At the recent Google Cloud Next Conference, Google announced a new beta machine learning service, called Document Understanding AI. The service targets Enterprise Content Management (ECM) workloads by allowing customers to organize, classify and extract key value pairs from unstructured content, in the enterprise, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Gartner and Forbes estimate that 80% of enterprise data is unstructured and 70% of enterprise data is free-form text like emails, written documents and comments. With the amount of data in enterprise organizations, Google perceives an opportunity to use AI and ML to address enterprise content challenges. Many enterprises see the value in applying AI and machine learning to their business challenges, but not all have the necessary resources to do it.

In 2018, the world witnessed the continued development of technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality. As these tools become more accessible and widely used among both businesses and consumers, many tech industry experts are speculating about what the next "big thing" will be. Looking ahead to 2019, we asked a panel of Forbes Technology Council members for their take on upcoming trends in their field. From blockchain as a service to enterprise content management, here are their predictions about the next wave of breakout technologies. The blockchain is not as revolutionary as artificial intelligence (AI), or as intuitive and user-friendly as voice control, but it will transform the way we handle finance, real estate, internet of things (IoT), the supply chain of most industries and much more.

What used to be a well-defined, vendor-versus-vendor competition is now spread across multiple categories, platforms and hosting sites. Box content management is more of an enterprise than web content tool, competing with Documentum, SharePoint and OpenText more than Drupal and WordPress. It is all cloud, and it has become an API-driven collaboration platform, as well. We caught up with Jeetu Patel, Box's chief product officer, to discuss his company's roadmap for competing in this changing market. How does Box content management and its 57 million users fit into the overall enterprise content management (ECM) market right now? Jeetu Patel: There's a convergence of multiple different markets, because what's happened, unfortunately, in this industry, people have taken a market-centric view, rather than a customer- and user-centric view.