New technology cycles in and out of favor constantly. It’s hard to know which ones live up to the hype for your organization. We polled the experts at Concord to define the top technologies that are worth the investment in 2022.
#1 | Terraform
What it is:
With compatibility across cloud computing giants such as Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, and Amazon Web Services, HashiCorp’s Terraform is an asset for building, changing, and versioning dynamic infrastructure. Terraform is an open source provisioning tool that facilitates an infrastructure-as-code (IaC) operating model for the creation of server and associated services. Using IaC enables automation in infrastructure and defines infrastructure in easy-to-read configuration files using HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL).
Why it made the list:
Among the advantages of Terraform is the ability to translate HCL language into JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), multi-cloud support capabilities, the potential for incremental changes to resources while being able to lock modules prior to state changes, the ability to import existing resources into a Terraform state, and simplistic provision of support for software-defined networking. The efficiency, automation, and flexibility Terraform affords make it a valuable enterprise tool and one of our Top Tech picks for 2022.
#2 | Snowflake
What it is:
Snowflake is a single Software as a Service (SaaS) platform for data warehousing, data lakes, data engineering, and secure data sharing. Snowflake automates the management of data storage, while enabling query processing for data analysis as well as high speed scalability.
Why it made the list:
Snowflake takes the hassle of disorganized semi-structured and structured data from heterogeneous sources and manages it in a simple, secure, and efficient way with an intuitive interface and full automation. With all components of service running on cloud infrastructures and no packaged software or third-party maintenance, management, or upgrading, Snowflake gives organizations straightforward mobilization of data at any scale with speed.
#3 | Azure DevOps
What it is:
Azure DevOps is a public cloud-computing service that provides analytics, virtual computing, storage, and networking. A core competency of Azure DevOps is its ability to host and manage code centrally, allowing teams to collaborate effectively and securely. The tool’s collaboration also extends beyond code, allowing teams to create process templates for modeling work items around an Agile Framework or Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI).
Why it made the list:
With its continuous integration and delivery, and a marketplace of integrations and plugins, Azure DevOps helps organizations take their solutions from development to delivery. With Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) capabilities, a wealth of security options, scalability, hybrid capabilities (private and public cloud availability), and an easy learning curve, Azure DevOps is one of the top tools.
#4 | Kafka
What it is:
Kafka is a free-to-use open source software service that allows for data streaming pipelines and applications for storage and general processing (reading and analysis) of historical as well as real-time, or current data. Competitive organizations equipped with Kafka can publish and subscribe to streams of data, storing them chronologically, to then process in real-time.
Why it made the list:
Kafka is a powerful tool outfitted with scalability, speed, and durability as data is distributed across multiple servers. The operative terms here are speed and real-time data analysis – two things crucial to every successful tech-based enterprise.
#5 | DataMesh
What it is:
Unlike the rest of the list, Data Mesh is architecture rather than a tool or software. This approach embraces the philosophy of decentralization of data and prioritizes a domain-driven, self-serve design that eliminates the costs and delays of conventionally centralized data lake solutions.
Why it made the list:
Each organization is responsible for the quality, security, and transfer of their data, products, and services by providing connectivity to direct sets of data rather than large pools. Businesses that implement this strategy increase the speed and flexibility of data analytics available to them, making Data Mesh a desirable architecture.
#6 | Google Cloud Platform
What it is:
Google Cloud Platform, or GCP, is a public cloud-based infrastructure used for hosting web-based applications that perform storage and data computing services for backend, mobile, and web solutions.
Why it made the list:
GCP allows users to work from anywhere with internet availability and contribute collaboratively on projects in real-time through the cloud while ensuring safe and secure access and movement of data. With features such as IaaS, PaaS, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Cloud Datastore, BigQuery (for big data sets), and Cloud Endpoints, GCP is a great choice for most organizations.
#7 | Amazon Web Services
What it is:
Dominating over a third of the market in cloud computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a provider of scalable and cost-effective data solutions for data analytics, networking, developer tools, machine learning, integration, data storage, email, mobile development, and service and content delivery by Amazon.
Why it made the list:
AWS aims to help businesses enter the digital age or assist already tech-forward companies while guaranteeing secure, reliable data services. With its breadth of easy-to-use services, AWS is an obvious choice for this year’s top tech.
