The year 2020 has been one of the most unpredictable years and in parallel, we have seen the transition of technology in various sectors that has really helped humanity predict & prepare for any catastrophic condition. Considering the Covid-19 pandemic as one of the situations, many Scientists, Engineers & other techies have realized that a lot of development is still required to make life easier with accessible technology. Therefore, we bring to you some of the top tech trends to watch in 2021:

In the last decade, we have seen that there is no limit for technology & with the rise of digitalization in India, there will be a need for Quantum computing in order to protect Banking systems & IT security from cybercrime. With database processing as a critical strength of quantum computing, technologies such as artificial intelligence will be one application that will get significant benefit from the superior processing of Quantum computers.

Therefore, it can be seen that there will be massive competition among the big IT giants to provide services in cybersecurity, drug development, climatic condition prediction, etc., with the help of quantum computing.

In IoT applications, there were two challenges: the range and battery life. These two challenges are now overcome with the help of NB IoT. Considering the fact that approximately 21 billion devices will be connected by 2025, there will be a huge competition between Telecoms like Jio, Airtel, Vodafone, and others to provide cost-effective & efficient solution to their consumers in SaaS (Software as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) model. Moreover, India is working actively on NB IoT. In a first, BSNL with Skylo has launched the world's first satellite-based on NB-IoT to streamline various sectors, including fishers, farmers, construction, mining and logistics enterprises.

Tech trends to watch in 2021 | Representational image

IPA is the advanced version of RPA i.e., Robotics Process Automation. It is actually a combination of RPA & Machine Learning. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, most of the IT industry has given intimation that there is a possibility to announce permanent work from home & some of the companies have already declared the same, including TCS, Deloitte, Twitter, etc. It is imperative for any industry to check the activeness, productivity & relative output from the workforce during this scenario.

Therefore, IPA techniques will be expected to increase process efficiency, better customer experience, optimize workforce productivity, and generate a relatively surge in revenue generation. In 2019-2020 we saw how chatbot helped the firms automate customer interaction & thereby reducing the operational cost. Similarly, various IPA techniques will help firms of any kind to construct any raw data into a structured one. In consequence, IPA techniques will be going to reducing human error & enhancing customer satisfaction.

Artificial Intelligence will expand its footprints in various sectors, including military, defence, agriculture, automotive, education, medical, construction, etc. power & scope of AI is unimaginable; it's endless. According to Fox News, the artificial intelligence algorithm, developed by heron systems, swept a human F-16 pilot in a simulated dogfight 5-0 on August 2020. Additionally, with the launch of GPT-3, an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text developed by the OpenAI lab team.

This model expects to generate excellent quality text, making it difficult to distinguish whether the text is generated by humans or machines. In the agriculture sector, too, there will be some expectation to increase crop productivity with the help of AI techniques & thereby increasing farmers' income.

With the announcement of NEP 2020 by the Ministry of Education, there will be a change in all the institutions' learning patterns. We can see the rise in technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, blockchain, etc. Hence, the education ministry will put strenuous effort into upgrading India's education quality to make a skilled workforce.

Most awaited 5G or the 5th generation cellular network technology services is expected to launch in 2021 as telecom giants including Bharti Airtel, Jio, Vodafone Idea is ramping up to move early trails to commercialization with their respective partners.

Meanwhile, Reliance CMD Mr. Mukesh Ambani has already declared that Jio is ready with the infrastructure & Jio will pioneer the 5G revolution in India in the second half of 2021. This way, we can realize that technologies have made our lives easier and better in many misfortune situations. Hence, it will be our primary need in the future to let humans and machines work together to protect humans.

-Article by Abhishek Gupta, CEO & Co-founder, Hex N Bit

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Tech trends to watch in 2021 - India Today