3 Emerging Digital Business Technologies to Watch

by Katie Bartenslager

Aragon Research recently introduced its 2021 Technology Arc for Digital Business. This 2021 edition features 29 technology profiles that are split between emerging, adopting, and mature arcs.

This blog will go over what an Aragon Technology Arc is and give you a preview of 3 emerging technologies featured in this new report.

What is the Aragon Research Technology Arc?

The Technology Arc will enable enterprises to understand both the maturity of the technology as well as its potential impact on the enterprise.

The Emerge Arc is when the technology or capability first starts to appear as a viable technology that can be leveraged in the product. The first part of emergence is when the technology appears outside of a pure research environment. Commercial pilots and first-generation product offerings appear in the first half of the Emerge Arc, followed by the growth of the market that includes the technology.

The Adopt Arc is when the technology is part of a product suite and is starting to be adopted into products, or general adoption of the product class itself is going on. The first third to first half section of the arc indicates that the entry is still in an early adoption phase.

The Mature Arc reflects the fact that all technologies mature. In this phase, the opportunity to gain efficiencies through lower costs is larger than earlier phases. Some enterprises wait for maturation before attempting to deploy.

Three Emerging Technologies for Digital Business

Digital business is about business model changes that are specifically designed to enable organizations to proactively reach, serve, and support their customers and partners from their contextual perspective.

In order to do so, organizations are looking for established or emerging technologies to help support their digital business model. They can find the right technologies for their specific needs in Aragon’s Technology Arc. 

For example, three emerging technologies recognized in The Aragon Research Technology Arc for Digital Business, 2021 written by CEO and Lead Analyst, Jim Lundy, and VP of Research, Betsy Burton, are: Immersive customer experience (Cei), Augmented Reality (AR), and Robotic Telepresence. 

Here’s a breakdown of each technology:

1. Immersive customer experience (Cei)

Aragon is predicting that immersive customer experience will reach full maturity in 3-5 years and will have an evolutionary impact on the market. Cei is a collection of technologies that enable customers to get a realistic understanding and experience of a product or service. Cei takes advantage of virtual reality technologies, an advanced display, and increasingly, AI. 

Today, Cei is supported with physical installations. More and more companies are using room exhibits to give an immersive experience. For example, IKEA has come out with an art installation, Blue City Dream, which consists of their IKEA beds and different displayed art to convey customer emotions creating a “dream-like” shopping experience.

In the future, Cei can combine with other emerging technologies to be compatible with IoT devices such as headphones so customers can get a more realistic experience online. This will ultimately evolve the shopping experience and the digital business market.

2. Augmented Reality (AR)

We all know what augmented reality (AR) is on the rise. We have seen it in video games and we are now seeing it in the workplace. Aragon is predicting that augmented reality will reach full maturity in 3-5 years and will have an evolutionary impact on the market as it keeps being used in new ways. 

Augmented reality (AR) leverages graphic images to overlay on top of a physical environment and often requires a device, such as a cell phone or a set of glasses. 

In a recent blog by Jim Lundy and Craig Kennedy, they discuss the recent improvement of collaboration with the use of virtual reality through Cisco Hologram and Microsoft Mesh. They state that with Microsoft Mesh, “users can join an immersive meeting using video to look and talk to each other and to work on projects or objects.” With Microsoft Mesh, “Microsoft Mesh for Teams allows people to join a meeting using an avatar or a headset and also collaborate on objects or documents.”

Instead of video games, companies are now evolving virtual reality to make meetings more immersive during the hybrid work era.

3. Robotic Telepresence

Aragon is predicting that Robotic Telepresence will reach full maturity in 3-5 years and will have a transformative impact on the market. 

Robotic telepresence blends robotics, drones, and video into one category. Robots are intelligent machines that can move around and act upon objects in the real world, either autonomously or via remote control. 

Devices can now move autonomously and have embedded video systems (screen, camera, microphone, and speakers) to allow people in other locations to participate in remote office activities, perform industrial inspections, and go into hazardous areas.

Are you ready for a robot server? Or instead of physically being in a meeting, your robot could attend with virtual videos of you? What about having a robot as your manager? These circumstances seem almost out of a movie, but this market will completely transform digital business workplaces to look just like that.

Bottom Line

Watch out for these three digital business technologies. These technologies can be used together or apart and make a huge impact on digital business. Want to read about more emerging technologies? Or check out technologies in the adopt and mature arc? You can read the whole report here.