This is understandably so. The last couple of years have been tumultuous to say the least. Every blockbuster has its Netflix. Expect even more disruption to come down the pike. Established companies are being outmaneuvered and out-innovated by digital start-ups in Nigeria. Nearly one in two don’t even know whether they’ll be around in three to five years’ time.
But amid the disruption are great opportunities – and a lot of them. Here are seven significant trends for 2017 and beyond (seven being a lucky number). No doubt some of these will change the way you do business, from the edge, to the core, to the cloud.
Prediction 1: Immersive creativity goes mainstream
The year 2017 will signal the democratisation of immersive creativity. Very soon, creators will be able to weave their magic with some super powerful technology and in time, the wider population will adopt this technology.
Builders and architects will walk onto project sites and use their devices to see full-scale models of buildings before any work has even begun.
Hobbyists will see and do with a twist of a knob, swipe of their finger, or scribble of a pen. Using touch and totem rather than point and click, kids will draw their way onto Minecraft.
Prediction 2: Otherworldliness
Sixty-seven per cent of respondents in the global Future Workforce Study have gone on the record saying they will be willing to use Augmented Reality /Virtual Reality products in their professional lives. Over the next few years, expect VR/AR to reach a tipping point.
Hands-free devices will propel people into parallel worlds, in which their only limitation will be their imagination. They will learn new skills, provide services and engage with people, without bumping into the time and cost constraints of physical media.
The blurring of the physical and virtual worlds could well herald the end of lectures, binders and incessant note taking by bringing education to life with more immersive senses like touch.
Pokemon Go may be adding around 700,000 new players a day, but the AR and VR are ripe for more than just gaming.
Prediction 3: Secure your HVAC
Have you recently heard your mechanic say that your car needs a software update? Well, you heard correctly. In the age of the connected world – practically anything with an IP address can be hacked. The 2015 incident with the Jeep Cherokee is a case in point.
Expect the attack perimeter to widen this year and encroach upon other areas of the business beyond the IT network. Understanding that it is not just your data that needs to be protected, but items like your HVAC infrastructure is going to be a critical awakening for businesses going forward.
Prediction 4: 5K blah…
This isn’t the generation who settles for second best. Why not? Because we have got used to progress at 100mph. Research and development teams are constantly working-up a sweat to surprise and delight their customers. And just when people thought 5K resolution would supplant 4K as the next industry standard, rumours of large displays with double the resolution are starting to circulate.
In 2017, people’s experiences of living in Technicolour will be upgraded further, until the real world will look dim in comparison.
Prediction 5: Chief IoT officer
Business chiefs are popping up all over the place. Chief digital officers were all the rage but now there is a new kid on the block, in the shape of the chief Internet of Things officer.
Why do we need them? Because companies will experience mounting pressure to bridge the gap between operations and the IT.
In a bid to improve ROI and efficiency, the chief IoT officer will work with everyone from faciliities and plant managers to chief information officers and chief executive officers.
They will be the change agents responsible for pulling their firms into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a world which pulses to the rhythm of eight billion connected devices on the planet today (by 2031, we forecast this will grow to over 200 billion devices – 25 times more than the number of people on the earth). Big job!
Prediction 6: Prevention is better than cure
Any doctor will tell you that prevention is better than cure. Now, thanks to machine learning, we can tell when a piece of technology is about to break before it does, and address the issue quickly. With self-healing technology, companies can deploy talent in more strategic IT projects than spending time on break/fix services.
The International Data Corporation predicts that by 2020, nearly 20 per cent of operational processes will be self-healing and self-learning. This represents far fewer fires to put out.
Prediction 7: Machines and their crystal balls
It is no secret that companies and people are struggling to cope with the tremendous amount of data now online. But brace yourselves – large scale data will soon help machines understand things in brand new ways. For instance, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is doing some cool stuff with vision perception. By making machines watch popular TV shows like The Office and Desperate Housewives, they are learning to predict how humans will behave.
The MIT researchers believe machine perception will revolutionise industries where insight can be acquired from data at scale. For example, computer vision may provide an affordable, more accurate procedure to screen people for medical issues.
In time, machines will start to apply their learning across modalities and domains – making it possible to learn from text or virtual worlds.
Additional info: Jeff Clarke, President, Client Solutions at Dell.
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