Info-Tech’s Tech Trends 2024: Insights for Product and Marketing
Seizing Market Opportunities and Mitigating Product Risks in AI: From Business Model Transformation to Digital Sovereignty and Security
By Joanne Morin Correia
Included Research:
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Info-Tech’s Tech Trends 2024: Insights for Product and Marketing
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Executive Summary
Welcome to the era of the Generative Enterprise. IT must balance the demand for harnessing AI's capabilities with protecting the organization’s information technology to ensure they do not expose the organization to possible risks of AI. This balance also includes meeting market expectations in software product marketing and development. This article offers an overview of Info-Tech’s top tech trends in 2024 related to product marketing, exploring how customers will approach investments in AI, spatial computing, security, digital sovereignty, and more in the upcoming year.
Introduction
Last year, our Tech Trends 2023 report featured generative AI as one of our seven trends. We advised firms to experiment with productive AI tools and curate data sets for the purpose of training models. It’s safe to say this trend had significantly more impact on the market than others, and this year, we’re focusing our report on exploring its many implications for IT.
Generative AI heralds the age of Exponential IT, a pivotal era for new business models and organizational autonomization. IT faces increasing demand while balancing high risks and rewards. IT must evolve as a business partner, integrating AI for cheap and accurate predictions at scale. CIOs are crucial in guiding AI's responsible use, aligning it with organizational values to prevent potential harm.
Today, Info-Tech’s Tech Trends 2024 shows AI might usher in the era of "MMMs" (multimodal models) after the dominance of LLMs (large language models) in 2023. These multimodal models will handle various input modes like images, text, or audio and generate multiple output methods. Today, developers using ChatGPT or its API often face limitations related to the model's attention span, hindering their ability to provide specific context. While large models are versatile, industries demanding accuracy, such as legal and pharmaceutical, require specific data sets and human verification.
We have identified the following six AI-centric tech trends set to define the coming year:
Seize Opportunities
AI-Driven Business Models – AI models now focus on making predictions about the core product, using neural networks trained on historical data and human feedback.
Autonomized Back Office – Generative AI enhances automation in business systems, handling tasks like classification and content creation for more self-regulating systems.
Spatial Computing – This technology merges digital and physical worlds, using natural interactions and augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies for user engagement.
Mitigate Risks
Responsible AI – Companies should proactively adopt responsible AI practices in anticipation of future regulations to minimize compliance risks.
Security by Design – Security measures must be integral to AI software development, anticipating vulnerabilities and implementing solid defenses.
Digital Sovereignty – In the AI era, data ownership and rights issues are crucial, primarily as AI technologies collect extensive web-sourced data.
AI Adopters vs. AI Skeptics
AI adopters are using AI to automate repetitive tasks, and they show interest in expanding its role in content creation and IT operations. Many organizations already use AI for automation, with more planning to adopt it in 2024 across various operational areas. AI adopters will use AI in several strategic areas by the end of 2024:
- 77% for business analytics and intelligence.
- 71% to identify risks and improve security.
Most skeptics won’t apply AI in any of these areas.
AI adopters are much more optimistic than skeptics. Two-thirds of adopters say AI will bring benefits to their businesses. But skeptics aren’t doom and gloom either – half are merely on the fence about it, anticipating a balance of benefits and challenges. Only 3% of skeptics feel their business faces an existential threat from AI, and no adopters are in this camp. Transformers, or organizations that rank themselves at the top of Info-Tech’s IT maturity scale, are like AI adopters in this area, with two-thirds also saying they feel optimistic about AI in operational task automation.
Most adopters and skeptics seem to agree that they are more interested in seeing AI automate tasks rather than augmenting operational staff in their decision making.
Source: Info-Tech’s Tech Trends 2024 report
Impact on Product Managers
The trends poised to shape the upcoming year encompass both seizing opportunities and mitigating risks. On the opportunity side, the AI-Driven Business Models trend focuses on leveraging AI predictions as core products, while Autonomized Back Office uses generative AI for tasks like classification and content creation. Spatial Computing, blending the digital with the physical, leverages natural interactions and augmented reality for enhanced user engagement. On the risk mitigation front, Responsible AI urges early adoption of ethical frameworks in anticipation of regulations, and Security by Design emphasizes embedding security in AI software from the start. Digital Sovereignty addresses concerns over data ownership and rights in the AI era.
The tech trends mentioned above directly and profoundly impact future product roadmap planning:
- AI-Driven Business Models: Integrate AI into product roadmaps for new or enhanced AI-powered products. Use AI for predictive analytics to gain deeper customer insights.
- Autonomized Back Office: Embed generative AI in back-office operations to streamline data management and content generation, improving product development efficiency.
- Spatial Computing: Develop products combining digital and physical realms using AR/VR technologies for immersive experiences, like AR-enhanced retail apps.
- Responsible AI and Security by Design: Include ethical AI practices and robust security measures in early product development to address AI vulnerabilities.
- Digital Sovereignty: Design products with data ownership and privacy in mind, ensuring compliance with regional regulations and user data transparency and control.
These trends highlight the need for product roadmaps to be more adaptable, data-driven, and focused on integrating advanced AI technologies while ensuring AI's ethical and secure use. Software providers must address risk tolerance in their marketing strategies and establish clear boundaries through top-level leadership for effective governance both for their company and their customers.
This change requires a forward-looking approach, anticipating market changes and customer needs driven by these evolving technologies. Move beyond the hype to build and implement a strategic plan to adopt generative AI and outpace competitors. Review Build Your Generative AI Roadmap, Develop Responsible AI Guiding Principles, and Identify and Select Pilot AI Use Cases.
Impact on Product Marketing
For product marketers, these trends open a different set of opportunities and challenges to consider for using AI, both in driving promotional activities and introducing additional risks to consider.
- AI-Driven Business Models: Use AI for enhanced customer segmentation and predictive analytics in marketing. Leverage AI to create more dynamic, targeted campaigns and personalized experiences by anticipating consumer trends and preferences.
- Autonomized Back Office: Implement generative AI for efficient content creation and data management. AI-generated content can be audience specific, enhancing engagement and providing real-time marketing insights for agile campaign adjustments.
- Spatial Computing: Integrate AR/VR into marketing for immersive and interactive experiences, which are especially effective in retail, real estate, and entertainment. Use virtual showrooms and demos to boost customer engagement.
- Responsible AI: Align marketing with ethical AI practices, ensuring transparency, non-discrimination, and respect for privacy. Position ethical AI use as a brand value to attract privacy-conscious consumers.
- Security by Design: Incorporate robust security in AI-powered marketing tools to protect customer data and prevent security risks. Emphasize security as a key brand trust factor.
- Digital Sovereignty: Address data ownership and privacy concerns in marketing strategies. Ensure transparency in data use, comply with regional data protection laws, and offer customer data control.
In conclusion, these tech trends necessitate a more adaptive, ethical, and technologically advanced approach to marketing. Marketers will need to develop strategies that not only leverage the capabilities of AI and emerging technologies but also address the associated ethical and security concerns. This means moving toward more personalized, efficient, and responsible marketing practices.
Recommendations
What does this boil down to for marketing and product leaders? To capitalized on trends mentioned in Info-Tech’s Tech Trends 2024, we recommend the following:
Enhanced Product Customization With AI: Use AI for personalized marketing and product customization and analyzing user data for tailored software features and predicting market trends. This approach improves customer engagement and positions software products as adaptive and responsive to individual needs.
Showcasing Software With AR/VR: Use AR and VR for interactive demonstrations of software features and functionalities, offering virtual demos and simulations for a more immersive customer experience. AR/VR can simulate real-world applications or provide immersive training and support for service-oriented software, enhancing customer understanding and experience.
Ethical Practices and Security in Marketing: Emphasize responsible AI use and robust security in software marketing, ensuring transparency and compliance with data protection laws to build customer trust and address privacy and security concerns. This approach aligns with ethical standards and resonates with a customer base increasingly concerned about digital privacy and security.
The stakes are clear, and governance policies based on responsible AI frameworks are taking shape. In the meantime, organizations are planning for AI to feature in strategy and risk management capabilities. By focusing on these strategies, software marketers can effectively navigate the evolving landscape of AI technology, ensuring their products are seen as both innovative and trustworthy, thus appealing to a broad and discerning customer base.
Other Related Publication and Deliverables
Tech Trends 2024 Methodology
The Tech Trends 2024 report is informed by Info-Tech’s recent Future of IT survey, which received responses from 848 industry professionals in IT or directing IT functions. The underlying metrics for the 2024 report are diverse, with insights from 15 countries and regions spanning North and South America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Additionally, the perspectives captured encompass 16 industries, including government, professional services, manufacturing, education, healthcare, financial services, telecom, and retail.
Info-Tech conducts brainstorming exercises with its expert advisors and former CIOs to determine the implications of megatrends for technology decision makers. The Future of IT survey is developed based on the lines of inquiry suggested by those implications. Analysts with functional area expertise then design hypotheses tested in the survey results. The trends featured in this report are based on those results. Info-Tech’s Priorities reports also leverage this research, determining the urgency with which external pressures must be responded to for different functional roles.