IT executives must look beyond cost savings to new forms of operational excellence and seek technologies that can help them optimize resilience, scale industry-specific solutions and product delivery, and pioneer new forms of engagement, according to the 10 top strategic technology trends for 2023 unveiled at Gartner's IT Symposium/Xpo 2022. These include multiple forms of wireless, artificial intelligence, and sustainability, according to Frances Karamouzis, distinguished vice president and analyst at Gartner, and external events are making IT pros' decisions about them even more difficult. "Depending on what region of the world you are in there are lots of looming issues such as a potential recession, supply chain concerns, the war in Ukraine and that impact, as well as energy-related issues," Karamouzis said. IT executives must focus on continuing to accelerate digital transformation and consider possible use both for technologies that can be applied immediately and those that are on the horizon. With that as background, Gartner's top 10 strategic technology trends for 2023 looks like this: No single wireless technology will dominate, but enterprises will use a variety of wireless solutions to support a range of environments, from Wi-Fi in the office, services for mobile devices, low-power protocols, and even radio connectivity, Gartner stated.

Talent shortages are not an impediment to AI adoption, a Gartner survey of almost 700 business leaders found. More than seven in ten executives reported they currently have or can source the necessary AI talent. Companies are deploying AI strategically, to support decision-making and automation across a broad array of business functions, rather than just tactically within tech units. Four in five respondents believe that AI-powered automation can be applied to "any business decision." Demonstrating the effectiveness and the value of AI remains a challenge, despite widespread adoption.

A new survey from Gartner found that a majority of CIOs are focusing their investments this year and next year on AI and distributed cloud …

Regardless of size, most companies are using some form of martech, from email automation tools like MailChimp to social media management tools like Sprout Social. For enterprise-level organizations, the explosion of tools combined with new capabilities like AI and machine learning make it possible to scale marketing efforts more quickly and efficiently than ever before. Even so, there is a dark side to all this tech--namely, confusion. In 2011, Scott Brinker's martech landscape contained just 150 tools. A survey by the World Advertising Research Center and global finance company BDO, revealed that 76% of marketers wanted to add more tools to their existing martech stack.

Despite the disruptive impacts of COVID-19, 47% of organizations plan to increase their investments in the Internet of Things (IoT), according to a recent survey from analyst company Gartner. Following the COVID-19 lockdown, the survey found that 35% of organizations reduced their investments in IoT while a larger number of organizations are planning to invest more in IoT implementations to reduce costs. One reason behind the increase is that while companies have a limited history with IoT, IoT implementers produce a predictable ROI within a specified timeframe. "They use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track their business outcomes and for most of them they also specify a time frame for financial payback of their IoT investments, which is on the average three years," said Benoit Lheureux, research VP at Gartner. In addition, as IoT investments are relatively new, most companies have plenty of "low hanging fruit" cost-saving opportunities to pursue, such as predictive-maintenance on commercial and industrial assets like elevators or turbines, and optimization of processes such as increasing manufacturing yield.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) in digital commerce is generally considered a success, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. About 70 percent of digital commerce organizations surveyed report that their AI projects are very or extremely successful. Gartner conducted a survey* of 307 digital commerce organizations that are currently using or piloting AI to understand the adoption, value, success and challenges of AI in digital commerce. Respondents included organizations in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, India and China. Three-quarters of respondents said they are seeing double-digit improvements in the outcomes they measure.