In 2021, the world continued to experience an unprecedented health crisis, the coronavirus pandemic. This has impacted all sectors of society and has forced companies, small businesses, governments and private institutions to refocus, in some cases extensively, on accelerating their digital transformation and to rethink the way they achieve innovations.
Keysight executives offer their thoughts on business-shaping operations and unfolding technology trends through the lens of the pandemic, the effects of which will linger across organizations and society.
The rise of quantum computing
Quantum computing is an emerging technology that has continued to thrive during COVID, from an innovation and investment standpoint. 2022 will be a pivotal year for quantum computing. The need for high-precision test and measurement will rapidly expand to enable superconducting quantum systems to reach their full potential.
• Multi-100-qubit quantum computers arrive in the cloud
In 2022, several companies will bring quantum processor units (QPUs) to the cloud with 100 qubits or more. These advances will create new challenges for device developers, including scaling (older quantum computers), deployment (more calibrations), and repeatability (in their manufacturing) of quantum devices.
• Advances in error rates in two-qubit gates
Error rates in two-qubit gates are currently a major limiting factor in the performance of quantum algorithms for finance, pharmaceutical, and logistics applications. With the current demonstration of improvements in QPU technologies in two-qubit gate error rates, by 2022 there will be records in minimum levels of system noise, which will help improve the performance of quantum processors. These advances will create a new challenge in measuring small Gate error rates and in understanding QPU crosstalk with reliability and efficiency.
Robust supply chains
The current disruptions in the supply chain (limitations in the availability of semiconductors and raw materials, along with logistical constraints such as congested ports and lack of truck drivers) have created a bottleneck that will continue to limit production in 2022. Robustness of the supply chain is currently critical to an organization's ability to weather current volatility. Organizations will further redirect their efforts to achieve future-proof supply chains to gain a competitive advantage. Additionally, sustainable supply chains will be prioritized to mitigate environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) impact.
• Supply chains will be more agile and digital
Digital technologies will create new capabilities for the supply chain ecosystem. With increased automation and visibility, organizations will be more agile and able to react quickly to fluctuations.
• The self-managed supply chain will be a reality
By widely embedding cognitive automation, supply chains will become smarter. This will lead to the automation making recommendations, predicting the results and eventually making decisions autonomously.
• Business continuity planning and risk mitigation
Instead of relying on a global provider, there will be a shift to multiple providers and division into regions to reduce disruption. This will be a vital determining factor in the robustness of the supply chain.
• Designed to be robust
Product design will incorporate easier-to-achieve standardized pieces, allowing organizations to quickly respond to disruptions. Maintaining safety stocks for critical components will replace the current “just in time” inventory strategy.
Virtual collaboration will become more sophisticated
The pandemic has shown organizations that they can succeed with a distributed workforce. In 2022, virtual collaboration will become more sophisticated, with organizations using innovative technology to increase their productivity. This new wave of remote collaboration will create a complex network of connected systems where measurement and testing will be essential to ensure a seamless and secure experience.
• Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality (VR/AR/MR) technologies will support better visualization. In product design, digital twins will create design simulations before building the physical product. These simulations will enable collaboration between remote groups on design, improving the overall process and reducing the time and cost required for product development.
• Remote monitoring with automated systems, including warehouse robots and logistics delivery drones, will capture and consolidate data that remote workers can share and monitor in real time.
Business IT
• Citizen Developers will be dominant in 2025
The biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity for CIOs is the democratization of IT through citizen development. A citizen developer reports to a business unit or other responsibility other than IT. By 2027, there will be five times as many citizen developers as regular developers in organizations.
• The accelerating pace of digital transformation with all workflows being automated, streamlined and interconnected is fueling the insatiable demand for applications.
• The wide deployment of intelligent technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP) on no-code or low-code platforms, makes it easy for citizen developers to automate processes. As a result of this change, CIOs will not be constrained by resources and will be able to rapidly scale their digital transformation efforts. However, they will need to continually monitor and test the user experience across the entire ecosystem of applications and services.
• The move to citizen developers will add to the security burden, making CIOs need real-time visibility into their networks to ensure that users and citizen developers are secure. The rise of citizen developers depends on continuous intelligent test automation, ensuring that everything works as users expect and that systems are secure.
• In enterprise systems, cloud-based composite architectures will displace traditional monolithic architectures
• IT organizations will accelerate the digitization of their businesses through API-based integration of cloud-based solutions from a variety of vendors to achieve unprecedented levels of adaptability, functionality, customer experience, scalability, and robustness.
• Each company will be increasingly dependent on the performance, reliability and security of the networks of its cloud service providers, its solution providers and its business partners.
• Network visibility and digital twin solutions for networks will need to find new ways to promote required levels of performance, reliability and, most importantly, security across networks across multiple enterprise groups.
IoT
• Focuses on subscription services, not devices
Connected devices are ubiquitous in every industry; the key right now lies in the provision of subscription services. In 2022, intelligent technologies will enable organizations to deal with their customers as a unitary segment and deliver hyper-personalized services. For example:
• A smart refrigerator presents menu options for the week based on individual preferences (gluten-free) and then suggests preferred grocery shopping lists with ingredients needed for meals.
• By 2025, these types of personalized services will have grown rapidly and more than 50 percent of US households will have at least one subscription.
• Traditional industries will become usage/subscription based
Rolls-Royce rents out its engines based on usage; the trains have contracts per km. As the on-demand service economy continues to expand, subscription models will expand into business and consumer markets. This includes cars, appliances, and automated services. The connected infrastructure will notify us when repairs or replacements are necessary as predictive maintenance becomes the norm by 2024, optimizing the availability of this type of service.
• Autonomous vehicles will help the shift towards mobility as a service (MaaS)
The combination of autonomous vehicles and the shift towards subscription-based services is in line with the vision of a world in which car ownership is no longer necessary. By 2025, consumers will shift to a rental-as-a-service model making it easy for them to go where they want when they want. Another advantage of autonomous vehicles is that users can optimize their locations to maximize their intended use. This ensures that anyone who wants a car has one when they need it, using the fewest number of vehicles by analyzing real-time and historical data to feed predictive analytics.
• IoT will transform the shopping experience in stores
• Before the end of this decade, there will be no cashiers in any store. Smart technologies and RFID tags will register each product and automatically charge the customer's bank account, eliminating personal interaction in the physical purchase.
• By 2024, there will be widespread deployment of robots in both stores and warehouses, further reducing the number of jobs for humans in the retail industry.
• Supermarkets will be the next victim in the store apocalypse. As RFID tags become ubiquitous in both homes and stores, supermarkets will supply directly from the warehouse to the customer, eliminating the need for physical stores.
• Drone delivery will be the norm by 2025 to meet the demands of younger consumers and to speed up product delivery.
• health diagnosis
In the same way that IoT began to push analytics to the edge of the network, the situation is repeating itself in the healthcare sector. Increasingly sophisticated and proven devices (such as an Apple Watch) feature technology that allows individual patients to perform a wide range of diagnoses on their own devices in their own home at any time. This trend will expand into new markets, offering a range of self-contained preliminary diagnostic solutions in most homes by 2024.
Security
• Cyber-risks in the supply chain will increase
With increased support in technology, cybersecurity risks and vulnerabilities will become a growing problem for supply chains as hackers are targeting IIoT and other critical infrastructure targets, including supply chains. Designing a robust supply chain will require being able to connect the entire ecosystem and ensuring that persistent attacks by hackers are unsuccessful.
• By 2025, SecOps will be the number one operational priority
• With security breaches a growing threat to any industry, DevOps will eventually be replaced by DevSecOps in 2022 as businesses realize that security must play a major role in a hyper-connected digital world.
• IT security and operations teams will collaborate and integrate tools, processes and technology to keep organizations secure. Security auditing and targeted attacks against your own network will be the only viable way to mitigate risks.
• Standards will be introduced to help make connected systems secure
• Each connected device presents another surface for hackers to exploit. With the complexity of connected systems, organizations have not had visibility into where problems are occurring. By the end of 2023, standards will emerge that provide a single secure interface to IoT systems to reduce the attack surface and provide better visibility into attempted and successful attacks.
• New security tactics will be essential in an increasingly connected world where trust and security are paramount. Identifying coverage gaps and fixing vulnerabilities before hackers take advantage of them will be a competitive advantage for any organization.
Digital transformation and connectivity
• There will be an insatiable demand for bandwidth
The demand for bandwidth continues to grow with no signs of stabilizing, and is rising like a digital tsunami. In today's world, there are more devices transmitting and receiving more and more content: high-resolution images, 4K and 8K video, dynamic interactive experiences such as multiplayer games, and telemedicine.
• Meeting customer expectations for the next generation of wireless devices will require breakthrough innovations that deliver significant reductions in size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C)
The insatiable appetite for bandwidth and reliability has resulted in an explosion of complexity in the wireless infrastructure, both in the fixed elements and in the user terminals (UEs). New RF bands, formats, and advanced modulation techniques add to the increase in complexity. However, consumers are not willing to accept increases in cost or size of UEs and are demanding even longer battery life. Achieving the necessary SWaP-C reductions requires a multifaceted approach, including advanced packaging technologies that allow hundreds of mmWave components to be interconnected while extracting unwanted heat, as well as novel approaches in chip fabrication.
• 5G will power digital transformation in multiple industries
• Through the end of this decade, the pace of transformation will continue to accelerate. In 2022, the large-scale deployment of 5G will boost the speed of change by removing bandwidth limitations. Device deployments and certifications and network deployments will continue to grow as Open Radio Access Networks (O-RANs) mature, large-scale 5G deployments will follow.
• There will be 5G devices everywhere by 2022. The focus will be on new Industrial IoT devices with improved latencies and reliability. 5G coverage in rural locations will still be limited, and 5G-assisted autonomous cars (tier 4) will still not be available in 2022.
• Continued investment in 16GPP Rels 17 and 3, and beyond, will focus on new capabilities such as latency reduction, improved reliability and positioning, which will facilitate new use cases in vehicle automation, industrial networks and factories.
• 5G will enable the next stage of ubiquitous computing by distributing intelligence wherever it is needed and improving the efficiency of all processes for better control and reduced waste.
• 6G: There's more going on than you think:
• By 2028, 5G networks will be everywhere, making the original vision of 5G a reality by enabling industry verticals much more than we think of as “mobile communications”: like Industrial IoT, digital healthcare, smart cities, and mobile applications. extended reality (XR) that are currently just concepts. The first commercial 6G networks will be available that same year, paving the way for the convergence between the physical, digital and human worlds through applications, computing and communications. This will eventually create the Internet of Everything (IoE).
• The launch of 6G in 2028 will be possible thanks to research that is already being carried out. And it will see increased investment in 2022 by the academic, government and industrial sectors. This investigation will determine how to make the vision surrounding 6G a reality. 6G will make mobile communications an even more essential part of our professional and personal lives.
• The adoption of the digital twin will forever change the way we design, build and deliver products.
• As organizations move towards digital transformation, they will become aware of the limitations of virtual systems and will increase the adoption of digital twins. For example, in emerging industries like autonomous vehicles, manufacturers have no room for error, and with the digital twin they will be able to simulate all the permutations and continually refine the design.
• Digital twins present a new way of approaching design and simulation that is more efficient, practical, and compliant with the increasing regulatory burden. Unlike a virtual model, the digital twin updates performance, maintenance, and vital data from physical systems in real time, improving decision making. To keep pace with digital transformation, digital twins will be an essential part of product design.
• Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and cloud conversion technologies will enable future networks increasingly
• This will include core network transformation and improved mobility, as well as new software technologies that will increasingly enable telecommunications, including O-RAN, 5G core network and mmWave mobility.
• Artificial Intelligence will also continue to transform testing, analytics and automation
• AI/ML is at the heart of automation, not just in running tests, but in how we use data to make informed decisions. It's much more efficient to move the algorithm down to the data than it is to move terabytes of data to the cloud, so we expect to see some advances that help get insights faster from data in motion.
• With the increasing complexity of a primarily digital world, testing code in isolation doesn't work. In 2022, code conformance will no longer determine whether software can be published. This is especially important in the growing number of systems using “AI” technology and not all answers are deterministic, requiring “AI to test AI”. Intelligent test automation will be vital to ensure that our complex connected world works exactly as needed.
Sustainability & ESG will continue to be a key point
• Supply chains will integrate sustainability
As organizations try to mitigate their ESG risks, they will prioritize sustainable supply chains. The sustainable supply chain will incorporate:
• Reduced carbon footprint in shipping and logistics planning and will have carbon accounting platforms in their systems to monitor emissions data.
• Creation of a circular supply chain (reduction, reuse, recycling and remanufacturing) to minimize waste that impacts the environment and to reduce the cost of raw materials.
• Integrity in the supply chain. Ethics and compliance will become increasingly important, encompassing fair and legal labor practices through responsible sourcing.
• Climate-smart supply chain. This will assess how climate changes affect the availability of materials and identify potential supply chain disruptions.
• Creating sustainable supply chains requires full testing and verification to minimize carbon footprint.
• Home Sustainability Scores
• With homes saturated with connected devices, there is an impact on sustainability efforts. By 2025, home energy rates will be a factor in the smart ecosystem and the efficiency of connected devices in the home will be scored. This score will be vital when selling or renting homes, especially in the case of Millennials and Gen Z.
• As everything is digitized, a complex web of system and application services is created that require rigorous automated testing to ensure that everything not only works as expected but also minimizes environmental impact.
• The push towards net zero will need to expand
The push to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 will require the deployment of a wave of new technologies. However, this fails to address the existing carbon in the atmosphere. To reset this balance, a form of industrial-scale carbon recovery will be necessary before the end of this decade.
