It is no secret that British Columbia (BC) is one of the biggest technology hubs in Canada. The region gets revenue of more than $23 million and $15 billion in GDP from its more than 10,000 tech companies. One of the driving factors of the province's technological innovation is its quickly expanding, highly educated, and a flexible workforce consisting of young, diverse, and enthusiastic talent. So energetic is this workforce that it has been very swift at embracing the "new normal" and even set the course for the rest of the world.

Adapting to the contactless world

BC's businesses have relied on the region's tech prowess to pivot, collaborate, and innovate to come up with practical ways to handle the COVID pandemic. This has seen a number of technological trends, both old and new.

The following three themes have inspired most of such current trends:

• People centricity. People are still important to all businesses, even if the pandemic has changed how they work and access companies. Digitalized processes have become more useful.
• Resilient delivery. Volatility has to occur, even when the world is experiencing a recession or a pandemic. Businesses have pivoted and adapted to weather the disruptions that arose in 2020.
• Location independence. Most physical organizational ecosystems and where customers, suppliers, and employees exist seem to have changed. A subsequent technological shift has offered support to the new way of doing business.

Top technology trends to close out 2021

As BC businesses continue to adjust their operations, the following are the technology trends you can expect to see more of this year:

Artificial intelligence (AI) 
Even though AI has received a lot of buzz before the start of this decade, its notable effects on life, work, and recreation are profound. Therefore, it continues to be a huge technological trend as businesses in the region continue to use it in diverse ways. It is already famous for its application in navigation apps, voice and image recognition, ride-sharing apps, smartphone personal assistants, and much more.

The emerging uses of AI include in the analysis of interactions to know the underlying connections and insights. This can make things like hospital services' demand prediction easier, which then allows authorities to make better resource utilization decisions. Additionally, they can detect changes in customer behaviour patterns by analyzing real-time data, which can make them enhance user experiences and drive revenue.

Robotic process automation (RPA)
Like AI, robotic process automation is one other technology that is causing massive job automation. It involves automating various business processes like processing transactions, interpreting applications, replying to emails, and even dealing with data, with the use of the software. If there is a repetitive task done by people at your company, RPA can do it.

Forrester Research estimates that it could cause roughly nine percent of the global workforce (230 million individuals) to be laid off. However, it is also creating new employment opportunities and disrupting the current ones as a Mckinsey report says that about 60 percent of jobs can be partially automated, while only less than five percent can be completely automated. Figuring out the tasks that you can automate will help you know the high-level tasks that your employees should focus on and generate more profits.

Edge computing 
While it was still an emerging technology before the pandemic, cloud computing has become immensely popular this year. The big sharks in the industry like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform have gained a huge share of the market. As numerous businesses continue to embrace cloud computing to support their remote work-from-home staff, it has ceased being an emerging technology. Edge computing has taken its place.

The rise of edge computing has been occasioned by the shortcomings associated with cloud computing. This includes latency and the transportation of huge volumes of data to a data center for processing.

With edge computing, organizations get "mini data centers" closer to where computing should happen to process time-sensitive data. It can occur in remote locations with minimal or zero connection to a centralized location. This technology can help to smoothen your company's remote working capabilities and strengthen your long-term operating strategy.

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)
VR, which immerses a user in an environment, has widely been used in gaming with Vancouver hosting about four of the top 10 most exciting Canadian startups in the sector. However, the technology is also being integrated into various forms of training and virtual tourism. For virtual tourism, museum-goers can get a deeper, all-around experience.

AR and VR's global market is expected to reach $209.2 billion by 2022. Its potential in your business includes areas such as entertainment, marketing, education, and injury rehabilitation, depending on your industry.

Blockchain 
When you think of blockchain, the first thing that comes to mind may be cryptocurrency. However, online currency is just one of the many uses that blockchain has. The technology's potential to offer enhanced security makes it highly trustworthy. With blockchain, you can only add to the available data, but not remove from or change it. Additionally, no one entity can have supreme control over the data, since blockchains are consensus-driven.

Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity has been around for a while, but it keeps evolving by the day and its importance grows with the growth of the internet. New threats continue to frighten individuals, businesses, and even government entities. This makes it essential for individuals and companies offering cybersecurity services to develop better strategies to stop hackers who continue to find mechanisms to bypass even the toughest security measures. The migration of most business operations to cloud-based environments has also increased the need for tighter cybersecurity.

When cyber-criminals infiltrate your company's network, they not only access your employees' personal data but also your proprietary business information. The following are some of the steps you can take to improve your company's online security:

• Conduct regular software updates
• Make sure your point of sale and online transactions have end-to-end encryption
• Regularly train your employees on how they can recognize online scams, malware, and phishing attacks
• Institute security processes and protocols for physical security on-site and passwords
• Hire a business consultant or IT expert to help with cybersecurity

Coleman Technologies is your top-rated IT partner

As a business, employing efficient technology to secure your operations, make them leaner and more efficient should be your top priority. This will help you remain profitable and more relevant, which means you can scale easily when the pandemic finally fades out. However, it can be hard to determine which technologies to apply and in what ways. A reliable IT partner like Coleman Technologies can help.

We offer a wide range of enterprise-level IT support and solutions to small and medium-sized businesses in the British Columbia area. Our services free you to focus on the core functions of your business, which leads to enhanced productivity and more profits. Contact us today to tell us more about your business and know the technologies that can help take it to the next step.