| |FEBRUARY 20209be organic. It can be a conscious choice. For example, banks can keep confidential customer account numbers and personal identifiers safely in a database on a mainframe while delivering a mobile experience to the customer from the cloud. So, 2020 will be the year that you'll see companies devising thoughtful hybrid IT strategies that assign the proper computing tasks to the proper infrastructure.4. We're all a little on edge computingNow that IoT devices are used in everything from cardiology clinics to your thermostat, edge computing has appeared on the scene. Edge computing enables the analysis of data from IoT devices before it's sent to a data service or cloud. Edge computing can process and store data faster than the cloud, which allows for more efficient real-time applications, such as running facial recognition on a smartphone or edge server or gateway instead of a cloud-based service.Edge computing is fast, secure, reliable, and scalable. It significantly reduces latency and costs. With the advent of 5G and its superfast network speeds, edge computing will make a major impact in 2020. From video conferencing to monitoring agricultural machinery on remote farms, edge computing use cases will be everywhere by the end of next year.5. Chatbot chatterboxesThe evolution of the chatbot is our one tiny nod to AI and, by extension, robotics. We've all gotten used to them on websites. Their friendly little robot faces or avatars with human names greet us when we land on a page and ask if they can help us. They answer basic questions like "How can I view my account?" or "Where can I find pricing?" If our questions are more complex, they offer to connect us to a "human in customer service."However, thanks to Siri and Alexa, chatbots are on the verge of becoming "a virtual assistant in customer service." Advances in sentiment analysis, the improved ability of voice recognition to detect emotions from tone of voice, and technology that makes robotic voices sound human are bringing us Chatbot 2.0 (or, if you prefer, Chatbot 2020). By this time next year, you won't be typing a response or question to a bot with a name like "Jiff" on many of the web or mobile sites you visit. Instead, you'll be able to ask Jiff a question out loud, and Jiff will answer back. Think how much faster things will be when you don't have to type all the time.A common thread runs through our 5 predictionsNo matter how sophisticated and futuristic technology gets, there's still one thing it will always need--the data and infrastructure to make it happen. So, if you happen to read any predictions that declare "the relational database is dead," "middleware will be gone by 2030," or "no one will be using mainframes in 2025," ignore them. GPUs, MDBSs, hybrid IT, edge computing, and VR assistants are all powered by databases, optimized through re-platforming applications (many of which are on the mainframe), or connected by middleware, or any combination the three. There's always a place for the old with the new. No matter how sophisticated and futuristic technology gets, there's still one thing it will always need the data and infrastructure to make it happen
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