Generative AI (GenAI), sustainability, digital marketplaces and industry cloud platforms have ranked among some of the top 10 tech trends to watch out for in 2024, according to research firm Gartner. Detailed in its 2024 Tech Provider Top Trends report, the research firm said 2024 would be the first full year of eased pandemic-related restrictions “that in one way feels familiar and in another presents a series of first-time issues and opportunities”. GenAI was one such influence on the list, resulting in the trends of vertical GenAI models and AI safety as major trends. For the former, Gartner said that general purpose models can perform adequately over a broad set of GenAI applications but can be impractical for enterprise use cases that need domain-specific data. “Tech providers must explore industry-focused models that can be adapted to specific user requirements using available resources more efficiently. Those failing to do so will face increased costs and complexity in the creation and leverage of models,” the firm said. With the use of GenAI also comes risk and as such tech providers need to make sure they keep this in mind, especially considering the rapid rate of its adoption and subsequent issues, like content provenance and hallucination. “Product leaders must build solutions that incorporate safety principles with a focus on model transparency, traceability, interpretability and explainability aspects. Preempting regulatory and compliance issues will be critical to staying competitive in this vibrant GenAI market by creating trust,” Gartner said. While GenAI has been influential across all industries over the last few years as well as its future prospects, it isn’t the only factor to consider for 2024, said Eric Hunter, managing vice president at Gartner. “GenAI is dominating the technical and product agenda of nearly every tech provider,” he said. “The technology reshapes a tech provider from its growth and product strategy down to the everyday tools used by its associates. Despite the potential for GenAI to reshape providers, it is not the only influence facing technology leaders. There are new points of friction in growth plans, new points of fusion in marketing and sales, and new relationships opening up to technology and service providers (TSPs).” The firm’s first non-AI-related trend is that it expects efficient growth for high tech concepts. “Significant growth in IT spending over the last decade benefited high-tech companies,” Gartner said. “Capturing that growth led high-tech firms to pursue growth without a full measure of the costs. This is a ‘growth at all costs’ strategy. High-tech firms anchored their product, organisation and employment plans on a hypothesis of continued strong growth. “As macroeconomic conditions create uncertainty among buyers and increasing costs of capital shift investor focus to margin growth, Gartner analysts see a trend toward tech providers focusing on efficient growth. Efficient growth strategies recognise the value in growing in ways that strengthen current margins and future revenue opportunities.” With the general state of increased business and technical demands, this then leads to enterprise IT needing to cover a larger area at a faster pace, eroding enterprise IT’s capacity and capability in the process. “This creates a trend for product leaders at tech providers to create new relationships and revenue opportunities across the enterprise, including expanded provider roles within enterprise IT and the business, outcome-centric provider-enterprise relationships and enterprise-wide tier-1 relationships,” Gartner said. Also forecasted for 2024 is a rise in attention towards sustainability and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG). The research firm said product leaders need to evolve by taking on double materiality and holistic leverage of emerging technologies to meet sustainability objectives. The economic hardships faced by all businesses around the world in recent years have generated a rise in buyer pessimism, which means old ways of transacting might not work anymore. “Over the past three years, tech providers have increasingly observed negative sales pipeline effects due to new buyer behaviours that are colliding with outdated go-to-market (GTM) models. Without adapting sales and marketing approaches to detect and respond to buyer pessimism, technology providers will see their own GTM operations decline in both internal and external perspectives,” Gartner said. One such way to adapt to new economic norms can be through personalised marketplace experience, which the research firm warned not considering could result in less business. “Product leaders who do not offer their services through personalised digital marketplaces limit their findability for their target customers. Gartner predicts that 80 per cent of sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels by 2025,” the firm claimed. Another approach is product-led-growth, which focuses on showing value to product users and creates intent signals that GTM teams can use with prospective buyers. However, those using a PLG GTM are seeing that, in the majority of cases, a fully self-service GTM approach is not tenable, Gartner said. “Buyer needs for business value and outcome justification — for new or expansion business — will meld PLG tactics with value management and realisation initiatives in hybrid GTM strategies,” the firm added. Additionally, expedited technological advances, as seen in GenAI as well as digital buying and the metaverse, according to Gartner, are changing the way tech providers market and sell technology. Businesses that ignore new ways of selling will likely see a fall in deal quality and relevancy. Industry clouds are also expected to take off ten-fold, as Gartner said service providers, hyperscalers, independent software vendors (ISV) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers are all looking at vertical solutions to drive growth. “By 2027, Gartner predicts that more than 50 per cent of tech providers will use industry cloud platforms to deliver business outcomes, up from less than 5 per cent in 2023,” the firm claimed. Earlier this month, Gartner also said the rise of GenAI images is causing more enterprises to turn away from identity verification and authentication solutions, finding them unreliable on their own.