These are the top 10 uses cases for AI and IoT technologies, per CompTIA

You might not know CompTIA, but you probably know the A+ Certification it administers. You might even know its monthly jobs reports tracking hiring trends in the tech industry.

Its latest offering is know-worthy, too: the 2021 Emerging Technology Top 10 List, this year focusing exclusively on top use cases for artificial intelligence and internet of things.

The list has a Delaware connection.

In 2012, partnerships exec Greg Plum was heading up partner development efforts for FreeConferenceCall.com at an industry trade show. That’s where he first learned about the international-facing CompTIA, which promotes growth of the information technology industry via education, training, certifications, philanthropy and market research.

When he received an invite a few months later to serve on the nonprofit’s newly formed Telecom Advisory Council, charged with bridging the gap between telecom and IT partners in the tech ecosystem, he jumped at the chance to get involved. In addition to his work as a channel strategy advisor (currently working with Delaware-based Markee), Plum is also board member for the Technology Forum of Delaware, and saw the opportunity to impact the local technology ecosystem.

Greg Plum. (Courtesy photo)

“CompTIA is a major proponent of small business technology initiatives,” he told Technical.ly. “Thanks to Senator Coons’ championing of technology initiatives, Delaware is well regarded in the tech space. My goal is to cross-pollinate between these CompTIA and the Technology Forum of Delaware, bringing the emerging technology findings to our local group, and evangelizing the innovations coming out of Delaware to a global audience.”

The hope is that Delaware’s place in the global technology community will grow.

“It’s funny, despite being a dynamic and innovative environment for technological advances, I feel like Delaware is woefully underrepresented in the larger tech space,” Plum said. “Just having the ability to raise awareness for our region’s developments with a larger audience is a unique and exciting opportunity. Our work is just beginning.”

CompTIA released its 2021 Emerging Technologies List last week, and Plum, who became chair of the executive council of the org’s Emerging Technology Community in December, played a major role in putting it together.

“This year, the executive council and I discussed ways to make the list less of a novelty and more of a practical guide for our global membership,” he said. “The result was a focus on the technologies that consistently topped the list since inception” — that is, AI and IoT. “So our top 10 has morphed into the top 10 applications for these two leading technologies. The evolution helps us deliver on our goal of taking the conversation ‘from promise to profit.'”

Here’s the new and improved top 10:

Top AI use cases

• Predictive sales and lead scoring
• CRM and service delivery optimization
• Chatbots and digital assistants
• Cybersecurity threat detection
• Marketing automation

Top IoT use cases

• Asset tracking
• Industrial monitoring
• Smart badges
• Fleet management
• Smart buildings

Plum notes that technologies classified as “emerging” are currently making an impact in various industries, including cybersecurity, sales, marketing and manufacturing.

“It is also interesting to note that these two technologies are not ‘sold’ as standalone features, but are incorporated into various services currently delivered to personal and business customers,” Plum said. “AI and IoT are also tightly connected in that IoT generates massive volumes of data — data that is analyzed and quantified, more efficiently than ever before possible, by artificial intelligence.”