The top 10 IT trends for 2020 (8) – Trend 7: RPA & automation increasingly integrate AI

Automation is already high on the list in both IT services and user companies as it increases both speed and quality while reducing the need to extend the workforce. There are two factors still hampering the market, however.

First, companies can only automate processes that are well-known, documented, and already working. In many cases, companies need to reengineer their processes before they can apply any kind of automation. They should not take the risk of automating faulty processes and then blame robotic process automation (RPA) for the poor results.

Second, despite a lot of hype on the market, RPA does not necessarily imply artificial intelligence – which might also be misleading for many companies that hope that RPA systems will learn and improve by themselves. Bots need to be trained with a set of data and maintained.

A new generation of AI-based RPA is emerging that is able not only to self-improve by automatically creating new rules but also to suggest or even apply fixes to optimize processes. Whatever intelligence they may have, these RPA systems will still need to operate on a clean base (processes and data sets), which means a lot of work ahead for both management and technology consulting.

• Forecast for the European IT services market

The top 10 IT trends, which we believe will have the greatest impact in 2020:

• Platform-based industrial value networks will spread
• Edge and 5G enable real-time IT locations
• IT/OT integration leads to OT data platforms
• Enterprise applications move into the public cloud
• Next-gen app platforms embrace digital innovations
• AI-empowered business applications
• RPA and automation on the edge of AI
• Cloud-based services revolutionize application development and deployment
• Managed security services accompany the digital change
• Agile and DevOps boost flexibility