Technology often changes so quickly that every year a new crop of trends emerge. These trends often dictate how engineering leaders spend their budget and how teams prioritize upcoming projects. Leading research firm Gartner recently released a report predicting their top trends for 2024. 

While ever-changing technology trends can be confusing, we’re here to help simplify things. We gathered a few of the tech focuses you should expect to see in 2024 and beyond, and we’ll explain how Ionic’s Superapp SDK can help you stay ahead of them.

Democratized generative AI

“By 2026, more than 80% of enterprises will have used generative AI APIs, models and/or deployed generative AI-enabled applications in production environments, an increase from fewer than 5% today.”

With the proliferation of AI APIs and models, enterprises will need to develop personalized application experiences to make these models useful to customers internally or externally. Ionic’s Superapp SDK allows developers to embed web-based mini app experiences into both iOS and Android native shells. Mini apps can deliver chatbots, generative designs, and other AI generated components to customers. The best part, these mini app experiences can be developed once and run cross-platform due to the way the mini apps are built—using any web language your team is comfortable using.

Additionally, there is a current narrative that AI will eventually take over the entire app development process. While we can’t predict the future, we can speak to the nature of how superapps can be built using a strong team of developers supported by AI. With the Superapp SDK, web and native developers can work together to build cohesive experiences for customers, and with the wealth of talent on the market, combined with the power of AI, building superapps is more feasible than ever before.

Augmented-connected workforce

“Gartner predicts that through 2027, at least 25% of CIOs will use an augmented-connected workforce (ACWF) initiative to help reduce time to competency by 50% for many key roles.”

An augmented-connected workforce, according to Gartner, “establish[es] a connective tissue that optimizes use of intelligent technology, workforce analytics and skill augmentation to accelerate and scale talent building.” Superapps can play a key role in creating a unified experience (on the frontend) and aggregated data (on the backend) to onboard and retain employees. With an employee-facing superapp, teams can level up their skill sets, onboard into new roles, and automate systems and processes all from one application. For managers, superapps can ensure employee engagement and wellbeing through customized application features like setting and tracking personal goals, approving time-off requests, and more, which can ultimately lead to retention and a strong company culture.

Continuous threat exposure management

“By 2026, organizations prioritizing their security investments based on a continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) program will realize a two-thirds reduction in breaches.”

The CTEM approach to cybersecurity is possible using the Superapp SDK. Superapps allow engineers to link different app experiences through one access point, making monitoring threat levels easier. Also, because the mini apps are launched and deployed as different projects, security can be reviewed per project. Any approach to cybersecurity can be implemented on the native layer, which leaves the flexibility to build threat management and review threat exposure programs.

Platform engineering

“By 2026, 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery.”

Engineering a composable platform can be achieved with the Superapp SDK in the same way. The native superapp shell serves as the platform while individual mini apps provide additional functionality in a modular way. Each mini app experience only needs to be built once, allowing internal teams to reuse it across all iOS and Android devices used throughout the organization. Additionally, using the Superapp SDK, teams can develop and release mini apps independently, giving them more autonomy and control. Lastly, using our mobile CI/CD integration, bug fixes and new features can be deployed to users automatically, providing seamless live updates directly to their devices.

Ionic’s Superapp SDK

Tech trends come in as quickly as they disappear. But at the root of major trends lies strong app development that will withstand the next round.

The Superapp SDK will help enterprises stay ahead of current and future trends by giving development teams the tools to build secure, customer and employee-focused superapps. The Superapp SDK comes with mini app development tools like premier plugins, a cross-platform UI toolkit, and a wide range of official integrations. The SDK also comes with a cloud service including cloud native mini app and shell app builds, a CI/CD tool integration, and Live Updates for mini apps—which automatically update app features and deploy bug fixes to users. Additionally, the SDK comes with world-class support and advisory services, with a guaranteed service-level agreement, code reviews, team training, and more.

To learn more about Ionic’s Superapp SDK and how it can transform your app development, get in touch with our team.