Generative AI, distributed enterprise and cloud-native platforms are amongst the top strategic technology trends for 2022, Gartner has predicted. David Groombridge, research vice president at Gartner, says with CEOs and boards striving to find growth through direct digital connections with customers, the priorities of a CIO must reflect the same business imperatives, which run through each of Gartner's top strategic tech trends for 2022. "CIOs must find the IT force multipliers to enable growth and innovation, and create scalable, resilient technical foundations whose scalability will free cash for digital investments," Groombridge says. "These imperatives form the three themes of this year's trends: engineering trust, sculpting change and accelerating growth." Gartner says one of the most visible and powerful AI techniques coming to market is generative AI – machine learning methods that learn about content or objects from their data, and use it to generate brand-new, completely original, realistic artefacts.

Gartner, Inc. announced its top 12 strategic technology trends for 2022 and beyond. Analysts presented their findings at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2021, heald virtually for the second year in a row, due to the pandemic. Gartner Research Vice President David Groombridge emphasized that just as 2020 and parts of 2021 found companies focused on survival, the future will focus on a return to the path toward growth. Just as survival required more creative use of technology, the path to growth will also emphasize creative use of technology, not so surprisingly. Gartner's strategic technology trends for 2022 and beyond are: Automation is a critical ingredient for digital transformation.

CIOs are tooling up an assembly line of technologies to get back to business in 2022, including a mix of solutions leaned on heavily to weather the pandemic and new offerings aimed at making the most of emerging opportunities as the pandemic subsides. At its virtual IT Symposium/Xpo this week, Gartner identified the top tech strategies it sees CIOs embracing next year, including the "distributed enterprise," advanced AI, hyperautomation, cloud-native platforms, decision intelligence, and advanced security, among others. Tying together these trends is the C-suite's ongoing recognition of IT as an engine for business transformation. "The two top business priorities for CEOs going into 2022 are scaling digitation and building ecommerce, with the aim of getting back to business," said David Groombridge, research vice president at Gartner, noting that CIO priorities will vary depending on whether they are tasked with driving consumer revenue or building products. But all CIOs will have common set of technology priorities, the analyst predicts.