Dion Hinchliffe updates his watch list annually. You'll find the latest edition here: The enterprise technologies to watch in 2017.

This year's round-up of enterprise technologies to watch in 2016 is more crowded than ever. This is partly due to the fact that there's just more new tech this year, and partly because the consumer-focused side of the technology industry is creating ever more disruptive advances that enterprises are simply required to face more quickly to maintain their relevancy in the market.

There are several new additions to the list this year that -- despite rampant overuse of the term these days -- hold the potential to be genuinely disruptive in the short term. These include blockchain, digital/customer experience management, and real-time stream processing, or fast data.

More tactical, though still important to carefully consider throughout the phases of tech planning, pilots, growth, and maturity are technologies that are likely to add something significant to the way enterprises operate and which therefore have non-trivial impact to competitive advantage. The tactical technology additions that made the cut this year including contextual computing, workplace application integration, so-called low code platforms, smart agents/chatbots, adaptive cybersecurity, microservices architectures, ambient personalization, and fog computing.

Looking farther out, some adjustments have also been made to the list of horizon technologies, or anticipated technical innovations of significance that most enterprises are probably not only not ready to experiment with yet, but are still in the process of being made viable in R&D departments and startup incubators. Nevertheless, their realization is likely important enough that enterprises should be keeping a close eye on them, as these advances will probably create large and otherwise unanticipated inflection points in various industries as they reach the mass market stage.

In my analysis, all of the listed technologies should be on the short list of organizations in the process of digital transformation, which is to say enterprises that are proactively on a concerted effort to become more technology-centric organizations that think and act like leaders in the digital space.

Related Reading: The digital transformation conversation shifts to 'how'

While some technologies have remained included since my first watch list in 2014 as well as last year's list, that's because these advances are important enough that enterprises should be devoting significant energy through the technology development lifecycle to most of them. These technologies are also either evolving rapidly and/or are significantly underpresented in the average organization, at least when compared to digital leaders and so should remain on the watch list.

Without further ado, let's briefly look at the state of each of these technologies to understand why they are significant this year.

The enterprise technologies to watch in 2016

How will this much new technology be absorbed by our organizations? There are several ways, but in large organizations, innovation these days often happens outside the IT department, and 2016 will see a high water mark of experimentation by non-IT departments that use tech at the core of what they do, such as the purview of the Chief Digital Officer as well as that of the Chief Marketing Officer. So too lines of business will be looking at ways to more quickly deploy these technologies to assist customers and drive results.

The challenge of era: Tech change at scale

But as I've been suggesting is the real trend that we see with digital leaders is actively enabling of mass digital innovation on the edge through techniques such as the use of empowered networks of internal/expert change agents or using hackathons and developer networks on top of open APIs, the enablement of this number of powerful and important new technologies will require service delivery capabilities that most organizations simply don't have yet.

In short, we remain in an all time high state of opportunity and challenges with technology in the enterprise. We'll require all new forms of IT enablement to be able to absorb and metabolize the tremendous technology advances occurring around us. I look forward to continuing the industry discussion about how we can match the pace of tech change outside of our organizations, with what we are able to do inside the enterprise.