Gartner, Inc. identified the top 10 data and analytics (D&A) technology trends for 2021 that can help organisations respond to change, uncertainty and the opportunities they bring in the next year. "The speed at which the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted organisations has forced D&A leaders to have tools and processes in place to identify key technology trends and prioritise those with the biggest potential impact on their competitive advantage," said Rita Sallam, distinguished research vice president at Gartner. D&A leaders should use the following 10 trends to determine investments that accelerate their capabilities to anticipate, shift and respond. The greater impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) requires businesses to apply new techniques for smarter, less data-hungry, ethically responsible and more resilient AI solutions. By deploying smarter, more responsible, scalable AI, organisations will leverage learning algorithms and interpretable systems into shorter time to value and higher business impact.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are key factors. Businesses must apply new techniques for smarter, less data-hungry, ethically responsible and more resilient AI solutions. When smarter, more responsible, scalable AI is applied, organizations will be able to "leverage learning algorithms and interpretable systems into shorter time to value and higher business impact," Gartner's report said. Composable data and analytics leverages components from multiple data, analytics and AI solutions to quickly build flexible and user-friendly intelligent applications to help D&A leaders make the correlation between the discovered insights to actions they must execute. Open, containerized analytics architectures make analytics capabilities more composable.

Gartner, Inc. identified the top 10 data and analytics (D&A) technology trends for 2020 that can help data and analytics leaders navigate their COVID-19 response and recovery and prepare for a post-pandemic reset. "To innovate their way beyond a post-COVID-19 world, data and analytics leaders require an ever-increasing velocity and scale of analysis in terms of processing and access to succeed in the face of unprecedented market shifts," said Rita Sallam, distinguished research vice president at Gartner. By the end of 2024, 75% of organizations will shift from piloting to operationalizing artificial intelligence (AI), driving a 5 times increase in streaming data and analytics infrastructures. Within the current pandemic context, AI techniques such as machine learning (ML), optimization and natural language processing (NLP) are providing vital insights and predictions about the spread of the virus and the effectiveness and impact of countermeasures. Other smarter AI techniques such as reinforcement learning and distributed learning are creating more adaptable and flexible systems to handle complex business situations; for example, agent-based systems that model and simulate complex systems.

Gartner, Inc. identified the top 10 data and analytics (D&A) technology trends for 2020 that can help data and analytics leaders navigate their COVID-19 response and recovery and prepare for a post-pandemic reset. "To innovate their way beyond a post-COVID-19 world, data and analytics leaders require an ever-increasing velocity and scale of analysis in terms of processing and access to succeed in the face of unprecedented market shifts," said Rita Sallam, distinguished research vice president at Gartner. AIBy the end of 2024, 75% of organizations will shift from piloting to operationalizing artificial intelligence (AI), driving a 5 times increase in streaming data and analytics infrastructures. Within the current pandemic context, AI techniques such as machine learning (ML), optimization and natural language processing (NLP) are providing vital insights and predictions about the spread of the virus and the effectiveness and impact of countermeasures.Other smarter AI techniques such as reinforcement learning and distributed learning are creating more adaptable and flexible systems to handle complex business situations; for example, agent-based systems that model and simulate complex systems. Dynamic data stories with more automated and consumerized experiences will replace visual, point-and-click authoring and exploration. As a result, the amount of time users spend using predefined dashboards will decline.

Augmented analytics, continuous intelligence and explainable artificial intelligence (AI) are among the top trends in data and analytics technology that have significant disruptive potential over the next three to five years, according to Gartner, Inc. Speaking at the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Sydney today, Rita Sallam, research vice president at Gartner, said data and analytics leaders must examine the potential business impact of these trends and adjust business models and operations accordingly, or risk losing competitive advantage to those who do. "The story of data and analytics keeps evolving, from supporting internal decision making to continuous intelligence, information products and appointing chief data officers," she said. "It's critical to gain a deeper understanding of the technology trends fueling that evolving story and prioritize them based on business value." According to Donald Feinberg, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, the very challenge created by digital disruption -- too much data -- has also created an unprecedented opportunity. The vast amount of data, together with increasingly powerful processing capabilities enabled by the cloud, means it is now possible to train and execute algorithms at the large scale necessary to finally realize the full potential of AI. "The size, complexity, distributed nature of data, speed of action and the continuous intelligence required by digital business means that rigid and centralized architectures and tools break down," Mr. Feinberg said.

The story of data and analytics is one that keeps evolving; from appointing chief data officers to procuring the latest analytics software, business leaders are desperately trying to utilise it, but it's not easy. "The size, complexity, distributed nature of data, speed of action and the continuous intelligence required by digital business means that rigid and centralised architectures and tools break down," says Donald Feinberg, vice president and distinguished research analyst at Gartner. "The continued survival of any business will depend upon an agile, data-centric architecture that responds to the constant rate of change. But while business leaders have to tackle digital disruption by looking for the right services and technology to help streamline their data processes, unprecedented opportunities have also arisen. The sheer amount of data, combined with the increase of strong processing capabilities enabled by cloud technologies, means it's now possible to train and execute algorithms at the large scale necessary to finally realise the full potential of AI. According to Gartner, it's critical to gain a deeper understanding of the following top 10 technology trends fuelling that evolving story and prioritise them based on business value to stay ahead. Gartner says by 2020, augmented analytics will be the main selling point for analytics and BI solutions. Using machine learning and AI, augmented analytics is considered, by Gartner, as a disrupter in the data and analytics market because it will transform how analytics content in developed, consumed and shared. Augmented data management utilises machine learning capabilities and AI technology to make data management categories including data quality, master data management, metadata management, data integration as well as database management systems (DBMSs) self-configuring and self-tuning. According to Gartner, this is a big deal because it automates many of the manual tasks opening up opportunities for less technically skilled users to use data. It also helps highly skilled technical resources to focus on more value-adding tasks. Through to the end of 2022, manual tasks in data management will be cut by 45% thanks to ML and automated service-level management. Continues data is more than a new way to say real-time data. Instead, it's about a design pattern where real-time analytics are combined with business operations, processing current and historical data to prescribe actions in response to events. "Continuous intelligence represents a significant change in the job of the data and analytics team," says Rita Sallam, research vice president at Gartner. "It's a grand challenge -- and a grand opportunity -- for analytics and BI (business intelligence) teams to help businesses make smarter real-time decisions in 2019.