Navigieren in der IT-Welt: Ein Leitfaden für Berufseinsteiger zu Branchentrends

The only constant in life is change. This applies not only to fashion and nutrition, but also to IT in particular. Trends come and go, what was just state of the art is now cold coffee again. I joined IT consulting in 2019 as a career changer, so I'm certainly not an old hand yet, but I've seen the odd trend come and go. This blog post is about how trends work, how IT management consultants can best deal with them and what state of the art we are currently in.

It is generally known that trends follow curves. For technology, Rogers' theory of innovators, early adopters, the early and late majority and the laggards, who only use a new technology when it is already standard for the majority of the population, applies in the classic sense. If we think back to the advent of smartphones, for example, we probably all know someone with the first iPhone and someone who was still using cell phones with buttons in 2016.

Have you ever been asked about a topic and only understood the first thing you said? This should only happen to consultants in exceptional cases. Accordingly, it is particularly important to regularly keep yourself fully informed about developments in your field, be it cyber security, data protection legislation or the various licensing models of large and small manufacturers. In this way, it is always possible to provide reliable initial assessments on specialist topics in discussions with customers. However, it must also be said that tailor-made solutions for customers' problems often only arise after very specific research, which cannot be covered by the general daily consumption of news from relevant specialist publications.

migration of data and applications to the cloud, to the current AI hype, which certainly has what it takes to become a megatrend. With such major upheavals, it is simply important to gather information on the topic at an early stage. With smaller trends, such as the use of augmented reality in the corporate environment, e.g. in the production of high-tech goods, it is more difficult to predict whether the phenomenon will be long-lasting, especially if some early products clearly flop on the market (keyword "google Glasses"). Here it is important to observe phenomena closely and to see growing interest in the market as a sign to focus more on products and services in this area.

The years 2022 and 2023 were thoroughly dominated by the phenomenon of artificial intelligence in all its forms. The previous big topic in IT, the cloud, has taken a back seat. Important cloud migrations have now been completed and major leaps in the development of cloud technology are becoming rarer. AI is a different story. Almost every month, a company surprises us with a groundbreaking innovation based on AI. Accordingly, the AI megatrend appears to be far from saturated. In 2024 and 2025, we can still expect to see innovations, products and services that will find their place in the IT landscape. What comes after that is purely speculative, perhaps only AI knows.

Author: Tobias Philipsen