Over the next few years, we are about to see this wave continue as several different technology trends come to fruition. They will impact businesses of all sizes, and knowing what to expect may help you take advantage of them.

1)  5G Internet Network  By 2020, the number of devices with internet connectivity will drastically increase, and the need for a faster, safer and cost and energy efficient network will be critical. Gartner forecasts that the number of networked devices will soar from approximately 5 billion in 2015 to over 25 billion by 2020. Following the ongoing trend of innovation in the mobile industry, 5G is the next logical step. It will help alleviate the problems we see with regard to network congestion, energy efficiency, reliability, and cost.

2)  Fibre Everywhere Improving Connectivity If you look back to 2014, you will see there have been notable efforts to increase available connectivity and meet the demand arising from an increased usage of HD video, 3G/4G, streaming and many other broadband services. Looking further into the future, it was recently announced only a couple days ago in the government’s new digital strategy, that full-fibre broadband coverage should be available to every home in the US by 2025. The proposed legislation would also guarantee that new homes are fitted with full-fibre broadband.

3)  Big Data Playing Bigger Role  With an increased number of embedded devices, mobile users, businesses, contextual information, location information, and network protocols, it is possible to generate 20 billion records a day (that amounts to 1TB information daily). And the data volume is only increasing. By processing this colossal data with complex analytics, it is possible to understand a scenario, interpret events, predict a trend and decide course of action. When used right, big data can yield bigger benefits and improved efficiency in terms of cost, power, and resources. With more businesses realizing its efficiency, big data is sure to transform communication systems into smarter networks.

4)  Unified Communications as Standard With the PSTN & IDSN network ending in 2025, businesses are going to have to move to cloud communications. With that move to an IP-based service, comes the opportunity to connect office telephony to other applications—such as CRM, finance software and mobile. Over the next couple years we will see a large portion of businesses adopt this type of unified communications technology, increasing the ease with which staff can move between applications and reducing the admin time of manual tasks such as logging calls. Mark Zuckerberg recently said, the future of communication is technology. As a company born in the cloud, we couldn’t agree more. Technology will change all aspects of how we communicate with each other, and indeed already has. With AI also on the horizon, businesses unwilling to move to the cloud will soon find themselves outside the normality of how business is done.