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At such an exciting time in the technology world , what are the trends to look out for , we ask ?
“ What an incredible time to work in technology – and honestly , every organisation and every company on the planet is now a tech company . There are a lot of technology trends shaping the future of defence right now , and I think many of these will be around for a long time to come ,” Maxwell predicts .
“ Cloud , I ’ m convinced , is here to stay . This is what the future of compute looks like , and it serves as the secure foundation for so many other capabilities – AI in particular .”
Networking and communications mediums such as 5G , 6G , and space-based comms are also proving vital in a defence context : “ When working in defence , you have to support tactical scenarios where connectivity is not always guaranteed . We can ’ t assume there ’ s going to be fibre at a deployed site in some farflung theatre . So we are constantly working to mature the cloud continuum – from cloud to edge – and leverage the fullness of the spectrum to provide secure access to data and communications even in the most harsh and remote environments on – or off – the planet .
“ That includes 5G and 6G , and it also includes all things space . Space and satellitebased communications continue to be critically important – particularly at the edge .”
Modelling & simulation , digital engineering , digital twin , and DevSecOps will also continue to be important , particularly for capability lifecycle modernisation , and to speed-up time-to-value for critically important mission innovations .
Maxwell also mentions the importance of quantum , and the expected impact
of this emerging area in the years ahead : “ Quantum is another trend that I expect will be huge , especially from a national security perspective . With the rise of quantum compute at scale , we ’ re going to see some changing national security postures . I think it ’ s going to do great things for a number of defence use cases — secure communications , for instance , as well as some interesting intelligence applications . On the flip side , quantum poses some very real challenges , particularly when we ’ re talking about traditional encryption methods and cryptography within the national security realm .
“ So , that ’ s my short list of trends , and I want to point out that the vast majority of these are software-defined and underpinned by the cloud . So that ’ s why we at Microsoft are continuing to counsel defence customers that it ’ s time to modernise . So for any defence organisations out there who have not yet started on that journey , today is a great day to begin , and we ’ re here to help .”
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