2021 is the year of metals: Digital technology will innovate almost every industry and metal will be at the center [Video]

Across the planet, a combination of looming climate change, a killer pandemic, and economic uncertainty are driving forward innovations like never before.

“Normal” behaviors that were unchallenged, even a year ago - like simply going to a central place of work - an office, a gym, a factory - are now changed forever. Digital technology, in the form of Zoom or Google Meet for meetings rather than face-to-face. Asana and slack for ideas and group discussions, instead of conferences. Drones for transport, rather than personal deliveries.

Innovations will accelerate as the initial ideas then expand and grow with new purposes, efficiencies, and transformations.

We’re going to look at the way digital technologies are developing - and what this means for the future of precious metals.

Centralized Information System: The Cloud and Circuitry

Across all sectors and industries, people have been forced to find radical new ways of doing things. Totally unforeseen problems have been solved, and these changes will bring about a sustained and profound impact on how we work and live going forward.

Centralized digital businesses were severely affected by the sudden need to share information and communicate remotely. Staff who were forced to work from home found they had no access to any customer relationship management systems (CRM) unless they were cloud-based and had the necessary authorization.

The challenges the situations presented made modern software stacks, open-source and cloud-based technologies front and center – to the point where it is evident that this cloud native infrastructure will dominate in the future.

All of the cloud structures, micro-services, API-first, containers, and DevOps, as well as other capabilities like immutable infrastructure, container orchestration, and service mesh, rely on techno equipment and hardware.

For instance, Istio is a traffic routing system that uses a service mesh like Kubernetes for its telemetry and monitoring. It is all part of the massive infrastructure behind the technology being used to bring Zoom, Team, Slack, and other software solutions to those who need it. The underlying key to all of it is circuitry. The speed at which digital information travels between and through the hardware and software systems to users.

The 4th Industrial Revolution

This digital transformation has been described as the 4th Industrial Revolution - the first three being the steam engine, electricity, and the microprocessor.

Using recent transformations, for example, farmers can optimize livestock breeding rates. Hospitals can deliver improved healthcare because of enhanced diagnostics. Because of predictive analytics and in-depth data, manufacturers can pre-empt maintenance issues to secure production and supply lines.

The new disruptive and dynamic business landscape is described by Ralph Haupter, President of Microsoft Asia, as "a fusion of technologies that is blurring the line between the physical, digital and biological spheres, this new era will create new services that link people together and enable them to do more. Three key drivers are making a real difference now – data, cloud, and analytics. Each of these, taken individually, are transformative in their own right. But when happening simultaneously, which is what is occurring right now, they create an unstoppable force enabling digital disruption, which will impact all organizations, all industries, all roles."

From ridesharing, gaming, streaming, collaboration tools, and videoconferencing, the data pipelines, security, caching, and estate management need distributed applications across multiple infrastructure tiers.

The advent of 5G will present particular challenges. Deployment planning for high-performance 5G capabilities envisages physical infrastructure – interconnected data centers – from the current macro-edge data centers to a new network that utilizes robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, telemedicine, and tactile internet.

With the advent of usable and more commonplace AI (Artificial Intelligence), the adoption and pervasiveness of technological improvement will depend on the rollout of data centers and the associated connectivity, power supply, and heat dispersal systems.

To add to the need for innovation, the Paris Accord and other environmental impact initiatives, will mean crafting strategies that will be carbon neutral across any technological infrastructure and "grid-and-sustainability" positive data center projects.

The Foundation Of The Future: Metals

So far, we have covered a lot of corporate-speak – but what does all this mean for you, your precious metal investments, and the future?

An excellent place to start would be mining, not just precious metals but also the rare-earth metals needed for the circuitry and wiring required by the hardware for the new technology. Mining is energy-intensive and dangerous.

The introduction of autonomous vehicles will improve safety, productivity and reduce costs through fuel and maintenance savings.