Four technology predictions for 2023
First and foremost, we wish you, your loved ones, and your businesses a wonderful new year. As we start the year, we’d like to share some of our technology predictions for the year ahead. We could have shared 23 predictions for 2023 (or even 2,023 predictions), but we settled on four simple predictions because, as you know, we at IP4B love the number 4!
5G Will not disrupt the Telecom Ecosystem
Much has been said about 5G coming to this country, far too much. The reputable website The Verge, which covers all things tech, headlined “Where was 5G at CES?”. Indeed, in 2019, it seemed to be about 5G, as was in 2021. But after several years of hype, nothing – or almost nothing – is left. Indeed, even though we now see the 5G icon on our mobile devices, it doesn’t seem to change much.
Granted, this is still a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. We still need to make the network ubiquitous, and there need to be even more devices connecting to it. But for now, and for 2023 and maybe even 2024, we believe that 5G will not materially change the telecom world.
Automation Increase will accelerate support for the growth of Artificial Intelligence
Like 5G, there is also a lot of talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning – also known as machine learning.
However, machine learning cannot be done without raw data. It isn’t easy to produce outputs without inputs. The Americans have given us the well-known expression “garbage in, garbage out.” This is where increased automation comes in. Okay, by “automation increase”, we meant a nod to the acronym “AI” for “Artificial Intelligence”.
IP4B is working hard to automate its internal processes. In a future article, we will share more information about the iSPACE™ enterprise information system that it continues to develop. This integrated system covering the business processes (sales, proposal creation, project management, production start-up and billing) allows IP4B to offer very high-quality services at a fraction of the operating costs of other companies in the sector.
IP4B also offers its clients RAVI™, the enterprise business processes automation platform. Indeed, RAVI, an acronym for Automated Voice Interactive Response, is a solution that offers integration with databases and other enterprise applications to enable a personalized response to customer requests.
What makes RAVI genuinely unique is that it learns from its use. For example, imagine a transportation company receiving calls from customers. RAVI can recognize the caller and automatically suggest, for example, their home as a pick-up location. All without human intervention. This use of RAVI is an excellent example of machine learning.
We are convinced that in 2023, to propel artificial intelligence (AI), companies will have to intensify their efforts in automation increase (AI!). The RAVI platform will support organizations in these developments.
SMS will finally be a thing of the past, and the industry will adopt the RCS protocol… even Apple will do it
The SMS protocol was invented in the 1990s to allow cell phones to communicate with each other via short text messages. Most of us remember using this archaic way of entering text on a numeric keypad.
But the SMS protocol has hardly evolved since then. Of course, there was the MMS protocol to send multimedia content, but this is far from modern instant communication tools such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Apple’s iMessage, or enterprise tools such as Cisco Webex or Microsoft Teams. Thus, to fully take advantage of rich communication between devices, the interlocutors must either use the same service or reduce their experience using the SMS protocol.
This silo effect was the case until the free and open protocol called RCS for Rich Communication Services was created. Today, the RCS protocol is supported by almost all telecommunication networks and major device manufacturers. All except Apple.
Far be it from us to put any one player on trial here. Google is taking care of that in the #GetTheMessage campaign. We predict, however, that Apple and other industry laggards, if any remain, will decide to adopt the RCS protocol for the sake of a customer experience that lives up to expectations.
UC Clients will embrace interoperability
Similar to what we said earlier about SMS, today, Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom clients, to name a few, cannot easily communicate with each other. And yet the industry calls these kinds of applications unified communications tools.
If these tools are to replace the traditional telephone service, they must be able to offer rich intercommunication. Some initiatives have already been launched, such as the partnership between Cisco devices and services offered by Microsoft Teams. But it’s not much.
Let’s take the case of home automation services. There are (or were!) several protocols to connect various smart devices within a home: Apple, Google, Samsung, Zigbee, and many others. For example, a Samsung device could not necessarily or quickly connect to an Apple environment. Recognizing this problem, the industry rallied and created the Matter standard to provide interoperability between all devices.
We believe that by 2023 the industry will come together to allow a person using Cisco Webex, for example, to communicate natively with a collaborator using Microsoft Teams without concern and without degrading the customer experience and rich functionality offered by these tools.
SD-WANs will be democratized and become accessible to smaller businesses
We told you about four predictions because at IP4B we like the number 4. But we couldn’t ignore the rise in popularity of SD-WANs. We recently wrote about it in this blog post.
While SD-WANs are not new per se, they are still a network architecture favored only by large enterprises. However, we believe that by 2023 we will see a proliferation of SD-WANs within small businesses to reduce costs, simplify management and provide a higher quality of service.
Summary
We’ve made four predictions (plus one) for 2023. We can’t predict the future, but we believe these are four (five!) key trends that will come true in 2023.
If you are concerned about the (non) coming of 5G, the increase in automation to support artificial intelligence, the adoption of RCS protocol to replace SMS, the unification of unified communications clients, or the democratization of SD-WANs, do not hesitate to contact one of our consultants at sales@ip4b.ca. Also, feel free to forward this article to a colleague.
And once again, we wish you a wonderful New Year for you, your loved ones, and your businesses.