Gartner's list of 10 top strategic technology trends organizations should explore in 2023 would be remiss if it didn't include sustainability and the metaverse.

While the firm's list is categorized into themes: pioneer, scale, and optimize, Frances Karamouzis, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner told SDxCentral that one trend – sustainability – transcends all three categories.

“In order to have sustainable business, there's the environmental, social, and governance piece of it. But we think that what is trending right now are the underlying technologies that people are implementing,” Karamouzis said.

“So we actually think the trend itself is any one of the other nine that you implement, if you're not doing it sustainably or using sustainable technologies, then you are really, really going to struggle going forward,” she added.

Karamouzis explained one of the consequences organizations might face if they don’t pursue sustainable technologies is redundant spending, adding “you're going to have to rip out and replace things that you've put in.”

She noted organizations might also experience isolation and difficulty marrying different technologies together, because other vendors and customers won’t want to work with them as more indexes on brands associated with sustainability emerge.

In a recent Gartner survey, CEOs reported that environmental and social changes are now a top three priority for investors, after profit and revenue.

Perhaps the biggest buzzword of them all lately – the metaverse – made Gartner’s list for the first time this year. Categorized as a pioneer trend, Gartner defines a metaverse as “a collective virtual 3D shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality.”

Some industry experts have gone as far to say that sustainability could be one of the biggest benefits presented by the metaverse.

Karamouzis noted that while Gartner thinks the “full blown view of how [the metaverse] is eventually going to work has not quite manifested,” the underlying technologies within the metaverse “absolutely have.”

She cited limited storage capabilities and unavailability of public WiFi in many places as two of the roadblocks the metaverse, or metaverses, will have to overcome to reach full potential.

Gartner expects that a complete metaverse will be device-independent and won’t be owned by a single vendor. It will have a virtual economy of itself, enabled by digital currencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

By 2027, the analyst firm predicts that over 40% of large organizations worldwide will use a combination of Web3, augmented reality, cloud, and digital twins in metaverse-based projects aimed at increasing revenue.