“Artificial intelligence and machine learning.”
These are just two of the technology trends that CirrusMD CTO Gabe Varela is watching in 2020. We recently spoke to Varela and four other Colorado executives about which tech trends they think will make a splash in the coming year and how those technologies will impact industries including blockchain, healthtech and e-commerce.
Some themes? Headless e-commerce, continuous integration and natural language processing, to name a few.
Colorado Tech Trends to Watch
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning will continue to innovate
- API-powered E-commerce
- Higher emphasis on DevOps
- Blockchain's popularity and use cases will grow
In 2018, Google employee Jacob Devlin and his colleagues created BERT, a language processing model to help the team better understand user searches. CirrusMD CTO Gabe Varela believes Devlin was on to something. This year, the virtual care platform is using modern technologies like machine learning to make the most out of the data they have access to. Below, Varela explained how he sees such information allowing his company to expand reach and improve care.
What are the top tech trends you’re watching in 2020? What impact do you think these trends will have on your industry in particular?
Artificial intelligence and machine learning will continue to change the technology landscape. These technologies are really still in their infancy and require a tremendous amount of data to reach the current state of the art in terms of results and accuracy. We will begin to see innovations (such as Google’s BERT and ImageNet) that will help to provide insights with less domain-specific data because of larger data sets. We keep a close watch on natural language processing technologies to see which ones we can leverage based on the amount of data we have.
It is critical to begin to harvest value out of large enough data sets with modern AI/ML technologies.’’
How are you applying these trends in your work in the year ahead?
We will be diving much deeper into NLP research and development with our data in 2020. We believe that we will be able to drive better automation, efficiency and insights through the use of such tools. It is critical to begin to harvest value out of large enough data sets with modern AI/ML technologies. With improved data, we are able to gain better insight into how we can improve care.
CEO of Yaguara, Jonathan Smalley, said that this year, he’s watching how artificial intelligence is altering the retail space and helping customers make sense of their data.
What are the top tech trends you’re watching in 2020?
Headless e-commerce is a major trend in building custom front-end experiences powered by APIs rather than monolithic platforms. Several of our e-commerce clients sell physical products they want to help customers experience in order to drive purchases. Artificial intelligence and 3D renderings allow such customers to imagine a pair of shoes on their feet or a couch in their living room.
Expedited purchase is another trend we’re seeing across multiple channels, whether that be through voice orders, one-click purchases or Apple Pay. This allows for faster transactions, especially on mobile devices.
Finally, data utility is a multi-factorial opportunity. In the 2010s there was a huge focus on big data infrastructure. In the 2020s, it’ll be about how to leverage technologies like artificial intelligence to deliver real business value.
Data utility is a multi-factorial opportunity.’’
How are you applying these trends in your work in the year ahead?
At Yaguara, we are focused on the data utilization piece for our customers. We look to help them unify and contextualize their data in order to empower end-users to make meaningful decisions better and faster. With that in mind, we focus heavily on understanding the changing levers for e-commerce and retail companies so we can accurately share success metrics with our users.
For Murad Kablan, Stateless’s CEO, the future is about connectivity. Below, he told us why he believes that deep networks are a thing of the past. His team is working to allow data center managers and their employees increase the speed and efficiency of their network connections.
What are the top tech trends you’re watching in 2020?
We see a few trends gaining traction in 2020. The first is the emphasis on DevOps in enterprises to connect company applications to remote resources without the need for deep networks. A good example of this is multi-cloud automation, which is driven by both innovation and demand. Hyperscale clouds will reach a state of interoperability that will unlock the ability for companies to automate across multiple clouds.
A second trend is the displacement of 5G last-mile access, where these wireless networks will allow businesses and operators to connect to each other in places previously unfathomable. Finally, security experts have discovered there is no such thing as a trusted network. So DevOps and network users will push to leverage lightweight microservice-based solutions to enable the encryption of every network connection.
Security experts have discovered there is no such thing as a trusted network.’’
How are you applying these trends in your work in the year ahead?
Our software ecosystem allows engineers to build networks while addressing the new challenges that 5G, IoT and the cloud are placing on our current legacy network infrastructures.
Our Software-Defined Interconnect (SD-IX) Luxon platform helps DevOps engineers and network users create networks in a simple and scalable way. Our DevOps-enabled software-based technology gives users access to build, program and rapidly deploy connections. In 2020, we are continuing to implement microservice-based solutions so customers can meet their future needs.
StackHawk Co-Founder and Chief Security Officer Scott Gerlach sees a future where tech tools are made for the end user rather than executives with only a broad understanding of the software. With that in mind, he encourages his team to build a product that makes the most sense for their target audience: developers.
What are the top tech trends you’re watching in 2020?
The DevOps movement has already consumed the functions of classic operations teams. Engineering-related security functions are next on the list. Continuous integration and delivery is increasingly becoming a reality, with features being shipped fast and frequently. Engineering teams can keep up with application security in a rapid delivery environment by taking back control of their security posture. We built StackHawk for engineers instead of traditional security teams. The ability to find and fix security bugs pre-production, by the engineers who wrote the code, will speed innovation and improve a company’s security.
From monitoring capabilities to pipeline and test automation, engineers have more power than ever to use software that supports the mission at hand. This drives the trend of software that is built end-user first, rather than for executives making top-down purchase decisions. This is a good thing, as incentives are better aligned to create software that helps employees do their best work. Companies focused on product-led growth, as coined by OpenView, will be the winners in B2B software moving forward.
We are building StackHawk to give software engineers the capability to find and fix security bugs themselves.’’
How are you applying these trends in your work in the year ahead?
We are building StackHawk to give software engineers the capability to find and fix security bugs themselves. Modern engineering teams are fully equipped to fix security bugs in the same way that they would fix a user interface bug, but the tooling out there does not make it simple. We are empowering developers to confidently deploy quality code and minimize security risks.
In addition, nearly every product with the word “security” as part of its value proposition is marketed and sold to CISOs at Fortune 2000 companies. Our product discussions are centered around the developer as the user. We encourage our software engineers to advocate for tooling that supports their workflow and improves efficiency.
Alan Curtis, CEO of Radar Relay, said in 2020, he will be busy identifying blockchain use cases and finding learning opportunities. In the near future, he believes Fortune 500 companies will make greater use of the decentralized ledger.
What are the top tech trends you’re watching in 2020?
We’re watching blockchain trends. Over the past few years, $23 billion of capital has poured into our industry. We’re going through one of the largest A/B tests the technology world has ever seen. Every blockchain company around the world, including ours, is hard at work identifying use cases, building applications and learning. Looking ahead to 2020, I think we’ll continue to see more viral, breakout consumer use cases and a few Fortune 500 companies using blockchain in critical ways.
We’re going through one of the largest A/B tests the technology world has ever seen.’’
How are you applying these trends in your work in the year ahead?
In order to keep up over the last two years, we’ve built three products: a peer-to-peer exchange, a new payment rail and a blockchain NodeOps platform. Each product focuses on low-level infrastructure and scaffolding, the “train tracks” of our frontier industry.
