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IDC's '3rd Platform' takes shape

Tyson Ngubeni
By Tyson Ngubeni
Johannesburg, 25 Mar 2014
Ubiquitous broadband connectivity will be important for the IDC's 3rd Platform to fully impact SA.
Ubiquitous broadband connectivity will be important for the IDC's 3rd Platform to fully impact SA.

Customers and industries are set to feel the impact of a shifting technology landscape, thanks to the emergence of what the IDC terms the 3rd Platform, as the analysis firm looks forward to the year 2020.

According to Vernon Turner, senior VP of enterprise infrastructure, consumer and telecom research at IDC, innovation and technological transformation will have a great impact on businesses and customers over the next few years.

The IDC describes the 3rd Platform as an era which harnesses cloud, mobile, big data and social networking as primary catalysts for the next phase of technology innovation across the globe. According to the research firm, the era began five years ago and its effects will gather pace in the coming years.

Speaking at the start of the IDC South Africa CIO summit today, Turner says "the ingredients of the 3rd Platform are no longer the story, but the combination of these forces will be where innovation is unlocked".

Ubiquitous broadband connectivity will be important for the 3rd Platform to take shape, says Turner, especially in emerging markets such as SA.

Turner outlined the IDC's key predictions for all of the platform's elements in the build-up to 2020:

Cloud
* Direct sales teams will be transformed to reflect changed customer needs by 2020 and suppliers will see a four-fold decrease in the number of accounts needing direct IT hardware infrastructure sales and support.
* In 2013, service providers housed 34% of installed servers in data centres and this figure will increase to 50% in 2017 and nearly 70% by 2020.

Mobile
* One out of five Internet users will use mobile-only by 2020 and mobile advertising spending will reach 45% of the digital market
* Wearable technology will shift into an era of "broad appeal", with greater penetration among consumers.

Big data
* Unified information access, cognitive computing and embedded apps transform knowledge worker tasks such as diagnostics, investigation and maintenance. This will influence up to 15% of knowledge-based roles, which will be altered or eliminated by automation in 2020.
* The Internet of things will have a great impact on connecting systems and machines for both the private and public sectors.

Social
* New, social-enabled business models will allow companies to respond proactively and engage with consumers.
* Facebook, Twitter and Google will be the primary drivers feeding the social engagement capacities. "Google has a lot of info they could mine and use as powerful social business tools," says Turner.

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