# Top Ten Technology Trends for 2024

> Observing technology trends by analysts, research companies, and thought leaders provides a broader perspective. It not only helps software architects to understand the impact of technologies being adopted but also helps them build the right skill set for themselves or their team.

This article synthesizes the top ten technology trends for 2024 and beyond based on my broader research, technology insights, observations, and industry experience.

### #1 — Generative AI and AI Platforms

> Generative AI appears as a key technology trends by Gartner Top Ten Strategic Technology Trends for 2024, Werner Vogel’s Top Predictions for 2024, IDC Industry FutureScape for 2024, and more.

-   With industry disruption by Generative AI in the last few years challenging the common ways of working in the IT industry, it will continue to be one of the major technology trends in the coming years.
-   The most promising part is the broader impact of Generative AI across industry verticals, product companies, cloud service providers, and many more. [Click here](https://medium.com/vedcraft/the-gen-ai-revolution-how-product-companies-are-embracing-generative-ai-to-transform-their-466dbb48af6d) to read about the applicability of Generative AI by product companies.
-   Considering the early stages, as per research — _only 10% of organizations have deployed Generative AI in production, but more than 50% are piloting._ This indicates in 2024 and beyond, there will be a surge of technical initiatives to build Generative AI applications meeting diverse business use cases and internal efficiencies.
-   _AI-augmented development, content generation, conversational experience, and multi-agent applications for workflow and automation_ are the most common use cases being experimented with by enterprise organizations.
-   _Generative AI Platforms_ for the Enterprise, _Observability_ of Generative AI applications, _AIOps_ for end-to-end automation, _Securing Gen AI_ applications, and _Responsible AI_ will continue to be the major focus areas to be strengthened.
-   Generative AI Platforms such as [Amazon Bedrock](https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/), [Azure AI](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/ai-platform/), [Google Vertex AI](https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai), [NVIDIA AI](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/ai-data-science/), and [IBM Watson](https://www.ibm.com/watson) will continue to trend enabling enterprise organizations to build AI & ML capabilities. Emerging players such as [Scale AI](https://scale.com/), [Galileo](https://www.rungalileo.io/), [Dataiku](https://www.dataiku.com/), [Mosaic AI](https://www.databricks.com/product/machine-learning), [DataRobot](https://www.datarobot.com/), and [H2O.ai](https://aws.amazon.com/sagemaker/studio/) will offer novel solutions.

![Generative AI Tools](https://vedcraft.com/images/2024/06/genai-tools-1024x463.png)

Generative AI Tools & Platforms

### #2 — Cloud Data Platforms

> Researchers estimate that, by 2026, we will exhaust high- quality text data for training LLMs, a trend that can slow down AI progress — CBInsights
> 
> Large language models (LLMs) trained on culturally diverse data will gain a more nuanced understanding of human experience and complex societal challenges. This cultural fluency promises to make generative AI more accessible to users worldwide.  
> — Werner Vogels (CTO, Amazon)

-   With the rise of large-language models, the role of Data Platforms in providing _relevant, contextual, and quality data_ will continue to evolve. With enterprise organizations adopting Cloud data platforms (including Cloud-based Data Warehouse, Data Lake, or Lakehouse solutions) — product companies will continue integrating their platforms with Generative AI capabilities and augment the entire lifecycle of building such apps.
-   While _Snowflake, Databricks, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift,_ and _Azure Synapse_ are the leading Cloud data platforms. there are players such as Redpanda, Teradata, Fivetran, MongoDB, Redis, Couchbase, Cloudera, Confluent, etc. broadening their core offerings as a comprehensive data platform.
-   Lakehouse architecture will continue to be a strategic technology initiative as part of the enterprise’s technology strategy considering it combines features of data lakes and data warehouses.
-   The boundary between the Data platform and the Data Science, Machine Learning, or Generative AI platform will continue to diminish as most of the leading players are offering them as an integrated solution.

Additionally, engineering-heavy enterprise organizations will continue to extend their Cloud-provider-managed or self-managed data platform using Opensource technologies such as:

![Opensource Data Stack](https://vedcraft.com/images/2024/06/open-data-stack.png)

Image Credit: [New generation opensource data stack by Zdenek Svoboda](https://github.com/zsvoboda/ngods?tab=readme-ov-file)

-   _Dremio, Presto, Trino, or Apache Drill_ as data query engine
-   _Spark, Flink,_ or similar as a data processing platform
-   _Parquet, Avro, Delta Lake_, or similar for data storage format
-   _Iceberg, Hudi, or Delta lake_ as table storage format
-   _dbt, Dataform_, or similar for ELT processing
-   _Airflow, Airbyte, Dagster_, or similar for data processing workflow orchestration

### #3 —Cloud-Native Platforms & Ecosystem

> By 2027, more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms to accelerate their business initiatives, up from less than 15% in 2023 — Gartner

-   Cloud-native platforms and technologies are in mainstream adoption and the trend will continue in 2024 technology roadmap for companies. There are laggards in industry verticals and the cloud-native ecosystem will continue to provide the holistic solution to accelerate their journey.
-   Industry cloud platforms, which offer tailored Cloud solutions as per industry verticals, will continue to emerge as a strategic initiative on the enterprise’s technology roadmap. With the power of SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services, the Composability of these solutions will emerge as a business enabler.
-   Opensource cloud-native technologies will continue to support the innovation ecosystem with communities as [CNCF](https://www.cncf.io/) fosters vendor-neutral technologies.

![Cloud-native Ecosystem (CNCF)](https://vedcraft.com/images/2023/12/cncf-landscape-1.png)

Image Credit: Cloud-native Ecosystem (by [CNCF](https://www.cncf.io/))

### #4 — Event-driven Architecture

> While event-driven architecture is in widespread use for 72% of global businesses, only 13% of organizations have reached the gold standard of event-driven architecture maturity — Solace Report

-   While Event-driven architecture has reached mainstream adoption, the maturity model of architecture will continue to evolve in 2024.
-   Event generation, event orchestration, event processing, event storage, event governance, event storage data format, event consumption, error handling, event data de-duplication, resiliency and scalability, and related patterns will continue to evolve with the maturity model.
-   While there are Cloud-provider-specific event processing platforms, the adoption of Opensource solutions (Cloud-managed Service or self-managed) such as _Kafka, Spark Streaming, Pulsar, Solace, and Flink_ will continue to rise in 2024.
-   Vendor integration for real-time data using event-driven architecture will continue to be the major adoption approach as a technology initiative in large and medium-scale enterprise organizations.
-   The role of Event-driven architecture in the era of Generative AI is pivotal for near real-time context to large-language models. This will give rise to patterns such as _Event Mesh_ elevating the maturity of the data processing platforms.

![Event-Driven Architecture Patterns](https://vedcraft.com/images/2024/06/eda-patterns-diagram.png)

Image Credit: [Event-Driven Architecture Patterns by Solace](https://solace.com/event-driven-architecture-patterns/)

### #5 — Software Supply Chain and Zero-trust Security

> By 2026, 50% of organizations will be exposed to data breaches because of the lack of investments in post-quantum cryptography — IDC FutureScape 2024.

-   With the rise of Generative AI, security practices around the large-language models to prevent attacks such as _“prompt injection”_ will continue to be pivotal for the enterprise organization. Threat modeling and Security Guardrails Framework (independent of Cloud Service Provider) to enable enterprise-level security policies (threat modeling, threat detection, insights generation) for Generative AI applications will continue to evolve in 2024. Solutions such as NVIDIA’s [_NeMo Guardrails_](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails) will continue to make life easier for developers to implement guardrails for large language models.
-   Practices highlighted by [OWASP Top 10 for Large Language Model Applications](https://owasp.org/www-project-top-10-for-large-language-model-applications/) will continue to get attention from developers, architects, and technology leaders for adoption in 2024.
-   A framework such as _AI Trust, Risk, and Security Management (AI TRiSM)_ will become more pervasive in 2024, and beyond extending the security practices within an enterprise. Community-driven knowledge bases such as [MITRE ATT&CK](https://attack.mitre.org/) will continue to gain adoption for adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world observations.
-   With the increasing complexity of cyber threats, organizations will continue to adopt proactive approaches as part of Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) to manage and mitigate risks. Growing threats will require stronger cybersecurity measures in 2024 and a focus on a zero-trust security approach.
-   Software Supply Chain Security will continue to be the focus area for DevSecOps promoting a shift-left mindset in enterprise organizations.
-   An emerging security technology such as Post Quantum Cryptography will be in an experimentation stage in 2024 and beyond.

![](https://vedcraft.com/images/2024/06/owasp-top-10-llm.png)

Image Reference:[OWASP Top 10 for LLM](https://owasp.org/www-project-top-10-for-large-language-model-applications/assets/PDF/OWASP-Top-10-for-LLMs-2023-slides-v1_0.pdf)

### #6 — Platform Engineering

> By 2026, 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery — Gartner

-   Enabling developer’s productivity with platform engineering practices such as _self-service capabilities, continuous integration & deployment, continuous delivery, infrastructure automation, applying AI-augmented software development, and more_.
-   Building internal platforms will continue to trend considering the contextual nature of the organization and team to enable productivity. [Click here](https://platformengineering.org/platform-tooling) to see the consolidated list of tools & technologies. While tools and technologies play the enablement role, engineering practices & organizational culture for the developers’ well-being play the pivotal role.
-   [Team Topologies](https://teamtopologies.com/) approach to organizing software engineering teams has emerged as a great reference for building an effective platform engineering team.
-   The measurement of productivity and engineering metrics will continue to be the recommended approach for assessing the maturity of the platform engineering. [DORA](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/devops-sre/using-the-four-keys-to-measure-your-devops-performance) (2018), [SPACE](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3454124) (2021), and [DevEx](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3595878) (2023) are the leading frameworks for measuring engineering and developers’ productivity metrics, which will continue to be adopted by enterprises.
-   The journey from “infrastructure-as-a-code” to the recent trend of “infrastructure-from-code” will continue to be experimented with to enable developers to manage Cloud infrastructure using their favorite programming interface or a new language like [Winglang](https://www.winglang.io/).

### #7 — No-code and Low-code Platforms

> Low-code and No-code Platforms are in the early majority phase — InfoQ Software Architecture and Design Trends Report (2024)

As part of the 2023 technology trend report, low-code and no-code application platforms have been categorized with key players as below (with new additions):

-   _Enterprise low-code platforms:_ With a more readymade ecosystem for building apps such as Mendix, Microsoft Power Apps, Oracle APEX, OutSystems, Pega Infinity, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and more.
-   _Cloud service providers:_ There are cloud-native services to build business apps using [_Azure App Service_](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/app-service/)_,_ [_AWS Amplify_](https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/)_, or_ [_Google Firebase_](https://firebase.google.com/)_._ Additionally, [Azure Power Apps](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/low-code-application-development/), [Google Cloud AppSheet](https://cloud.google.com/appsheet), and [AWS Honeycode](https://www.honeycode.aws/) provide a low-code-focused development ecosystem.
-   _Niche platforms:_ Specific players focusing on specialized areas such as [Creatio](https://www.creatio.com/our-technologies/low-code), [Caspio](https://www.caspio.com/), [Betty Blocks](https://www.bettyblocks.com/), [Zoho](https://www.zoho.com/), [Kintone](https://www.kintone.com/), [Newgen](https://newgensoft.com/), and [Quickbase](https://www.quickbase.com/).

Low-code platforms have extended the objective of rapidly developing and deploying applications by leveraging AI-Assisted Development (AIAD), which accelerates development with the guidance of our built-in virtual co-developer assistants. [Click here](https://medium.com/vedcraft/the-gen-ai-revolution-how-product-companies-are-embracing-generative-ai-to-transform-their-466dbb48af6d) to read about how product companies are leveraging Generative AI.

The trend of adopting low-code and no-code platforms along with specialized SaaS solutions will continue to be on the technology roadmap for enterprises in 2024 and beyond.

### #8— Edge-computing and IoT

> By 2027, 85% of G2000 will rely on cloud providers and connectivity partnership for zero-touch provisioning and zero trust security at the end, reducing the burden on IT staff when using distributed AI functions — IDC Worldwide Cloud FutureScape, 2024

-   Shift to edge computing has been the focus area for distributed applications built in the Cloud with CDNs, Edge Gateways, powerful mobile and IoT devices, etc.
-   Processing data closer to its source will continue in 2024 and beyond for lower latency and improved performance for business applications.
-   Internet of Things has witnessed substantial growth in connected devices and embedded computing power for automation, and the intelligent devices will continue to be built in 2024, and beyond.

### #9 — Green Computing and Sustainability

> By 2027, 25% of CIOs will have compensation linked to their sustainable technology impact — Gartner

-   With the rise of Generative AI, Green computing and Sustainability are of utmost importance considering the power consumption surge by large-language models, and related processing.
-   Organizations have recognized the importance of such practices, and environment-friendly technology solutions will be preferred in 2024, and beyond to support the cause.
-   Gartner predicts the rise of the _Sustainable Technology Framework_ in enterprise organizations to enable environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives for long-term impact.
-   Communities such as the [Green Computing Foundation](https://greencomputingfoundation.org/) will increase awareness of sustainable IT practices promoting environmental responsibility, social equity, and economic development.

![The Sustainable IT Framework is created by Green Computing Foundation.](https://vedcraft.com/images/2024/06/green-computing.png)

Image Credit: [Green Computing Foundation](https://greencomputingfoundation.org/sustainable-it-framework/)

### #10 — FinOps and Cloud Cost Management

> Into 2025, all enterprises will deal with uncertain infrastructure costs and accessibility, triggering the use of stop-gap measures that make cloud economics and data logistics goals harder to achieve — IDC FutureScape 2024 Report

-   With the rise of Generative AI, the organization’s cost considerations are pivotal to support additional costs for LLM tokens usage, compute & storage capacity, network bandwidth, and others.
-   Community-driven initiatives such as [The _FinOps Foundation_](https://www.finops.org/) help with socializing Cloud Cost Management framework and practices, and organizations will continue to start leveraging these in 2024, and beyond.

![FinOps Framework by FinOps Foundation](https://vedcraft.com/images/2024/06/finops-framework.png)

Image Credit: [FinOps Foundation](https://www.finops.org/framework/) licensed under CC BY 4.0

Another interesting trend is to leverage a hybrid cloud or own data center (aka cloud repatriation) for lowering the Cloud Cost footprint or legal/compliance reasons or data sovereignty such as below:

-   Uber’s ledger data archival moved from [AWS DynamoDB to self-managed blob storage](https://www.uber.com/blog/migrating-from-dynamodb-to-ledgerstore/) in their data center to save cost.
-   Hey’s movement f[rom Cloud to own data center](https://world.hey.com/dhh/we-stand-to-save-7m-over-five-years-from-our-cloud-exit-53996caa).

To extend the above list further, these are also the technology trends to watch for:

-   Decentralization, Metaverse, Blockchain, and Web 3.0
-   Quantum Computing
-   Spatial Computing
-   Augmented and Virtual Reality, Extended Reality (XR)
-   Confidential Computing
-   Robotics & RPA
-   Privacy Enhanced Computation
-   Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) with technologies such as Neuralink

To conclude, these are the key top technology trends for 2024 and beyond, which will continue to evolve with new architecture and design patterns. Click on the corresponding links to read about the technology trends published in [**2021**](https://vedcraft.com/tech-trends/top-ten-technology-trends-for-2021/), [**2022**](https://vedcraft.com/tech-trends/top-ten-technology-trends-for-2022/), and [**2023**](https://vedcraft.com/tech-trends/top-ten-technology-trends-for-2023)**.**  
Feel free to share your opinion or thoughts in the comments.

![Top Ten Technology Trends for 2024](https://vedcraft.com/images/2024/06/top-ten-trends-2024.png)

Top Ten Technology Trends for 2024

_References:_

-   [Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2024](https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/gartner-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2024)
-   [Werner Vogels’ Tech Predictions for 2024 and Beyond](https://aws.amazon.com/executive-insights/content/werner-vogels-2024-tech-predictions-and-beyond/)
-   [Forrester Predictions 2024](https://www.forrester.com/predictions/#form)
-   [IDC FutureScape](https://www.idc.com/events/futurescape)
-   [Trends in Tech and Computing by IEEE](https://www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/trends)
-   [CB Insights Tech Trends for 2024](https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/top-tech-trends-2024/)
-   [Deloitte Tech Trends 2024](https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/tech-trends.html)
-   [Info-Tech Tech Trends 2024](https://www.infotech.com/research/ss/tech-trends-2024)

Disclaimer:

_All data and information provided on this blog are for informational purposes only. The author makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, correctness, suitability, or validity of any information on this blog and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. This is a personal view and the opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer or any other organization._