Johannesburg, 17 Feb 2014
We are already in February 2014 and this is the time when we actually know whether our new year's resolutions will stick, or are they forgotten?
With 2014 getting into full swing, it is a good time to start thinking about what the IT industry could have in store for us this year.
Over the last couple of years, the mega-trends of mobility, cloud, big data and social networking have emerged as the pillars of technology for the future. The IDC calls this the "third platform", as opposed to the second platform, that being LAN/Internet, Client/Server, and the first being mainframe and terminals. The third platform is the base for innovation for future products, services and even whole new industries.
Enough of the theory, so what are the trends for 2014? All the major analysts from Gartner and Forrester to IEEE have taken a stab at gazing into the crystal ball. Aside from the predictions on "self-driving cars" and "3D printing", these are the common themes for 2014:
Mobility and the explosion of smart devices are driving cloud computing and cloud services. The almost unlimited computing resources that the likes of Microsoft, Amazon and Google are making available in the cloud are bringing serious power to the mobile platforms.
Everything seems to be connected, and this has coined the phrase "The Internet of Things"; this is again driven by cloud services offered by the mega-vendors and others. It, in turn, is collecting really interesting data, from transactions to sensor data, which needs to be and is being analysed for real-world trends and behaviours.
This collection of massive amounts of data is driving the "big data" revolution, which demands the resources to collect and store data as well as driving the growth in the discipline of data science. This is still an emerging space that will grow significantly over the next few years.
Cloud is also offering analysts, and data-driven disciplines, the ability to access computing power that they have never had access to before, as well as giving them the ability to pay for these, on demand, for as long, or short periods, as required.
There is also the move from cloud providers and the mega-vendors offering only "infrastructure as a services" or "platform as a service" into "software as a service". Microsoft's "Devices and Services" strategy is a direct example of this.
Social collaboration has invaded most aspects of our lives and has given marketers an amazing amount of insight into us as consumers. This is definitely driving the trend of 'what do I keep private' and 'what do I allow the world to see'. This balance will drive new disciplines and behaviours in the social space.
2014 will be an exciting year! The IDC is saying that this year, emerging markets will return to double-digit growth in IT revenue; South Africa is a truly exciting place to be!
Links:
http://www.computer.org/portal/web/membership/Top-10-Tech-Trends-in-2014
http://www.frogdesign.com/techtrends2014/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2013/11/25/forrester-top-technology-trends-for-2014-and-beyond/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2013/10/14/gartner-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2014/
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24472713
Share