The Top 5 Data Trends to Look Out for in 2022

The role of data is central to corporate strategies, no matter the industry. However, the challenges related to data governance, management, exploitation, and valorization are constantly evolving. Companies must adopt the most promising data and analytics methods as soon as possible. This article will give an overview of the main data trends that will help you tackle 2022 in the best possible conditions.

For organizations, the year 2021 brought two major challenges: the need for economic recovery after the disruptions brought by the pandemic and the realization that data exploitation is essential for being more predictive than reactive.

Each year, the Gartner Institute publishes a list of technological and strategic trends likely to accelerate the growth and digital transformation of companies. For 2022, five of the twelve key trends revealed by Gartner concern data.

Trend 1 – Data Fabric: Flexibility and Agility

According to Gartner, the lever for optimal data exploitation is a Data Fabric. It is designed as a coherent environment for reconciling all types of data, from all types of sources, and can reduce data management efforts by nearly 70%.

Promising flexibility and agility, a Data Fabric avoids data siloing and simplifies its integration into the decision-making and strategic processes of companies. Data Fabric facilitates the use of data, even for non-technical users, and contributes to the development of your organization’s data culture.

Trend 2 – Cloud-Native Platforms: Scalability, Adaptability, Profitability

The second major data trend identified by Gartner is the unavoidable place of Cloud-native platforms in the data ecosystem. These platforms, which promise scalability and adaptability, are a response to both performance and cost control.

The institute points out that Cloud-native platforms, which exploit the basic capabilities of cloud computing to provide scalable and elastic IT capabilities “as a service”, are expected to form the basis of 95% of companies’ digital transformation projects by 2025, compared with 40% by 2021.

Trend 3 – Hyper Automation to Favor Human Intelligence

Faced with the acceleration of time-to-market and the need to return to strong and rapid economic growth, companies are looking for solutions that limit human intervention. The challenge is to win the race against time and refocus human intelligence on value-added tasks.

According to Gartner, hyper automation will be one of the key trends in 2022. This hyper-automation translates into a massive use of advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate processes and augment human capabilities.

In its report, Gartner states that “the most successful hyper-automation teams focus on three key priorities: improving the quality of work, accelerating business processes and increasing decision-making agility.”

Trend 4 – Business Intelligence for Performance

Business Intelligence is based on a set of technologies that enable real-time and granular analysis of data to clarify and facilitate decision-making. This discipline is developing beyond large accounts in the world of SMEs. It relies on a wide range of applications, solutions and methodologies combined to collect data from internal systems and external sources, in order to integrate it into decision-making processes.

According to Gartner’s Data 2022 trends report, “over the next two years, one-third of large organizations will use BI for structured decision making to improve their competitive advantage”.

Trend 5 – AI Engineering: The Ultimate Lever for Growth

AI Engineering addresses the critical mission of automating data updates, models and applications to streamline the use of AI in data analysis. AI Engineering services create the data platforms to deliver operational AI solutions.

AI Engineering is the key lever for value generation by 2025, according to Gartner. The institute predicts that “the 10% of companies that will establish AI engineering best practices will generate at least three times more value than the 90% of companies that will not.”

About Actian Corporation

Actian makes data easy. Our data platform simplifies how people connect, manage, and analyze data across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. With decades of experience in data management and analytics, Actian delivers high-performance solutions that empower businesses to make data-driven decisions. Actian is recognized by leading analysts and has received industry awards for performance and innovation. Our teams share proven use cases at conferences (e.g., Strata Data) and contribute to open-source projects. On the Actian blog, we cover topics ranging from real-time data ingestion, data analytics, data governance, data management, data quality, data intelligence to AI-driven analytics.