Trend Macrotrend 4: infrastructure becomes cognitive, anticipatory and sovereign

Summary

NTT DATA's fourth macrotrend, informed infrastructure, describes a deep change in the nature of digital infrastructure. Layers that used to be passive back-end systems are becoming cognitive, anticipatory and sovereign, altering how organisations handle workloads, resources and resilience. This is happening while demand for computing surges because of AI, connected devices and distributed intelligence, and while limits on energy, sovereignty and sustainability tighten. The report sees the strategic advantage in being able to sense, model, simulate and optimise entire environments before decisions are made. High-performance computing, continuity from edge to cloud and quantum-enabled simulation are named as the enablers. It describes this infrastructure as the operating substrate on which intelligent activity runs at every scale.