2018 will see a boom in conversational interface development with more and more developers creating Alexa skills, Google actions, and Apple Home Kit automation that can be used by the respective ecosystems. We are well into 2018 and it is already looking at the watershed year for technology. A more efficient way to “discover” these services will make it even easier for the users to extract full benefit from their smart home appliance. We are finally getting close to practical, flexible, easy to build ad-hoc solutions for home automation. We will see more and more appliances growing ears and programmable brains guided by Echo, Google Home and HomePods. Other top technology trends to watch out for in 2018 include:
AI and capsule: Neural networks are passé – AI now comes in a capsule! Geoffrey Hinton’s work on Artificial Neural Networks and Deep Learning has helped sculpt the shape of AI as it stands today. His research team recently presented papers on capsule networks and usable algorithms which will take AI to the next level of consciousness (gulp!). And do yourself a favour – go watch ex-machina!
Kubernetes: The domination of Kubernetes (K8s) is complete. If you have not heard about K8s yet, you may start with the knowledge that K8s was the server at backend powering Pokémon Go when it exploded! This year will see robust tools built around K8s ecosystem to enhance and assist people moving to containers. All container orchestration products will be re-built as K8s “distributions” much like Cloudera, Hortonworks etc. are for Hadoop ecosystem. These include Rancher, Mesosphere, Tectonic (always has been a K8s distribution) and Docker itself. Want to know more about K8s – go through the fun comic strip on imgur about how Philips used K8s to build a better-connected light bulb.
Docker: This is a make or break year for Docker as a company. With a number of people already predicting the downfall of Docker, it remains to be seen how well this company, beloved by troves of developers and open source enthusiasts, and which brought containers to the mainstream development toolbox, will manage to stay fit and strong this year. A lot of eyes are on how it embraces K8s for the seamless collaboration.
A movement to the cloud: Do you know most enterprises are yet to embrace the cloud for their infrastructure needs? The movement to cloud environment has picked up speed yet a number of enterprises are yet to take that leap of faith. 2018 will see this movement accelerate with better security and data isolation guarantees provided by known cloud providers. Cloud environments have also become cheaper to use, are charged by the hour and is easier to manage which will helps moving the cost advantage in favour of cloud providers vs an in-house data centre.
Blockchain: It is high time that blockchain is adapted in public domain with the support of a legal framework. With more and more governments looking to use it productively and proactively, this year may witness the birth of a widespread built-for-public product which is not a pure-play crypto-currency platform.
Security and privacy: AI will become a major cybersecurity threat, and it will also be the greatest saviour! Rule-based security and fraud detection systems have been in use for ages. They are being given a turbo boost with machine learning and AI-based products. Privacy is also a main-stream concern and this space will see a lot of movement. Injection of capital has already started with Brian Acton – WhatsApp co-founder — committing $50 million to Signal — a scalable messaging app built for those paranoid about security and privacy! Have you tried signal? Do it today!
Virtual Reality: VR has a lot of promise but has yet to deliver. With steady advancements and refinement being witnessed in this segment, we may see the first commercially successful VR headset release this year which will make the human-cyborg trade-off worth it. While you are waiting for somebody to give us a VR system with a definitive answer to the top five problems of VR world, you can go ahead and read Ready Player One by Earnest Kline which gives you a glimpse on what VR may become in future and how easy it is to step from reality into the realms of artificial reality!
DevOps and DevSecOps: DevOps practices will see an even wider adoption by enterprises and startups. DevOps (if done correctly) gives substantial yield across the product lifecycle and the need for it is gaining importance as companies look to ship high-quality products at an even faster clip. One of the concerned areas is the integration (or lack of) security practices in DevOps tooling. This is where we will see a healthy growth of specialised tools which can plug into the existing toolchains and provide much-needed compliance. Gitlab’s acquisition of Gymnasium is a move that will trigger a lot of momentum in the field. The handy GitHub repository – awesome-devsecops – will help you understand the security landscape and how you can start using some of the tools right now.
Quantum computers: Quantum computing is coming, and it will change everything! IBM and Google are racing to claim the crown of quantum supremacy, while Intel has made significant progress in making use of Silicon to fabricate quantum chips. A commercially viable quantum computer may become generally available by mid-2018. Did you know that IBM has been offering a 20 qubit quantum computing machine as a cloud service since the end of 2017?
— by Gaurav Nagar, Director & CTO, Appworks Technologies.
Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
