Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are redefining the enterprise IT landscape, as across verticals see the potential for AI and ML to automate repetitive tasks and solve complex problems. But just how far does the potential of AI/ML reach?
GigaOm co-founder and CEO Ben Book recently appeared on an episode of the 7investing podcast with 7investing Founder and CEO Simon Erickson to discuss technology trends. He says most enterprises know that AI and ML will impact their business, but some are still trying to figure out just how the technology will work for them.
“The early adopters were webscale and high growth new industry and digital companies, like Google, Twitter, Uber, Facebook, investing in data scientists and other data-intensive industries such as finance and insurance,” says Book.
He says that while AI and ML have already made their mark in verticals like finance and insurance, adoption will soon extend to traditional verticals such as media, retail, manufacturing, and healthcare. And one key reason for that is the ease of adoption enabled by the cloud and maturing AI/ML stacks.
“They can now leverage the power of the cloud and other AI technologies that are mature to deploy easily, versus the nascent technology the early adopters stitched together to do AI,” says Book. “All of these mainstream enterprises will start with their core applications to drive ROI and TCO. The easiest applications to start are using AI with digital and modern products/services they have been building for the past couple years—like mobile apps, IoT, predictive maintenance, and personalization.”
The conversation turned to another key trend in business technology: the emergence of low-code/no-code development. Many organizations are embracing low-code and no-code solutions to empower so-called citizen developers—business people and power users who lack coding skills but often step in to help create applications for business purposes.
“This is real—enterprises want to move faster and deliver services to businesses and customers faster,” says Book. “This helps them do it more easily with less technical staff resources. Not all applications will work with this based on complexity and technical requirements, but the line of business apps that need to be created to test new ideas with customers is a great use case. And you can then scale the use case fast across the company and integrate it with appropriate additional applications and data sources.”
Book says low code and no code is also a mega trend emerging across the broader technology landscape as providers try to make their tools easier to use so any business user can engage with them.
“Snowflake is a good example of how they democratized the data warehouse for all, you don’t need to be a DBA to use it and get business analytics insight,” says Book, who says no-code/low-code is just one area being impacted. “We see this happening across AI, data, cloud, mobile, and security.”
Read the full interview
