2023 has been the year of Gen AI, and Asia Pacific has led the way — with two-thirds of companies already investing in Gen AI or exploring potential use cases. More and more companies are investing in such new technologies as a business priority rather than just something “good to have” as leaders assess how to get the most out of every buck.
In 2024 and beyond, businesses in Asia-Pacific will continue to embrace and leverage emerging technologies for business benefits and growth.
Some of these upcoming trends will include:
Generative AI hype will move from models to operationalisation
In 2024, organisations will continue to innovate and build Artificial Intelligence (AI) models, but, as with previous AI cycles, businesses will need to increase investment in machine learning (ML) operations.
How quickly and effectively an AI model can make predictions or decisions will be affected by model optimisations, hardware and software optimisations, including CPU accelerators and data preprocessing. To succeed at making improvements to AI models, I urge businesses to deploy them at the edge.
But work does not stop there, as these models will need to be monitored for data and model drift once they are in action. The challenge for businesses would be to address any changes in the data or model and integrate these deployments into existing governance models.
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By ensuring continuous improvement, businesses will have the potential to surpass previous thresholds of success. Model supply chains, A/B testing, and feature store management frameworks will also need to be developed or integrated. For organisations using multi-cloud services and dealing with various data sources they cannot afford to ignore flexible architectures to avoid cloud concentration risks and lock-in.
Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud adoption will lead to distributed architectures
Enterprises are now diving headfirst into the realm of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies by strategically weaving together the finest offerings from different cloud providers tailored to their business needs.
This trend is set to continue well into 2024 as organisations embark on a quest to fine-tune their cloud expenditures to elevate the effectiveness and dependability of their applications. As the approach matures, it’s not just about optimising costs — it’s a journey toward technical and operational agility to unlock the full potential of distributed architectures.
Embracing distributed computing is merely the prelude; the key to success depends on the widespread adoption of distributed databases, which should provide the foundation for developers to create innovative architectural models. The cloud revolution is not just about adoption but a combination of optimisation and architectural evolution.
Compute performance demands will be escalated
Meeting the escalating performance demands of applications has become a formidable challenge for enterprises in the modern landscape. This is a primary concern that revolves around the adverse consequences stemming from subpar user experiences.
Modern consumers anticipate, and in certain instances demand, flawlessly smooth and highly responsive interactions with applications. Any delays in this regard can lead to dissatisfaction and a decline in trust towards the brand.
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This challenge will likely evolve in 2024 as enterprises embrace the proliferation of interconnected devices, which are all reliant on real-time data exchange across distributed systems to deliver a satisfactory user experience, ensuring that reliable and efficient communication among machines becomes indispensable.
Immediate demand for expertise to keep up with the cost of compute
As businesses increasingly turn to cloud infrastructure and services, the collective expenses associated with data storage, computing power, and egress bandwidth can swiftly strain financial resources and impact overall profitability.
Beyond the immediate financial challenges posed by computational costs, concerns with vendor lock-in and reliance on specific cloud providers or proprietary technologies and abstractions can also make transitioning to alternative solutions challenging, resulting in substantial migration expenses or operational disruptions.
Mitigating these challenges demands expertise in cloud technologies, software development, and system administration. Enterprises will need to maintain a skilled workforce capable of effectively managing and optimising their applications to provide the best performance while sustaining a competitive cost structure.
Looking ahead — not only in 2024 but even beyond — innovation and entrepreneurship in the Asia Pacific are on the rise, making it very important to democratise access to new technology for enterprises, regardless of their size and scale. Cloud platforms will need to remain simple, easy to use, and developer-friendly so that our economy’s engines can enjoy long-term benefits and maximise the advancements of emerging technologies.
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