Forrester: Top 10 Emerging Technologies for 2024

GenAI, TuringBots, And IoT Security Poised To Deliver Fastest ROI

According to Forrester's The Top 10 Emerging Technologies In 2024 report, generative AI (genAI) for visual content, genAI for language, TuringBots, and IoT security are the top emerging technologies that will deliver the most immediate ROI for businesses in 2024 and beyond.

With new technologies emerging seemingly every day, business and technology leaders need to time those investments based on value, risk, and potential payout timelines. Forrester organizes its top emerging technologies by benefit horizon to help with these decisions.

Emerging technologies that will offer significant benefits within the next two years

GenAI for visual content: Advanced machine learning models that generate images or video from text, audio, or video prompts, this technology will help firms generate visual content for marketing, experiences, and products.

GenAI for language: GenAI for language is already delivering value in customer support and content creation but continues to advance at a blinding pace. It is accelerating many other technologies as it goes.

TuringBots: Accelerated by advancements in genAI for language, these AI-powered software robots help developers build applications that deliver more than just code generation.

IoT security: The proliferation of devices has led to an exponential explosion in security attacks, raising the importance of security for IoT devices. Vendors are competing and colliding in a rush to offer capabilities.

Midterm emerging technologies that will deliver benefits in the next two to five years

AI agents: The role of autonomous workplace assistants or AI agents has expanded beyond the back office and employee assistance to customer-facing automation. These AI agents will grow increasingly sophisticated to better understand and respond to nuance and context.

Autonomous mobility: This technology will accelerate commercial and urban transportation ecosystem collaborations to orchestrate personalized mobility experiences for both customers and businesses.

Edge intelligence: Advanced edge intelligence capabilities such as edge machine learning are still not yet common, even though many foundational elements like Apple foundation models are becoming available.

Quantum security: This technology will overhaul security systems for on-premises and cloud compute, storage and network infrastructure, commercial off-the-shelf software, commercial software-as-a-service offerings, and in-house built software.

Emerging technologies that will take at least five more years to deliver tangible value for most firms and use cases

Extended reality (XR): Only 8% of US online adults own a virtual-reality headset, and just 16% have used an augmented-reality device or app. While XR is advancing in training and onboarding, companies are resisting investing in tools like these until they see broad adoption.

Zero Trust edge (ZTE): ZTE technology has the potential to protect remote workers, retail outlets, and branch offices with embedded local security, but only a handful of true ZTE solutions exist today, and legacy devices add additional management complexity.

"Tech leaders must be able to identify the right use cases and quantify potential benefits, costs, and risks across multiple horizons," says Brian Hopkins, Forrester VP, Eerging Tech Portfolio. "They need to spread investments out, with shorter-term technologies delivering quick returns and longer-term bets requiring more effort, more foundational investment, and the capacity to manage more risk."

Related Links

Hot Topics

The Latest

OpenTelemetry: A Complete Telemetry Framework that Grows with You

Most organizations approach OpenTelemetry as a collection of individual tools they need to assemble from scratch. This view misses the bigger picture. OpenTelemetry is a complete telemetry framework with composable components that address specific problems at different stages of organizational maturity. You start with what you need today and adopt additional pieces as your observability practices evolve ...

The Quiet Power of Milliseconds in High Traffic Systems

One of the earliest lessons I learned from architecting throughput-heavy services is that simplicity wins repeatedly: fewer moving parts, loosely coupled execution (fewer synchronous calls), and precise timing metering. You want data and decisions to travel the shortest possible path. The goal is to build a system where every strategy and each line of code (contention is the key metric) complements the decision trees ...

Are AI "Autonomous Coworkers" Ready for Payroll?

As discussions around AI "autonomous coworkers" accelerate, many industry projections assume that agents will soon operate alongside human staff in making decisions, taking actions, and managing tasks with minimal oversight. But a growing number of critics (including some of the developers building these systems) argue that the industry still has a long way to go to be able to treat AI agents like fully trusted teammates ...

Enterprise AI Reaches Pivotal Inflection Point: From Automation to Agentic Intelligence

Enterprise AI has entered a transformational phase where, according to Digitate's recently released survey, Agentic AI and the Future of Enterprise IT, companies are moving beyond traditional automation toward Agentic AI systems designed to reason, adapt, and collaborate alongside human teams ...

The Real Reason Enterprise AI Stalls: It Doesn't Fit in the Box

The numbers back this urgency up. A recent Zapier survey shows that 92% of enterprises now treat AI as a top priority. Leaders want it, and teams are clamoring for it. But if you look closer at the operations of these companies, you see a different picture. The rollout is slow. The results are often delayed. There's a disconnect between what leaders want and what their technical infrastructure can handle ...

AI's Inflection Point Will Redefine Enterprise Readiness in 2026

Kyndryl's 2025 Readiness Report revealed that 61% of global business and technology leaders report increasing pressure from boards and regulators to prove AI's ROI. As the technology evolves and expectations continue to rise, leaders are compelled to generate and prove impact before scaling further. This will lead to a decisive turning point in 2026 ...

Turning Foresight into Resilience: Reclaiming Prevention in the Age of Exposure

Cloudflare's disruption illustrates how quickly a single provider's issue cascades into widespread exposure. Many organizations don't fully realize how tightly their systems are coupled to thirdparty services, or how quickly availability and security concerns align when those services falter ... You can't avoid these dependencies, but you can understand them ...

MLOps Meets DataOps: Creating Unified Backbone for AI

If you work with AI, you know this story. A model performs during testing, looks great in early reviews, works perfectly in production and then slowly loses relevance after operating for a while. Everything on the surface looks perfect — pipelines are running, predictions or recommendations are error-free, data quality checks show green; yet outcomes don't meet the ground reality. This pattern often repeats across enterprise AI programs. Take for example, a mid-sized retail banking and wealth-management firm with heavy investments in AI-powered risk analytics, fraud detection and personalized credit-decisioning systems. The model worked well for a while, but transactions increased, so did false positives by 18% ...

2026 Network Monitoring Trends

Basic uptime is no longer the gold standard. By 2026, network monitoring must do more than report status, it must explain performance in a hybrid-first world. Networks are no longer just static support systems; they are agile, distributed architectures that sit at the very heart of the customer experience and the business outcomes ... The following five trends represent the new standard for network health, providing a blueprint for teams to move from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive, integrated future ...

2026 AI Predictions - Part 5

APMdigest's Predictions Series concludes with 2026 AI Predictions — industry experts offer predictions on how AI and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2026. Part 5, the final installment, covers AI's impacts on IT teams ...

Forrester: Top 10 Emerging Technologies for 2024

GenAI, TuringBots, And IoT Security Poised To Deliver Fastest ROI

According to Forrester's The Top 10 Emerging Technologies In 2024 report, generative AI (genAI) for visual content, genAI for language, TuringBots, and IoT security are the top emerging technologies that will deliver the most immediate ROI for businesses in 2024 and beyond.

With new technologies emerging seemingly every day, business and technology leaders need to time those investments based on value, risk, and potential payout timelines. Forrester organizes its top emerging technologies by benefit horizon to help with these decisions.

Emerging technologies that will offer significant benefits within the next two years

GenAI for visual content: Advanced machine learning models that generate images or video from text, audio, or video prompts, this technology will help firms generate visual content for marketing, experiences, and products.

GenAI for language: GenAI for language is already delivering value in customer support and content creation but continues to advance at a blinding pace. It is accelerating many other technologies as it goes.

TuringBots: Accelerated by advancements in genAI for language, these AI-powered software robots help developers build applications that deliver more than just code generation.

IoT security: The proliferation of devices has led to an exponential explosion in security attacks, raising the importance of security for IoT devices. Vendors are competing and colliding in a rush to offer capabilities.

Midterm emerging technologies that will deliver benefits in the next two to five years

AI agents: The role of autonomous workplace assistants or AI agents has expanded beyond the back office and employee assistance to customer-facing automation. These AI agents will grow increasingly sophisticated to better understand and respond to nuance and context.

Autonomous mobility: This technology will accelerate commercial and urban transportation ecosystem collaborations to orchestrate personalized mobility experiences for both customers and businesses.

Edge intelligence: Advanced edge intelligence capabilities such as edge machine learning are still not yet common, even though many foundational elements like Apple foundation models are becoming available.

Quantum security: This technology will overhaul security systems for on-premises and cloud compute, storage and network infrastructure, commercial off-the-shelf software, commercial software-as-a-service offerings, and in-house built software.

Emerging technologies that will take at least five more years to deliver tangible value for most firms and use cases

Extended reality (XR): Only 8% of US online adults own a virtual-reality headset, and just 16% have used an augmented-reality device or app. While XR is advancing in training and onboarding, companies are resisting investing in tools like these until they see broad adoption.

Zero Trust edge (ZTE): ZTE technology has the potential to protect remote workers, retail outlets, and branch offices with embedded local security, but only a handful of true ZTE solutions exist today, and legacy devices add additional management complexity.

"Tech leaders must be able to identify the right use cases and quantify potential benefits, costs, and risks across multiple horizons," says Brian Hopkins, Forrester VP, Eerging Tech Portfolio. "They need to spread investments out, with shorter-term technologies delivering quick returns and longer-term bets requiring more effort, more foundational investment, and the capacity to manage more risk."

Related Links

Hot Topics

The Latest

OpenTelemetry: A Complete Telemetry Framework that Grows with You

Most organizations approach OpenTelemetry as a collection of individual tools they need to assemble from scratch. This view misses the bigger picture. OpenTelemetry is a complete telemetry framework with composable components that address specific problems at different stages of organizational maturity. You start with what you need today and adopt additional pieces as your observability practices evolve ...

The Quiet Power of Milliseconds in High Traffic Systems

One of the earliest lessons I learned from architecting throughput-heavy services is that simplicity wins repeatedly: fewer moving parts, loosely coupled execution (fewer synchronous calls), and precise timing metering. You want data and decisions to travel the shortest possible path. The goal is to build a system where every strategy and each line of code (contention is the key metric) complements the decision trees ...

Are AI "Autonomous Coworkers" Ready for Payroll?

As discussions around AI "autonomous coworkers" accelerate, many industry projections assume that agents will soon operate alongside human staff in making decisions, taking actions, and managing tasks with minimal oversight. But a growing number of critics (including some of the developers building these systems) argue that the industry still has a long way to go to be able to treat AI agents like fully trusted teammates ...

Enterprise AI Reaches Pivotal Inflection Point: From Automation to Agentic Intelligence

Enterprise AI has entered a transformational phase where, according to Digitate's recently released survey, Agentic AI and the Future of Enterprise IT, companies are moving beyond traditional automation toward Agentic AI systems designed to reason, adapt, and collaborate alongside human teams ...

The Real Reason Enterprise AI Stalls: It Doesn't Fit in the Box

The numbers back this urgency up. A recent Zapier survey shows that 92% of enterprises now treat AI as a top priority. Leaders want it, and teams are clamoring for it. But if you look closer at the operations of these companies, you see a different picture. The rollout is slow. The results are often delayed. There's a disconnect between what leaders want and what their technical infrastructure can handle ...

AI's Inflection Point Will Redefine Enterprise Readiness in 2026

Kyndryl's 2025 Readiness Report revealed that 61% of global business and technology leaders report increasing pressure from boards and regulators to prove AI's ROI. As the technology evolves and expectations continue to rise, leaders are compelled to generate and prove impact before scaling further. This will lead to a decisive turning point in 2026 ...

Turning Foresight into Resilience: Reclaiming Prevention in the Age of Exposure

Cloudflare's disruption illustrates how quickly a single provider's issue cascades into widespread exposure. Many organizations don't fully realize how tightly their systems are coupled to thirdparty services, or how quickly availability and security concerns align when those services falter ... You can't avoid these dependencies, but you can understand them ...

MLOps Meets DataOps: Creating Unified Backbone for AI

If you work with AI, you know this story. A model performs during testing, looks great in early reviews, works perfectly in production and then slowly loses relevance after operating for a while. Everything on the surface looks perfect — pipelines are running, predictions or recommendations are error-free, data quality checks show green; yet outcomes don't meet the ground reality. This pattern often repeats across enterprise AI programs. Take for example, a mid-sized retail banking and wealth-management firm with heavy investments in AI-powered risk analytics, fraud detection and personalized credit-decisioning systems. The model worked well for a while, but transactions increased, so did false positives by 18% ...

2026 Network Monitoring Trends

Basic uptime is no longer the gold standard. By 2026, network monitoring must do more than report status, it must explain performance in a hybrid-first world. Networks are no longer just static support systems; they are agile, distributed architectures that sit at the very heart of the customer experience and the business outcomes ... The following five trends represent the new standard for network health, providing a blueprint for teams to move from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive, integrated future ...

2026 AI Predictions - Part 5

APMdigest's Predictions Series concludes with 2026 AI Predictions — industry experts offer predictions on how AI and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2026. Part 5, the final installment, covers AI's impacts on IT teams ...