The 2018 Gartner, Inc. Hype Cycle for information and communication technology (ICT) in India classifies machine learning (ML) among three technologies that will have a transformational business impact within the next two to five years.
The ICT Hype Cycle identifies 28 key technologies and capabilities for digital transformation that are important for local Indian IT leaders. The focus is on three stages of digital business delivery – designing, delivering and scaling, which reflect the focus of 75 percent of CIOs in India.
“Scaling business is the primary objective of Indian CIOs,”said Pankaj Prasad, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Doing it right requires continued investment in proven technologies and balanced investment in emerging technologies that sustain growth.”
Peak of Inflated Expectations
Machine learning continues to climb up the hype curve in India. ML has moved from being at the Innovation Trigger in 2017 to close to the Peak on this year’s Hype Cycle.
Organizations in India, across various industries, are still evaluating ML and experimenting with it. “There is a lack of understanding of the technology and therefore user adoption is currently limited,” said Mr. Prasad. While large banks and insurance companies in India are either evaluating or piloting specific use cases (for example, fraud prediction, lending appraisal and propensity to buy prediction), organizations in retail are evaluating and piloting ML concepts in customer segmentation, churn analysis and predictive modeling of buying behavior. “In the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector, we witness some use cases particularly in drug research and oncology/cancer research,” he added.
Edge computing made its entry onto the Hype Cycle this year and moved to the Peak of Inflated Expectations. Gartner defines edge computing as solutions that facilitate data processing at or near the source of data generation. For example, in the context of the Internet of Things, the sources of data generation are usually things with sensors or embedded devices.
Moving Up the Slope of Enlightenment
Platform as a service (PaaS) is moving up the Slope of Enlightenment. Several trends are increasing consumer’s confidence and making the adoption of PaaS progress towards the Plateau of Productivity. Among them is the maturity of PaaS offerings, which is improving over time. IT megavendors are fast improving their execution and a growing market acceptance of the smaller xPaaS innovators.
