[New Wave] Three Cloud Technology Trends That Will Change Our Lives in 2022

During the COVID-19 pandemic, cloud technology has transformed many aspects of our daily lives. The year 2022 is also expected to be an exciting year for the advancement of cloud technology. Recently, Dr. Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Amazon.com, predicted five new technological changes that will emerge next year. Among them, I would like to introduce three major trends closely related to the domestic business environment.

First is the utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) within the software (SW) development field. Recently, AI has had a broad impact across various industries, from advanced technology sectors such as object recognition, translation, and autonomous driving to manufacturing and robotics. Going forward, AI is expected to bring significant changes to software development itself. Depending on the supply of capable software developers within organizations, a gap may arise between the implementation of new technologies and ideas. Considering the developer shortage recently emerging among domestic IT companies, it is important to build systems that support not only program code writers but also software developers in developing and distributing programs to users, thereby optimizing workforce utilization.

Dr. Vogels forecasted that AI will function as a game changer, enabling general employees without specialized development knowledge to define and build software-based products. This new change will also serve as an effective tool to elevate Korea’s software capabilities to an advanced country level.

Second, changes in the real world?such as factories, warehouses, restaurants, retail stores, and farms?will also come through the cloud. The technological foundation supporting this is digital transformation (DT), which digitizes businesses that have operated in analog ways until now. If the entire process?from the smartphone applications we use, delivery drivers’ devices, delivery and dispatch processes, to the manufacturing sites?is organically connected through DT, the real world will experience changes at a much faster pace.

In particular, next year, the cloud will establish itself as a data pipeline that organically connects the entire process. A representative example is the domestic unicorn “Market Kurly,” which pioneered the fresh food dawn delivery market as the first in the e-commerce industry. Market Kurly was able to solve technical issues related to large-scale orders and deliveries resulting from rapid corporate growth?60 times the previous scale during the pandemic?by migrating to AWS cloud, and plans to handle a volume three times that of its existing logistics centers through the cloud in the future.

Third is progress in the smart elderly care sector. The blind spots in elderly care have emerged as a challenge in regions with rapidly aging populations such as Europe and Japan. A Japanese company called Jetworks revealed that it was able to find clues to solving elderly care problems by leveraging the cloud’s inherent flexibility and scalability. Jetworks installed sensors on beds and throughout rooms in elderly households and connected all sensors to the cloud for continuous data analysis. The deployed sensors detect human movement, and through machine learning models in the cloud, determine whether a person has visited the restroom.

In the coming year, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and AI assistants will be actively used not only to turn lights on and off or respond to questions but also to care for vulnerable groups. These technologies are expected to have a significant impact on new types of housing construction and facility industries where elderly populations reside. Along with these global trends, it is anticipated that the use of innovative technologies such as cloud and machine learning will expand in related industries within the domestic social welfare sector to improve the quality of life for the elderly population.

Just as the pandemic has affected every corner of the world, the world is now connected as one. The development and utilization of innovative technologies such as cloud, AI, and machine learning are also rapidly spreading globally beyond borders. In the coming new year, it is hoped that various countries will benchmark cases of solving social problems and improving quality of life through technology and further advance based on these experiences.

Yoon Seokchan, AWS Senior Tech Evangelist