What Technology Trends & Predictions to look for in 2023

Call it a boon or a bane, technology continues to disrupt our everyday life, so much so that no aspect of our lives is left untouched. Decades ago, we had the internet, and later email to disrupt mankind. Fast forward to the decade of 2020, we have technologies such as human-like intelligence and self-driving cars impacting everyone. 

New technologies give rise to innovative business models and products by simplifying the mechanics of data-sharing across and between organizations. We live in an era of everything connected and the consumer marketplace is no exception. Businesses are expected to not just meet the needs of customers, but anticipate and exceed them.

The year 2022 was no less different. Technology, as its nature is, continued to change the world and impact everyone. When businesses around the globe faced situations they had never witnessed earlier, they had to take recourse to technology. Technology has always kept tech leaders on the tip of their toes to see what’s coming next and how they can be the first to embrace it. 

As we approach 2023, it's important for organizations to remain cognizant of emerging trends.

Applied Observability
Taking pattern recognition to the next level, Applied observability is the ability to deep dive into complex systems and a stream of data to predict and detect anomalies and provide resolution. It monitors the internal running of complex systems, gathers, and structures the incoming unstructured data and simplifies it to create patterns and detect issues. It can track telemetry data such as logs, metrics, traces, & dependencies.

Advent of Advanced Artificial Intelligence
As a big enabler of business transformation, Artificial intelligence (AI) has already been on the leaderboard for the last few years. 2023 will however take it to the next level. AI has been around for a while now, and it has enabled the tech leaders to experiment, explore, and build on top of it. Advanced Artificial Intelligence (AAI) will not only transform computing, pattern recognition, and machine learning but is aimed at end-to-end automation of processes without any manual intervention. This will help in replacing human labour with AAI at high-risk jobs such as people working at nuclear power plants, chemical labs, metal foundries, etc. where the risk to human life is higher.

AAI will also find its adoption in the area of healthcare. With the help of pills/ chip-on-body or standard over-the-body sensors such as watches, goggles, neckbands, or wrist bands, etc, AAI can supposedly track human vitals to a more granular level and monitor health, suggest remedies, plan a diet, and alert closed ones about any emergency such as an accident or a heart attack.

Power of Metaverse and Web 3.0
Metaverse and Web 3.0 will change the entire customer experience in 2023. AR/VR, AI/ML, IoT, and Blockchain will come together to create a more connected, secure, and immersive virtual world where people and businesses can simulate real-life scenarios such as virtual houses for living, virtual roads, rails, cars and trains for transport, brand billboards on highways, and simulated travel experiences.

The real estate created in the metaverse can be leveraged by brands to market themselves without people leaving their homes and invoke a purchase or an engagement. Customer data in the virtual world will enable businesses and advertisers to create customized experiences for the customer thereby enhancing the conversion rate. With blockchain and interconnected systems, one will also be able to carry-out transactions in the metaverse.

Emergence of Superapps
Seen as the next pivot in application design and development, Superapps is where users use one app to control most things within a business ecosystem. Gartner points out that more than 50% of the global population will be daily active users of superapps. These Superapps could even have mini apps that will act as add-ons and provide benefits above and beyond the existing capabilities.
A superapp will be able to connect to all systems and linked user accounts (sources such as savings account, credit cards, etc.), and carry out transactions at all systems (purchases such as mutual funds, stocks, groceries, insurance, etc.), all in one app. A superapp will be able to deliver numerous experiences around a person’s daily life via one platform.

Coming of Digital Immune System
Digital Immune System combines various technologies within AI and ML to weave an immune system around an ecosystem to ensure that it runs seamlessly and delivers 24x7 to maintain business continuity. It will combine observability, AI-augmented testing, Chaos engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and Software supply chain security to ensure that systems function round-the-clock to provide uninterrupted services. The immune system will be equipped to handle sudden critical failures and learn from them to prevent them later. According to Gartner, businesses that invest in digital immunity will increase customer satisfaction by decreasing downtime by 80%.

Paper documents will be replaced by Smartphones 
Today smartphones or other devices are widely used as payment methods, making classic plastic debit and credit cards obsolete in some countries. Moreover, smartphones can be used for medical purposes – as proof of vaccination or current COVID-negative health status – or even as a digitized version of an ID card. However, using a smartphone to store an increasing amount of personal data can raise serious security concerns. This places serious demands on the security of mobile devices and the way data is stored while preserving privacy.

In 2022, due to new and extremely disruptive threats, enterprises across industries and regions saw an increase in cyber-attacks incidents. Surveys done by several security companies indicate of almost all APAC respondents admitting of their organization experiencing cybersecurity incidents and data breaches in the past year. Based on this, cybersecurity trends predicted for 2023 are -

Rise of deepening vulnerabilities with 5G adoption 
5G connections in India are expected to reach 88 million by 2025, according to a recent report by GSMA. With the spotlight currently focused on delivering higher data speeds, latency improvements, and the overall functional redesign of mobile networks, the cloud will expose the 5G core to cloud security vulnerabilities. With only 14% of Indian organisations equipped with a plan for securing their 5G/4G environment, CISOs will need to be wary of large-scale attacks originating from any source, including the operator's own network. 

Disruption of businesses with Cloud supply chain attacks  
Cloud-native architectures, that are also consuming third-party code in their critical applications, will render the entire cloud supply chain vulnerable. As per Palo Alto Networks’ latest ‘What’s Next in Cyber Survey,’ 37% of organisations expect software supply chain attacks to increase most in 2023 and cloud adoption trends will intensify this further. 44% of Indian organisations expect software supply chain attacks to increase in 2023.

The debate on data sovereignty will intensify
As the world becomes more reliant on data and digital information, the volume of regulations and legislation emanating from a desire to control and protect citizens and ensure the continued availability of critical services will increase. As a result, the conversations around data localisation and data sovereignty will likely intensify in 2023.

Metaverse to be the new tool in hands of cybercriminals 
With an estimated $54 billion spent on virtual goods every year, metaverse could open up a new playground for cybercriminals. The immersive nature of the metaverse will unlock new opportunities for businesses and consumers alike, as it will allow buyers and sellers to connect in a new way. Companies, and cyber attackers in tandem, will take advantage of mixed reality experiences to diversify their offerings and cater to the needs of consumers in the metaverse.

 

Telecom and skilling industries saw significant reforms in policies and initiatives

Arvind Bali  
CEO - Telecom Sector Skill Council

“2022 was a phenomenal year for the telecom and skilling industries. Both saw significant reforms in both policies and initiatives which have elevated their contribution in nation building. We at Telecom SSC have been closely working with both ministries and secretaries to enhance the aspirations of the youth to work in new fields like 5G, IoT, Drone tech and many more. Over the next 3 years, we will be training over 1 lac budding youth in these technologies and many more. We plan to add 10 CoEs and the 1 lac training is being done with DoT oversight. We are going to add 100 new courses to our roster for use cases in both legacy and new technologies. The rollout of 5G will help accelerate advancement in skilling and telecom. We lend our support to the government and industry initiatives to empower the next generation of India.”

 

2022 has been a phenomenal year for Comviva

Manoranjan Mohapatra  
CEO - Comviva 

“2022 has been a phenomenal year for all of us at Comviva. Our reinvention as a leading digital technology platform partner and expansion into new western markets like the US and Europe has been extremely encouraging and expected to fuel future growth. We received a very strong response on our new “digital transformation & commerce platform” and “growth marketing” solutions. As we grow, we shall invest more in building differentiated propositions and use cases around Enriched Marketing and Customer Experience, Digital Enterprise & commerce solutions and Embedded Payments solutions. We shall continue our focus on building the next Gen platforms that are AI / ML Powered, Cloud native, SaaS-enabled and API driven.”

 

2022 saw a major boost for the electronics industry with schemes like PLI and PMP

A. Gururaj  
Managing Director - Optiemus Electronics

"We at Optiemus are constantly working towards contributing to India’s efforts to become a major electronics manufacturing hub globally. 2022 was a major boost for the electronics industry with schemes like PLI and Phased Manufacturing Program (PMP) pushing indigenous manufacturing in mobile phones, hearables/wearables and other categories. The hearable/wearable industry in India recorded 171% YoY growth in smartwatches, to become the biggest smartwatch market in the world. Under the visionary leadership of our Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji, India has made significant progress in electronics manufacturing this year and initiatives like Phased Manufacturing Programme introduced for Hearable/Wearable in the Union Budget 2022 helped immensely to fuel the growth. The electronics industry is set for the next wave of revolution in the coming year and 2023 can be the major milestone year in our aim to make further progress towards realising “Atmanirbhar Bharat” in electronics.”

 

 

2023 will pave the way for a rural fintech revolution 

Dilip Modi  
 Founder - Spice Money  

“India has come a long way in its digital journey. 2022 has seen some successful and noteworthy initiatives undertaken by the government including 123 Pay, and launch of 75 Digital Banking Units (DBUs) in 75 districts. These initiatives are addressing the under-penetration of banking and financial services, dearth of financial literacy & awareness as well as employment opportunities prevailing in Bharat. Other initiatives like ONDC are democratising e-commerce in India and shaping the future of global ecommerce.
2023 is going to be a game changing year for the rural fintech ecosystem. For the Indian economy to grow, the rural segment has to grow and with the pool of opportunities presented by technology and internet penetration, it will also take India towards the dream of a $5 trillion economy by the turn of this decade or sooner. As we step into 2023, rural fintech is bound to grow by leaps and bounds.”

 

 

2023 will see the continued development of Web3 infrastructure 

Leon Foong  
Head of APAC - Binance

“2022 has been a big year for the Web3 and crypto space, with new projects and protocols launched while existing ones continue to grow and evolve. The Ethereum upgrade was one of the major developments in the crypto industry, making the blockchain more scalable, secure, and sustainable paving the way for more efficient decentralized applications to be built. Transparency in this industry has become a big area of focus and blockchain technologies such as merkle-sum trees and ZK-SNARKs are being used to build proof of reserves which we hope will bring added trust into the digital asset space.”
In 2023, we expect to see the continued development of Web3 infrastructure with continued attention to investor education and awareness. To build a robust Web3 infrastructure, security is very important, and Binance plans to continue with initiatives such as Global Law Enforcement Training Program and establishing the Industry Recovery Initiative (IRI) to protect consumers and rebuild the industry.”

 

 

India’s digital and creator economy are set to thrive in 2023

Prativa Mohapatra  
Vice President and Managing Director, Adobe India   

“As India gears up to become among the world’s fastest growing economies in 2023, the months to come will be crucial towards setting the stage for our long-term success. Amid the incredible momentum around ‘Digital India’ and the macro-economic advancements - India’s digital end creator economy are set to thrive like never before. 

2022 sparked mega trends like the cryptocurrency boom and bust, increasing examples of the power of Generative AI, and the emergence of incredible use cases on what could be Metaverse’s long term journey to making real impact in the world. With such fast-paced trends governing with the dynamics of the industry and customer experiences in 2023 - businesses will need to continuously adapt to changes, evolve strategies, and be laser focused on looking around the corner to drive innovations that can create an impact”.

 

 

Crypto and Web3 players should foster a sense of security among its consumers

Raj Karkara  
COO, ZebPay  

“In 2022, the crypto industry witnessed landmark events including the Ethereum Merge Upgrade, the launch of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) as well as the Government of India's new crypto tax policy. While market fluctuations and unfavorable tax implications have affected overall trading volumes and sentiment, investor education has helped in increasing the adoption of crypto and will continue to be a priority.
In 2023, it will be the responsibility of all players in the crypto and Web3 ecosystem to foster a sense of security among its consumers. Those businesses that operate with transparency, strong ethics and values, while protecting consumer interests will succeed. The year will weed out businesses with weaker models and practices. Sustainability and financial inclusion will be strong themes, promoting mass adoption of the asset class. We hope India's G20 Presidency will help in establishing an innovative regulatory framework based on new technologies and will assist in creating a favourable environment for the crypto industry.”

 

 

Businesses must opt for digital-first technologies that combine AI, ML, and behavioural biometrics 

Ranjan R Reddy  
Founder & CEO - Bureau  

“2022 was filled with news about crypto meltdowns, synthetic ID fraud, phishing, fraud rings, UPI fraud, money laundering, collusion, OTP theft, and referral abuse, to name a few. Online fraud has exploded as attackers constantly evolve their techniques for maximum benefit, leading to financial and reputation loss for businesses across industries.
In 2023, businesses must look beyond traditional approaches and opt for digital-first technologies that combine AI, machine learning, behavioural biometrics and device intelligence. It will also be crucial for all stakeholders to collaborate and create a pro-privacy data infrastructure. In the wake of rising data leaks and alarming identity theft incidents, the key focus for organisations across sectors will be to ensure trust and security by creating an underlying risk infrastructure that will help protect user data, simplifying the user journey by creating a secure, transparent and frictionless experience across sectors. This will further pave the way for innovation and scalability.”

 

 

Trends like metaverse, AI, 5G, and IoT are new forms of communication 

Vishal Agrawal  
MD - Avaya 

“The industry is going through a transformational stage of growth to adapt to the latest technical and cloud trends. In this post-pandemic phase, a number of themes have emerged, and we are convinced that they will continue to be important in 2023 and beyond. Several trends like the metaverse, AI, 5G, and IoT, are new forms of communication along with hybrid and remote working models, which we believe will continue indefinitely. The cloud is what we need to stay connected with these work modes. It is evident that people are loving this new environment, and from the standpoint of communicators, this opens new opportunities. Most IT leaders are interested in futuristic technology but are not sure of how to use it or what some practical business use cases are. A cloud communications solution that works the way you do, where you do, is no longer the wave of the future it’s here, now.”

 

5G deployment will help in realizing India’s vision to become a $ 1 trillion digital economy 

Lt. Gen. Dr. S.P. Kochhar  
Director General - COAI  

“One of the major landmarks for India this year was the much-awaited launch of 5G services in the country by the Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. Besides bringing in a radical transformation in the digital processes and efficiencies of industries and in the regions of governance and connectivity, 5G is also expected to generate significantly more direct and indirect job opportunities. The deployment of 5G will be a major force in realizing India’s vision to become a USD 1 trillion digital economy by 2025. The Indian Telegraph Right of Way (Amendment) Rules, 2022, will help the industry in faster proliferation of Digital infrastructure, via deployment of small cells, aerial fiber, and optimal use of street furniture to enhance connectivity. There is a provision for small cells, electric poles, access to street furniture, etc. introduced for the easy and smooth deployment of 5G networks.”

 

 

Cloud adoption is expected to rise in 2023  

Sajan Paul  
Managing Director & Country Manager, India & SAARC, Juniper Networks 

“Cloud computing has become a crucial tool for businesses, the government, and consumers since the pandemic. It is not just the technology that supports digital transformation, but it also fosters creativity among ecosystem actors and teamwork among them. Cloud adoption is expected to rise in 2023, with digital innovation leading the top business objectives for Indian companies. The overall India public cloud services market is expected to reach $13.0 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 23.1% for 2021-26. Cloud computing is gaining traction across industries as a result of the requirement for agility, flexibility, and speedier access to digital technology.
The continued pursuit of low- and no-code applications will put further stress on a networking industry struggling to keep up. Low-code and no-code software development technologies have developed as feasible and practical alternatives to the traditional development method to solve these difficulties. The global low code no code industry is anticipated to grow between 2021 and 2025 at a CAGR of 28.1%, according to NASSCOM.”

 

 

Immersive meeting rooms can become the new normal in 2023  

Sumed Marwaha  
 Managing Director, Unisys India   

“Digital transformation is a fundamental reality for businesses today. We will witness a hyper-automation of processes that will enable people to focus on much more significant tasks. Businesses will heavily rely on data-driven decision-making to scale product deliveries while increasing customer engagement. Multicloud adoption will also continue to grow in a data-led economy, leading to a steeper rise in demand for cost-effective cheat-proof cloud solutions. With widely distributed office networks, businesses will put faith in collaborative solutions for engagement within their workforce and with customers. For example, immersive meeting rooms can become the new normal in 2023. Sustainability is another key element embedded in cloud-native strategies of businesses. As we see advancements in emerging technologies, I see that we are going to have an exciting year for technologists.”

 

 

Customers will choose a mix of cloud and on-prem environment approach 

Puneet Gupta  
 Managing Director and VP India/SAARC, NetApp

“The hybrid multicloud will grow in importance as more services move from on-prem to the cloud and as customers seek to balance their cloud spending across multiple Cloud Service Providers. Public cloud spending in India is expected to grow 27% YoY in 2023, according to Gartner. The migration to cloud saw an acceleration at the onset of the pandemic and in the new post pandemic world, the adoption is only set to go up. Moving forward, more organisations will take a strategic approach that seamlessly connects a mix of clouds and on-prem environments. In the next phase of the evolved cloud, enterprises will turn to a unified control plane to remove management complexity, stay secure against evolving cyber threats, be sustainable, and cut costs through automation, whether their data resides on the cloud or on-prem. This will put organisations in a position to focus on innovation and drive their business.

 

 

Organizations have reportedly experienced higher levels of disruptions in 2022  

Ripu Bajwa  
Director and General Manager, Data Protection Solutions, Dell Technologies India   

“The Dell Technologies Global Data Protection Index is a survey of 1000 IT decision makers globally on the maturity of their data protection strategies and how they value data and assess the relative preparedness of their businesses. This year’s results highlight that organizations have experienced higher levels of disruptions in the past year, with over 86 percent of respondents’ organizations experiencing at least one disruption in the last 12 months. This points toward a staggering trend of increasing data loss, downtime, and recovery costs. With outages being so widespread and costly, businesses have started looking toward the next generation of methods to maximize availability for their users. 36 percent of respondents had experienced unplanned system downtime in the last year. 67 percent of respondents are concerned that their organization’s existing data protection measures may not be sufficient to cope with malware and ransomware threats.”

 

 

C-suite leaders, IT decision-makers prioritizing IT transformation for business growth 

Amit Luthra  
MD - India, Lenovo ISG  

“Businesses and societies at large continue to turn towards technology to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. For instance, Cloud, Edge, and AI are being leveraged by the healthcare industry for better patient monitoring, the civil service industry for better traffic management, and the oil & gas industry for remote monitoring of assets. IT operations have majorly evolved over the last three years with c-suite leaders and IT decision-makers prioritizing IT transformation for business growth. A positive observation is that businesses in India are moving from the whiteboard to implementation. The key IT trends that we expect will transform businesses in 2023 are - 5G revamping IT infrastructure; Increase in demand for Edge, AI & IoT; Rise in adoption of Zero Trust; Businesses benefiting from as-a-Service; Sustainable Computing; and lastly, GPUs gaining more prominence. As per NASSCOM estimates, the Indian technology sector crossed $200 Bn in FY2022. This acceleration is fuelled by businesses prioritizing streamlined operations, better speed to market, and seamless digital experiences for customers.”

 

 

Commercialization of ransomware-as-a-service will continue in 2023  

Sunil Sharma  
Managing Director - sales, India & SAARC, Sophos   

“In a world dominated by technology, we have seen a rise in cyberattacks, both in terms of volume as well as complexity. The Sophos State of Ransomware 2022 revealed alarming findings that showed that 78% of surveyed organisations in India were hit by ransomware. In addition, more than 90% of Indian organisations that were attacked said these attacks impacted their ability to operate and led to a loss of business/revenue. Over the course of 2022, we continue to see cyberattacks taking place at a large scale, dominating news headlines, and crippling organisations for days.
Today, it is safe to say that with the commercialization of ransomware-as-a-service, cyberattacks are getting more brazen, and will continue to evolve in 2023. Some cybersecurity trends to watch out for in 2023 include - Mobile devices increasingly getting targeted, Increase in Crypto-related scams, 5G bringing about increased cybercrime, and lastly, Attacks on the cloud supply chain disrupting firms.”

 

 

We are driven by our vision to deliver incredible technologies

Anku Jain, Managing Director, MediaTek India

“During 2022, MediaTek succeeded in delivering on the 5G aspirations of OEMs while also maintaining the 4G/5G mobile volume share leadership with a focus on the mid-level category. Flagship-level smartphones with superior cameras, gaming, and high-end display caught wide attention. Ground-breaking launches like MediaTek Dimensity 9200 and Dimensity 9000 have brought new benchmark performance for 5G smartphones. MediaTek maintained its leadership in Smart TVs, smart speakers/displays, and Arm Chromebook and emerged as No.1 in the Wi-Fi segment across Retail, Broadband and Consumer Devices.

MediaTek is a leader in Mobile PMIC, Computing & Display and succeeded in developing an exhaustive 5G technology portfolio. We are driven by our vision to deliver incredible technologies to power incredible lives and going forward we will expand our 5G portfolio to 5G Thin Modem, redcap & wearables, automotive telematics and industrial M2M/IoT, and focus on emerging trends like Metaverse, Wi-Fi 7, and power management applications in Computing & Storage of the future.”

 

2023 is truly going to be a ‘Techade’

Rajiv Bhalla, Managing Director, India & Vice President APAC - Barco

“In 2022, we navigated the bend to lead the digital transformation and innovation disruption, powered by new-age technologies, and accelerated its amalgamation across operations and workflows. Fueled by India’s promising growth prospects, 2023 is truly going to be a ‘Techade’, given the focus on mega trends such as digitalization, R&D and innovation, local manufacturing, global offshoring, among others. As India is set to lead the G20 agenda in 2023, a lot of focus will be on India’s capabilities to power sustainable economic growth and development and thereby setting a precedent for others to follow.

With the focus moving from technology usage across enterprises to leveraging emerging technologies for a better future, we foresee technologies like AL/ML, cloud computing, 5G, IoT and automation to drive sustainable solutions and new use cases across sectors, industries, governance and citizen services. The global enterprise IT spending is estimated to increase significantly in the next year and there is going to be renewed demand for control room solutions, projection technologies and video wall solutions, smart infrastructure, hybrid collation solutions, among others.”  

 

Customized solutions for solving India-centric problems are the need of the hour

Agendra Kumar, MD, Esri India

“Technology has indeed been the engine of change worldwide, and India has been the hub of many exciting technological developments in the past year. Customized solutions for solving India-centric problems are the need of the hour. Esri India’s IndoArcGIS which provides GIS-based solutions for a wide range of problems that we face as a country became very popular among our users. Moving ahead, technology trends like the integration of various types of data in GIS systems, data portals to enable easy sharing of data, and Geo-Hubs to create more collaborative working environments and increase community engagement are going to transform the way geospatial technologies are being consumed. Other trends like GeoAI, GIS on Cloud, digital twins, immersive experiences, and advanced spatial analytics will further cater to improved and secure solutions for industries and masses alike. These tech trends will help enterprises boost their speed and agility, reduce complexity and save costs while concurrently enabling unmatched connectivity.”