Published on the 13/10/2022 | Written by Heather Wright

Value of emerging tech questioned …

If you’re banking on returns from Web3, zero trust edge and even explainable AI and intelligent agents in the near future, you might want to think again, with Forrester saying some tech just isn’t ready yet.

The tech sector runs on hype, perhaps more so than any other sector – witness Gartner’s Hype Cycle model – and that hype can lure in many a company to spend both money, and time, on emerging technologies.

“Most firms barrel into emerging technology expecting immediate returns, only to be disappointed.”

Now, research and advisory firm Forrester has included a new framework in its annual emerging technologies report, including attempting to answer whether a technology can help your company and, if so, when.

And while the hype around some technologies is sky high, it suggests some technologies just aren’t ready yet. 

The report says six technologies – cloud native computing, natural language processing, edge intelligence, explainable AI and privacy preserving technologies – will create ‘significant’ ROI over the next four years. 

Of those, Forrester says cloud native computing and NLP are already delivering value for some companies. It suggests companies should be implementing both technologies now. 

The remaining four are longer term plays which companies should be planning for or experimenting with.

Then there’s the four ‘frontier’ technologies – extended reality, Web3, zero trust edge and TuringBots – and Forrester says they won’t be generating any positive returns for most clients for five or more year. 

Brian Hopkins, Forrester VP Emerging Tech Portfolio, says “We all want the magic that new technologies such as Web3 and TuringBots promise.”

Forrester’s more subdued take on emerging technologies comes against a backdrop of heavy investment for some companies in those technologies – including the much hyped ‘metaverse’. 

The company has forecast global tech spending to reach more than US$4.8 trillion in 2023 as two-thirds of technology decision makers increase their tech budgets, despite ongoing economic uncertainty.

Forrester’s own research shows 65 percent of firms polled are increasing spend on emerging technology this year. 

KPMG’s 2022 Technology Survey, admittedly of US executives, showed similar bullishness for emerging technologies, with 70 percent saying they expected to have a ‘significant presence’ in virtually every major emerging technology over the next two years. 

Those technologies included the metaverse, Web3 – both of which are yet to even be clearly defined – crypto, NFTs, quantum computing, VR/AR, 5G and edge computing. 

A whopping 58 percent said they were planning metaverse investments – though what exactly was unclear, no doubt because the metaverse itself is as yet decidedly unclear – while 62 percent planned to invest in Web3, and 37 percent said they planned investment in both technologies. 

At odds with that, however, was that 65 percent said they’re waiting for competitions to invest in or adopt the technologies before they themselves splurged.

Hopkins says those big budget increases make it hard to separate all the shiny toys from the technologies that actually are important.

That’s not to say, however, that companies shouldn’t be looking at some of those more ‘emerging’ technologies: TuringBots – an emerging (and the emphasis here is very much on emerging) technology using AI and ML to learn to code your enterprise applications – Web3, Zero Trust edge and extended realility should be on companies’ watch lists, Hopkins says.

AI written code, a la TuringBots, has been criticised by some coders as being buggy and containing potentially dangerous cybersecurity flaws.

He says knowing when to expect benefits from the technologies is crucial for companies.

“Most firms barrel into emerging technology expecting immediate returns, only to be disappointed,” he says, adding that blockchain is a great example. 

“We’ve seen clients’ high hopes for blockchain dashed on the rocks of reality, not just for technical reasons but also because of business and partner readiness. 

“This doesn’t mean blockchain is bad; it just means these companies didn’t have a sense of benefits timing to set their expectations,” he says.

Understanding when a technology might benefit mainstream companies is one – important – thing, but understanding your own company is also critical.

“If you are ahead of the curve, you can likely take more risk, but how much?”

Hopkins more subdued  – many would say realistic and intelligent – response to the emerging technologies echoes one of his colleagues. 

In August, the company put out its planning guide for 2023 corporate tech spend, recommending companies rein in tech spending. 

Chris Gardner, Forrester VP, research director, says unlike the pandemic response which demanded huge investments in technology to provide new delivery models, digital experiences and remote work, the current economic headwinds bring with them a need for ‘optimisation and rationalisation while maintaining resilient, modern environments, all without undercutting the organisation’s future fit strategy’.

He says when it comes to emerging tech, some caution and investment reduction is necessary, though ‘total elimination would be a mistake, because it is these investments and experiments that often help the business create hard-to-copy innovation and leapfrog rivals with sustainable competitive differentiation’.

He’s advocating experimenting with cloud native computing that enables agility at scale, edge intelligence that brings analytics to the customer and, surprisingly, those TuringBots.

As for one of the most hyped ‘technologies’ around, the metaverse, it doesn’t even make a showing on Forrester’s emerging technology list. 

“It doesn’t exist yet, even if existing virtual worlds and games try to pretend otherwise by simply relabelling themselves as ‘metaverse’, Martha Bennet, Forrester VP, principal analyst, says in a blog. 

Forrester says the benefits from Web3 – for which US$30 billion in venture funding was provided in 2021 – and metaverse are at least five years, if not more, away from generating any value for most traditional companies.