, ATMs. 

We were lucky enough to work on a great project with our Swiss partner Tatoshi AG, where we developed a Bitcoin wallet, called Tatoshi Wallet, that protects users against the loss of their Bitcoins. 

Tatoshi Wallet is a decentralized self-storage solution without the risk of losing your private key and the related Bitcoins. With that app, you can store recovery data with your friends and families. If you lose your phone and private key, you can easily recover it with the help of your friends. Involving your friends to protect you from loss is called social recovery.

If you would like to find out more about it, visit this website: https://tatoshi.io/

 

 

• Microservices

 

A layered, monolithic architecture is suitable for many applications, but one of the trends in software as of late is a migration towards microservice architectures. 

Microservices are an alternative to the monolith approach that gives developers the flexibility, scalability, and simplicity they need to build complex software applications.

Using microservices means creating applications from loosely coupling services. The application consists of several small services, each representing a separate business goal. They can be developed and easily maintained individually, after which they are joint in a complex application.

Microservices give dev teams the freedom to choose the technology stack they prefer best.

They release them from worries about the effects it will have on the app they’re developing. 

This allows them to operate much faster and have more confidence than when they work with a monolithic architecture.

If we piqued your curiosity, find out more details about the migration of a monolithic application to a scalable microservice architecture, read our case study in this link:

https://simple-task.com/news/case-study-migrating-a-monolithic-application-to-a-scalable-microservice-architecture/

 

 

• VR/AR

 

AR/VR is now not only limited to building and playing games or getting a roller coaster experience but now is much more than that. In the future, this is going to be used for almost every application and that is what developers are trying to do currently.

In hard times like these, AR/VR can make life easy where a person working from home can experience work from the office and do the work as he/she does regularly. Potentially this way, there will be no difference in work from home and work from the office. 

These days, it is being used in almost every field like medicine, where doctors can operate a person remotely with help of robots and VR and it has infinite possibilities.

Predictions are that AR/VR might also be used in the tourism industry in the future even more. 

AR/VR technology allows hotels to show accurate 360-degree photos and videos of their spaces, also companies can promote destinations and inspire customers to travel through 360-degree videos and cinematic VR productions worldwide. 

Innovation in this field is endless and can be used for the betterment of society.

 

 

• Flutter

 

The trend towards 2021 is the growth of mobile apps. 

Viewing and executing acts on mobile is most convenient since we can do so from anywhere and at any time. A completely customizable platform that allows you to create highly expressive and scalable user interfaces, Flutter is simple to learn and allows for quicker development.

Flutter is increasingly popular due to the simplicity of quickly creating apps and the ease of learning the language. If you’re an experienced developer or a new one, learning Flutter will take only a few well-informed lessons, learning tools online and offline, and a lot of self-learning. 

Flutter is made up of many beautifully designed widgets, a rich collection of movable APIs, and platform-wide scrolling, navigation, fonts, and icons. This makes for smooth operation on both Android and iOS phones. Flutter applications are compiled natively and are therefore highly efficient and fast.

In our company, we worked already on projects involving migration from native apps to Flutter and even wrote a case study, so you can learn more from our experience.

You can read our case study here: https://simple-task.com/news/migrating-native-apps-to-flutter-case-study/

 

 

• Streaming services

 

As mentioned earlier we do live in a digital world, today more than ever. With the change of our social habits comes the necessity to stay more at home, work from home. So it is not a surprise for us to develop a craving for movies, music, virtual meetings with your friends, or live conferences & events worldwide. 

Not being able to travel and to socialize made us improve some existing tools and resources to educate or entertain ourselves. That’s when streaming services started to play an even bigger role in our lives nowadays. From Netflix to Zoom, Spotify, these are only some of the online providers of entertainment and our prediction is there are going to be more and more. 

Music, video, and other types of media files are prearranged and transmitted in sequential packets of data so they can be streamed instantaneously. And unlike traditional downloads that are stored on your device, media files are automatically deleted once you play them.

All you need to stream is a reliable and fast high-speed internet connection, access or subscription to a streaming service or app, and a compatible device. 

Live streaming is the broadcast of an event over the internet as it happens. Awards shows, sports, boxing matches, video games, and special one-time events are the most popular types of live streaming with an ever-growing menu of topics.

Social media platforms and others broadcast everything from celebrity events, promotions to streaming between users. 

You can live stream on any compatible smartphone, tablet, TV, computer, or gaming console with a relatively fast internet connection

There are many streaming devices available, each with its unique features. Whether you want a hands-free option, ample internal storage, something affordable and/or 4K accessibility, there’s a streaming device for you. 

The higher the resolution like 4K, the more speed is needed for virtually flawless music and movie streaming.

Streaming in ‘real-time’ with a continuous stream of data instead of downloading can be the future.

 

 

• Gaming industry

 

Another trend that you can expect in 2021 is the growth of the gaming industry. 

The prediction is that the players are likely to play even more games on their mobile devices due to the world pandemic. 

As their mobile desktops are getting bigger and bigger, it makes it easier for them to enjoy the game to its fullest potential and it’s much easier to make a payment.

eSports are expected to become more and more popular with those who consider online gaming a professional career. Players will find it easy to stream the games, provide commentary, play for fun, and offer tutorials. eSports are expected to dominate the online gaming industry, and as more people play them, the industry is likely to make more games for streaming purposes.

Gaming-as-a-Service or cloud gaming is expected to revolutionize the online gaming industry. It is going to help players jump through the loops and barriers created by an expensive gaming hardware set. They only need a high-speed internet connection to enjoy playing. More providers will emerge to help players enjoy cloud gaming. This will eliminate the need for expensive gaming hardware that limits players who wish to do online gaming as a career or just for fun.