Key Trends for 2020: AR/VR, Blockchain and S/4HANA

Enterprises are embracing technology change at a relentless pace. Augmenting disruptive accelerators and edge solutions has become more critical than ever. The pandemic will only accelerate these trends, as organizations look to leverage technology to manage through the crisis and better position themselves for medium to long-term neat future. At the core of these developments are cutting edge technologies and platforms While these technologies represent important innovations for businesses on their own, when combined, they have a much more profound impact on how organizations grow, evolve, and innovate.

Here are the trends that we see taking over the next decade…

Augmented Reality and virtual reality is becoming a new normal for ways of shopping. Apparel and fashion retailers have deployed virtual showrooms and fitting rooms. IKEA has built AR apps and customers can point their phones at spaces and see what different products would look like in their own homes.

One of the most obvious use cases for AR technologies is indoor navigation, and 2020 is expected to be the year that the average consumer gets their first real taste of its potential. People already lean heavily on maps services from both Google and Apple to get around outside, but indoor navigation stands to be the use case that blows the public away. Indoor navigation can provide directions in airports, malls, hospitals, and office campuses.

As both of the first two trends continue to develop and gain traction, it is going to become ever more important to ensure the security and traceability of all of our data and transactions. As companies split workloads into ever-smaller components, distributing them across multiple vendors in the interests of cost and/or specificity, the demand for products or systems that can ensure the integrity of key transactions is going to increase. True (or complete) blockchain-based systems allow for this integrity to be achieved without centralized oversight or control, feeding quite well into the low cost and fully automated environments we will see very shortly.

Any predictions for 2020 without mentioning S/4 migrations would be incomplete. As we have already detailed previously, the end of support date for ECC is coming up fast. While 5 years may seem a long time, for many of the larger organizations this is still going to be a stretch to complete such a major migration in the available time. Factor in the reality that there are only a finite number of experts in the area, and these are already in high demand, and there’s the distinct potential that companies will find it hard to put together project teams if they don’t start planning now.

There have been many discussions about whether SAP will extend the deadline or not, however, to accept that as a risk for one of the most critical systems business has in operation, will be a significant challenge, especially for public companies. SAP has been taking action in this direction by establishing groups like the Selective Data Migration Engagement to help companies who have particularly complex environments or plans, but if the companies do not start putting strategies together soon, this will not help.

Author Name: Aparna Tarafdar