Technological Innovation Assignment On Current Trends
Question
Task: Write a report on current trends on technological innovation and disruptive technologies. Identify few examples of current trends in technological innovation and then focus the report on one innovation in detail. You must be able to identify
Answer
Introduction to the case scenario of technological innovation assignment
Technology, innovations and current trends in computing and disruptive technology are high in market demand. Companies these days have completely transformed and are using such technologies to develop products and services to aid human life. This report on technological innovation assignment defines technological innovations and disruptive technology in brief at initial paragraphs and then discusses current, emerging trends and innovations regardingtechnology. Later, as a main part – edge computing, one of the trends is elaborated in terms of business advantages and disadvantages. Data storage, computation and savings in bandwidth are some eye-catching benefits whereas privacy, security and power consumption are few disadvantages that can be overcome. IBM uses edge computing for wider business goals. Finally, the report on technological innovation assignment is concluded with major findings gathered with respect to chosen trend.
Technological Innovations
A technology is a novel approach of innovating to help human daily chores those were difficult manually. It is an implementation of machine, tool or program based on prior knowledge and understanding with the help of complex algorithms. The innovations of technologies are prevalent these days since many new things have been introduced in industries including disruptive technology as defined next.
Disruptive Technology
A new technology that replaced ancient and well-established technology considering out-dated.The disruptive technology provides new platform to trends and innovations to grow and conquer markets through its ways of providing helpfulness in daily lives. These technologies have changed the way of activities entirely due to its invention (Christensen et al. 2015). Following section of technological innovation assignment provides list of some important disruptive technologies currently in demand.
Current & EmergingTrends inTechnological Innovations
This section of technological innovation assignment discusses current trends and technological innovations related to computing (Uzzaman 2019). The list and brief introduction to each trend is as followed.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
A technology that when introduced promised to make reality of imagination. As time passed by the words became true to greatest extent. Today, AI has become an essential part of human daily routine. Some prominent examples include Alexa, Siri and Google assistant. By 2020, it was projected that emotion recognition and computer vision will prove AI’s breakthrough in the market (Moore 2020). Many companies have started manufacturing products and offering services those are rich in AI technologies; these companies include some start-ups too that have made prominent marks till date.
Internet of Things (IoT)
Internet of Things as name suggests the use of things or devices connected to each other capable of transferring information to form a network. It created a buzz in the market when introduced but applications implemented using IoT did not make impact in mainstream market. IoT is currently been used by Amazon for offering more clear vision and experience of product before buying.
Edge Computing
Computing hardware need betterment over and over again for the ever-changing performance needs.Edge computing hardware includes devices such as sensors and those that are main components to Artificial Intelligence. These devices noted in the context of technological innovation assignment are required to have internet capabilities and decision-making intelligence hence processing units are individually fit into such hardware. Some processing chips are also known as brain chips or AI chips since they can process complex AI algorithms too. Edge computing bridges the gap between data storage and computation (Collins 2019).
Quantum Computing
It was projected that with the very beginning of 2020, quantum computing will hit the computing world (QuantumXChange 2020). As data is increasing each day in health care industry and many other fields as well, quantum computing will offer new horizon to data analysis by handling data for many serious concerns such as nuclear energy and disease treatments. Many leading companies including Intel, IBM, Google, etc moved to Quantum Computing.
Progression in Aerospace Technologies
Aerospace technologies are not latest and advancements are being done since ages. Be it invention of rocket for orbiting around different planets or manufacturing spaceships and sky labs, aerospace technologies have been important part of human inventions with respect to space. The trends are still upcoming in near future with many innovations and evolutions in existing aerospace technologies.
Progression in Agriculture
With several machines and techniques introduced in the sector of agriculture, in future more innovations are projected with the help of AI and Big Data. The sensors and techniques will help monitor crops effectively without farmers to be present on field.It is more likely that robots can be placed in the fields for cutting crops and monitors them.
Autonomous Driving
The investigation on technological innovation assignment illustrates that an autonomous driving also known as autopilot mode in Tesla cars when introduced opened eyes wide all over the world. It has many advantages as claimed by the company but also can risk life its machine failed. The evolutions are being made and it is projected that in late 2020, new progressions will be introduced with zero risk of accidents (Francis 2020).
Blockchain Technology
Blockchain technology has evolved tremendously and helped many financial companies to grow as it offers high end of security that prevents frauds. Blockchain technologies have grabbed eyes since many years now and many new inventions in it are going to flourish in near future. IBM is using blockchain technology to develop application useful for payment transactions.
Edge Computing
The concept of edge computing mentioned hereintechnological innovation assignment refers to the important part of a network and computing topology that enables devices to gather and process information produced by people surrounding the devices. Many researchers have defined edge computing in different manner but summing up all, it can help devices to computer values based on information received before transferring it to another device or store it in cloud. Edge computing go hand in hand with another disruptive technology – Artificial Intelligence.
Edge computing specifically focuses on evolving hardware components required in AI and IoT applications for better computation so that performance so attained is high comparatively.In edge computing, data storage and computation are performed in distributed manner at the device itself which gathers the information from real world rather than depending on central applications and servers to respond for each event.Traditionally, device with no computational capabilities could only send information to cloud storage where applications used to perform computations and send information back to the respected device for triggering an event. This process in traditional AI and IoT applications required more time for transactions. Hence use of edge computing has enabled hardware to be capable of computation as well as temporary data storage.Many advantages have been experienced using edge computing hardware especially it has solved latency issues to the larger extent.
The research on technological innovation assignment mentions that edge computing is beneficial to companies since it saved huge sum of amount as transactions for sending data for computation is saved. The local computation minimizes amount of data processing at cloud servers located centrally for processing and data storage.Many devices placed in real environment gather data continuously as a result there is a huge data collected from one device. Similarly, as IoT involves many such devices deployed at different locations, the enormous data collection can be imagined.
The devices included in edge computing are IoT sensors, notebook PCs, cameras, phones, microwave oven, etc. All these devices must have internet capabilities so that information processed or gathered could be stored. Many internetworking devices are now converted to edge computing hardware so that they can sense the environment, collect data, process it and also ensure connectivity of devices in the network; these are known as edge gateways. The devices laid down in IoT are similar as edge computing infrastructure, the difference lies in smartness of devices connected in edge infrastructure (Shaw 2019).
Many companies benefited as it has solved latency and performance issues of IoT applications as a whole.Next section of technological innovation assignment describes competitive advantages to IBM of using edge computing.
CompetitiveAdvantages to IBM – a company that uses Edge Computing
Specifically, it is evident in the technological innovation assignment that IBM is currently using many perks of edge computing and finds it suitable to meet all its requirements with regards to cloud computing, 5G, IoT and AI applications. Edge computing has solved IBM’s issues in terms of speed and scalability. Continuous delivery is ensured as processing is distributed over the edge devices in the network. With the help of edge computing, IBM can imagine its business outside of the server rooms. The company has named its edge computing module as IBM cloud that spans to various business and start-ups.
IBM Cloud is a set of cloud computing services that offers Platform (Paas) and Infrastructure (IaaS) as a Service. A component that utilizes edge computing is named as IBM Edge Application Manager where application environments of thousands of applications are managed. It offers medium and larger business to extend the cloud infrastructure from private and public clouds to edge devices newly attached in the network architecture. The application outlined in the technological innovation assignment has been widely used currently for many advantages of edge computing environment (High, 2020).
Influence of Edge Computing in Business and Computing
Positive Influence
Many companies have experienced savings by using edge computing devices within the network architecture. Those companies that stuck to cloud-based processing considering that edge computing may fail and can result in heavy losses due to high cost of devices, faced bandwidth issues later when architecture went on scaling longer than before.
The biggest advantage illustrated in the technological innovation assignment is capabilities of devices to process information collected from environment. Another advantage is, it can store data too. For example, consider a face recognition module prior used with smartphones. It needed algorithm to be executed via cloud interface when face was scanned at local level. The data transaction includes, feature capturing via phone camera then sending data to cloud storage. The next step could calculate the features via algorithm and final verdict was sent to smart phone if face matches or not. The entire execution requires cloud storage and processor at remote location. These days, edge devices namely, edge gateways or server placed locally can scan person’s face, run the algorithm locally at the same device and produces the verdict if the face matches or not. This new edge architecture saved connection and data transactions to cloud servers which eventually turned into highest performing IoT application. Due to its fast processing and response, systems built in edge computing infrastructure are most preferred (Collins 2019).
It is predicted herein technological innovation assignmentthat many traditional IoT applications will be moved to edge computing so that high performance applications can be used. Companies including NVDIA have found the requirement of more computations at sensing devices hence more enhancements are seen in many different modules that can help in the sector of artificial intelligence too. For an instance, Jetson Xavier NX module developed is tested and proven to be smaller than credit cards. This module can offer artificial intelligence to devices such as robots, drones and those related to health care. The artificial intelligence in simpler sense is to make devices or artificial things intelligent. In other words, things or devices are made to process data; algorithms are executed in such devices. Algorithms execution needs processing power and hence many applications with simpler sensing devices run it through cloud services. However, expansion of AI chipset will offer edge computing to each device in the architecture which will in turn result in high performance applications.
Bandwidth saving in edge computing is another great feature when suppose a camera captures several stills when it founds proper image to process, it discards other images hence no storage space at edge device is consumed, neither any internet pipe is consumed to send the data. Due to this exciting benefit, Apple and Google have drawn their attention to edge computing for their future applications as well.
The advantages of edge computing are discussed but some disadvantages with respect to privacy, security, power consumption and bandwidth are discussed in next section within the technological innovation assignment.
What is the negative Influence mentioned in the technological innovation assignment?
Privacy and security
When it comes to solving problem, it is more likely that certain issues may appear. With amazing advantages discussed in previous sections of technological innovation assignment, privacy and security of data and devices can be dicey and troublesome. As data is collected and processed at edge device located at remote location, an intruder many manipulate the information processed in such a manner that it cannot work the way it is intended too. Whereas its information is processed at central location, security of just one location is to be focused. With several devices connected at remote location for different or same purpose, it becomes difficult to secure each device or system in the edge infrastructure (Shaw 2019).
Data storage is possible to some extent only in edge devices; hence it is compulsory to send data timely to cloud storage servers. Sending data directly to the servers without encryption can be dangerous and is an unethical practise. Hackers are always keeping their eyes on mistakes in such infrastructures. Hence, use of encryptions and VPN tunnelling can be beneficial. However, encryptions are easily hacked too. Summing up, privacy and security are major concerns too for the edge computing infrastructures. But if implemented well with concrete technologies, will help minimize the concerns.
Power Consumption
It also stated in the technological innovation assignment that algorithm execution requires much power consumption and hence more battery or electricity is needed for each edge device executing algorithms. Moreover, for internet connectivity as well power consumed by devices is more. These results in failover if any of the devices runs out of power, data processing and storage process may shut down for that particular edge device.Power consumption will be an issue when several devices are connected and keeping track of thousands and millions of devices at a time is an impossible task. Some measures to keep devices alive all the time should be next focus for edge computing infrastructure developers. Existing devices are also converted in edge device by adding a brain chip to it. However, the power consumption of devices built previously cannot be changed by such chips. Additionally, these chips are programmed for algorithm execution. Hence, more power consumption issues are faced (Collins 2019).
In spite of some disadvantages, many companies including Apple, Google, NVDIA, Jetson Xavier NX and many countless start-ups has drawn their focus to the edge computing. Companies already offering AI and IoT applications are alsomigrating their architectures to edge computing to take benefits of devices into their infrastructures. If privacy and security measures are followed and strong policies are implemented to combat against security issues concerned, it is more likely that the edge computing advantages can help companies in larger monetary gains.
Conclusions
The overall discussion on technological innovation assignment concludes that there are several trends and technological innovations world have witnessed in last two decades. The evolution does not seem to be stopping. In the era of aiding human life, the disruptive technologies have taken a big leap in last 5 years when many new technologies have introduced for making human lives easier. The trend continues with technologies such as quantum computing, edge computing, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, evolutions in autonomous driving, agriculture technology and many other things. Some technologies are already introduced butare still under future enhancements due to some of the flaws in it. Out of all, this report on technological innovation assignmentfocused on edge computing disruptive technology.Edge computing hardware includes devices such as sensors and those that are main components to Artificial Intelligence. Edge computing refers to the important part of a network and computing topology that enables devices to gather and process information produced by people surrounding the devices.
Main advantages identified in the above context arecapabilities of devices to process information collected from environment and data storage. Bandwidth saving in edge computing is another great feature. With some advantages there are always some disadvantages as identified in the technological innovation assignmentwhich can be overcome by adding new functionalities. The edge computing faces privacy, security and power consumption issues. With many security policies and algorithm, security of edge computing infrastructure can be safeguarded.
References
Christensen, C Rayno, M and McDonald, R 2015, What Is Disruptive Innovation?,technological innovation assignment viewed 17 July 2020,
Collins, D 2019, Intelligent Edge Computing Delivers Disruptive Innovation, viewed 17 July 2020,
Francis, S 2020, Emerging trends in the world of autonomous vehicles, viewed 18 July 2020,
Moore, J 2020, Disruptive innovation examples that transformed industries, viewed 17 July 2020, < IDEADROP https://ideadrop.co/how-3-companies-used-disruptive-innovation-to-transform-their-industries/>.
QuantumXchange 2020, Top 5 Trends in Quantum Technologies to Look for in 2020, viewed 18 July 2020,
Shaw, K 2019, What is edge computing and why it matters, viewed 17 July 2020,
Uzzaman, A 2019, 10 technology trends that will impact our lives in 2020,technological innovation assignment viewed 17 July 2020,
