The Internet of Things (IoT) is the emerging technology that offers the most immediate opportunities to generate new business and revenues, according to the Emerging Technology Community at CompTIA, the leading trade association for the global tech industry.

The community has released its second annual Top 10 Emerging Technologies list, ranked according to the near-term business and financial opportunities the solutions offer to IT channel firms and other companies working in the business of technology.

The Internet of Things also topped the community’s 2018 Top 10 list.

“Everybody in the technology world, as well as many consumers, is hearing the term Internet of Things,” said Frank Raimondi, a member of the CompTIA Emerging Technology Community leadership group who works in strategic channel and business development for Chargifi.

“To say it’s confusing and overwhelming is an understatement,” Raimondi continued. “IoT may mean many things to many people, but it can clearly mean incremental or new business to a channel partner if they start adding relevant IoT solutions with their existing and new customers. More importantly, they don’t have to start over from scratch.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) ranks second on the 2019 list.

“The largest impacts across all industries – from retail to healthcare, hospitality to finance – are felt when AI improves data security, decision-making speed and accuracy, and employee output and training,” said Maddy Martin, head of growth and education for Smith.ai and community vice chair.

“With more capable staff, better-qualified sales leads, more efficient issue resolution, and systems that feed actual data back in for future process and product improvements, companies employing AI technologies can use resources with far greater efficiency,” Martin added. “Best of all, as investment and competition increase in the AI realm, costs are reduced.”

Third on this year’s list of top emerging technologies is 5G wireless.

“The development and deployment of 5G is going to enable business impact at a level few technologies ever have, providing wireless at the speed and latency needed for complex solutions like driverless vehicles,” said Michael Haines, director of partner incentive strategy and program design for Microsoft and community chair.

“Additionally, once fully deployed geographically, 5G will help emerging markets realize the same ‘speed of business’ as their mature counterparts,” Haines commented. “Solution providers that develop 5G-based solutions for specific industry applications will have profitable, early-mover advantages.”

Also on the top 10 list is blockchain, coming in at number five this year.

“Blockchain came down crushing from its peak of hype cycle, and that’s probably for the best,” said Julia Moiseeva, founder of CLaaS (C-Level as a Service) Management Solutions Ltd. and member of the community’s leadership group. “Now that the luster of novelty and furor of the masses are gone, the dynamic of work around blockchain took a complete U-turn, again, for the best.”

“Now we observe players in this space building blockchain-based solutions in response to the real industry problems,” Moiseeva explained. “The trend of blockchain as a service (BaaS) is the one to watch. BaaS will be the enabler of significant revenue and cost-saving opportunities for cross-industry participants, especially those who don’t have the know-how or R&D to develop their own blockchain. We are moving toward plug-and-play product suites.”

Two new technologies, serverless computing and robotics, made the 2019 list, replacing automation and quantum computing.

The CompTIA Emerging Technology Community includes industry executives and thought leaders who have both a keen sense of new technologies, and insight into how to create business opportunities and transform business operations. The community is developing guidance for organizations on the factors to consider when contemplating which emerging technologies are best for them, whether as a seller of technology solutions or as a consumer of emerging tech. To learn more about the CompTIA Emerging Technology Community and to get involved with the group visit https://www.comptia.org/communities/emerging-technology.