Gartner's top 10 technology trends for 2016.

• Position: INFO TECHNOLOGY

According to Gartner Inc., data analytics has been a top area for technology investment in 2015 and is likely to be so again in 2016. David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow at Gartner Group, shared his thoughts with Information Management on the "Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends" that will affect IT leaders and data analytics in the coming year.

1. The Device Mesh: According to Cearley, this is "the expanding set of endpoints people use to access applications and information or to interact with other people, social communities, governments, and business."

2. Ambient User Experience: Cearley says this is "one continuous, seamless digital experience for the user that blends device, time, and space, and combines the user's physical environment with the virtual and electronic environments."

3. D Printing Materials: 3D printing technology advances will cause it to be used more widely in new industries, Cearley says. For example, he says, there will emerge over the next two decades more materials that can be printed, improved printing speed, and new models to print and assemble composite parts.

4. Information of Everything: Cearley says, "Advances in semantic tools such as graph databases as well as other emerging data classification and information analysis techniques will bring meaning to the often chaotic deluge of information."

5. Advanced Machine Learning: Manual classification and analysis will not be feasible or affordable due to the growth of data sources and information complexity, Cearley says, so "deep neural nets" will automate these tasks and will address challenges related to the Information of Everything.

6. Autonomous Agents and Things: Machine learning will give rise...