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.

Editor's note: To make Gartner's top technology trends more digestible, CIO Dive broke them into two parts. This is the second of two parts. You can read the first, which focuses on technology interacting with people, here. When "Minority Report" was released in 2002, it felt futuristic. Psychic technology would predict a crime before it was committed and Tom Cruise would go make the arrest.

The first focuses on technology interacting with people. Part 2, which highlights technology advancements that will make the world tick. In 1981, Douglas Adams introduced the world to a universal translator via human augmentation. In "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a bright yellow "Babel fish" is slipped into the hero Arthur Dent's ear to offer real-time translation from any language. It's a concept popularized in science fiction, but advancements in technology are making similar capabilities possible in 2019, albeit less invasive.

Gartner has released a list of the top 10 strategic technological trends that will impact the most organizations in 2018. The list reveals both ongoing priorities expected to play an even larger role and emerging trends. Gartner believes these trends make up the "Intelligent Digital Mesh" which will be proliferating and are expected to reach the tipping points within the next five years. David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow sees the Intelligent Digital Mesh as "a foundation for future digital business and ecosystems." IT leaders must factor these technology trends into their innovation strategies or risk losing ground to those that do.

During the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, taking place in Orlando, Florida, the company announced what it thinks are top ten strategic technology trends for next year. It curated a list of technology solutions with'substantial disruptive potential', that are just emerging into broader use. A couple of these technologies have been around for some time, and have been talked about quite often, while others are just beginning to grab some limelight. "Gartner's top 10 strategic technology trends for 2017 set the stage for the Intelligent Digital Mesh," said David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "The first three embrace'Intelligence Everywhere,' how data science technologies and approaches are evolving to include advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence allowing the creation of intelligent physical and software-based systems that are programmed to learn and adapt. The next three trends focus on the digital world and how the physical and digital worlds are becoming more intertwined. The last four trends focus on the mesh of platforms and services needed to deliver the intelligent digital mesh."