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2016 is slated to be the year of Information. More than technology, this will be about strategy- of data and its utilization.
Data is fast becoming the center of all business strategy and analytics is its biggest tool. Not leveraging data or not capitalising on its power could make companies go out of business- such is its influence on the industry in 2016! There will be no option but to leverage analytical insights to ensure product planning and business and market strategy meets customer expectations.
Gartner in its Gartner Symposium/ITExpo, held in October 2015 set clear expectations of what will be trending 2016. Its top enterprise forecasts were:
An expanding set of endpoints- The Device Mesh – for connectivity of people, machines, governments and enterprises, also including mobile devices, wearable, consumer and home electronic devices, automotive devices and environmental devices . This will be driven by the Internet of Things and will mean that an increasing number of end point connections will get everything on a single platform…or a number of platforms which in turn will be interactive. The new reality will provide an ambient user experience seamlessly flowing across devices and interaction channels that transcend boundaries of device mesh, time and space. This will be the second coming of Mobility that took centre stage in 2014-2015.
This continuous and unimpeded flow of information will create data banks that go beyond textual, audio or video, and will now be what is called Information of Everything. Analytics, as we know it today, will need to step up to meet the BI requirements of the industry using this new nature of information. The new machines will require different architecture – Mesh App and Service Architecture, a more loosely coupled integrative approach for the apps and services architecture, increasingly enabled by software-defined application services. Agility, robustness, speed and energy efficiency will be the continuing buzzwords.
In terms of enterprise, classic computing moves forward to facilitate Machine Learning, creating systems that can perceive the world on their own intelligence. This is a step ahead of what we call Smart Machines today. This new concept will be huge competitive advantages to enterprises that know how to leverage it. This will enable smart machines implementations- going beyond robots and VPAs, and entering the realm of more realistic machines that can THINK, and these will only expand their scope over the next couple of decades! These will necessitate ultra efficient neuromorphic systems architecture, fueled by field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), high powered and much more energy efficient.
Without a doubt, these leaps into smarter technologies will require much better security architecture, making conventional perimeter defense obsolete. Self defense in terms of entity behavior analytics will be the way forward.
The way forward for Enterprise Technology
Big Data will Only get Bigger
“Over the past one year, we witnessed an increased investment by organizations in Big Data technology as it emerged to be one of the core components of their strategy. 2016 will be the year when big data becomes more mainstream and is adopted across various sectors to drive innovation and capture digitization opportunities”, says Neil Mendelson, Oracle’s VP Big Data Product Management. Oracle expects Big data deployments to become mainstream in 2016. This will be driven by an increased demand for data scientists. ”2016 will witness an increase in the proliferation of experiments default risk, policy underwriting, and fraud detection as firms try to identify hotspots for algorithmic advantage faster than the competition, “Oracle predicts. The new system will see new management tools that will uncouple Big Data technologies from higher level data processing needs, and the emergence of dataflow programming for simpler reusability of functional operators, providing pluggable support for statistical and machine learning functions. In 2016, simpler big data discovery tools will help improve both self-service access to big data and provide richer hypotheses and experiments, thus driving the next level of innovation. According to Oracle, Data virtualization will become a reality wherenot only a greater variety of data will be captured, but it will also be used in a variety of algorithms, analytics, and apps. The Emergence of big data cloud services because of IoT will help manufacturers create new products that safely take action on the analyzed data without human intervention. And cloud will be mostly hybrid, honouring both the drive for cost reduction and regulatory compliance.
“As the world becomes more connected, the incredible amount of real-world data available today promises engineers and scientists great insight, but getting that insight can be a challenge,” says Eric Starkloff, NI executive vice president of global sales and marketing.
This will be the true power on Big Data and its Analytics- when the returns in business are driven by recommendations based on the analytics.
Cloud
As Big Data becomes mainstream, storage and analytics will need to find a point of convergence, and the cloud is expected to come to the rescue. Optimised for storage, managing and sorting mammoth amounts of Data, these clouds will change the entire paradigm of IT workload for enterprises. Agility being the keyword for cloud adoption, the cloud will support analytics to analyse much more data much much faster. No longer the fancy “C “word, the cloud will become an integral part of the enterprise infrastructure.
The public cloud, however, may not stay the same; the industry is now looking at a new concept- a new category of value-added data services on the public cloud, which has been termed as “database platform-as-a-service” by Gartner and “big data processing as a service” by Forrester.
Another change coming in, in 2016, is most enterprises side- stepping Hadoop as the focused hardware requirements for cloud. With software led applications, the adoption of cloud is likely to be much faster and easier. Hybrid clouds, as now, will be centre stage for enterprise and CIOs will continue to look for ways to connect on-premise systems with their cloud bits. As the RoI rises, the easier and more secured movement between on-premise to the cloud, a surge in business apps on the cloud is foreseen. This may well drive what could henceforth be termed as ‘cloud mentality’.
Security
Again, it’s all about data, and more so, connected data. So data security will be topmost on everyone’s minds in 2016. In 2016, prevention of data compromise will emerge as the strongest focus of security enterprises. Machine learning will be a strong support in this endeavour, and there will be a leap forward on anticipating threats and hacking incidents.
While IoT and the cloud will almost certainly face more sophisticated threats, Fortinet’s Threat Research Division, FortiGuard Labs predicts the advent of increasingly more sophisticated techniques for evasion of these threats. FortiGuard foresees new vulnerabilities in connected mesh points, that will need attention in 2016. There would be worms and viruses that specialise in IoT devices attacks- given the huge spread of these devices and their increasing play both in consumer and enterprise areas. The connected nature of these devices will be their biggest vulnerability. Attacks on virtualised infrastructure and cloud are also set to become more malicious and more sophisticated. Two-faced malware, that appears harmless at the surface but attacks just a viciously, is also being identified, and even sandboxing techniques cannot detect or destroy it. Of course, there are solutions being planned as well.
“The threats that matter most, today’s pervasive threat actors are now conducting attack campaigns comprised of multiple exploit methods and multiple backdoors to assure persistence. Incomplete incident scoping has become a critical and consistent mistake made by security teams,“ says Amit Yoran, President, RSA, the Security Division of EMC.
In 2016, he adds, industry and organizations need to be ready for Strategic Data Manipulation and Disruption – Organizations will begin to realize that not only is their data being accessed inappropriately, but that it is being tampered with. Data drives decision making for people and computer systems – creating potentially devastating consequences of misrepresented data on the processes. The “…as-a-service” models are going to increasingly threatened with security outages. As the cost of attacking an organization is dropping dramatically, financial gain is no longer the primary focus. “Security operations and risk managers should evolve their understanding not only of the threat, but also of what, why, where, and how they are being targeted, opines Yoran.
Tarun Kaura, Director – Solutions Product Management – APJ, Symantec, has some specific threats identified for 2016. The intelligence team at Symantec identified Apple as under threat. “Apple devices have experienced a surge in popularity in recent years. According to IDC, the company now accounts for 13.5 percent of global Smartphone shipments and 7.5 percent of global PC shipments. This increase in usage has not gone unnoticed by attackers. A rising number of threat actors have begun developing specific malware designed to infect devices running Mac OS X or iOS, ” he says.
In addition, biometrics has become mainstream over 2014-15, with forecasts of significant growth over the next two years. This technology caters to both enterprises and consumers, and has huge money implications if threatened. To counter this threat, enterprise adoption of biometrics may start to see a reduced dependence on passwords.
“According to a Gartner report titled Agenda Overview for the Internet of Things, by 2020 close to 30 billion connected things will be in use across a wide range of industries and the IoT will touch every role across the enterprise,” he points out, “As market leaders emerge and certain ecosystems grow, the attacks against these devices will undoubtedly escalate.” This also brings wearable devices, remote patient management devices and m2M devices in healthcare will also be under increased threat in 2016, simple because their usage is set to jump manifold.
According to Symantec, Encryption technologies are all set to increase, given the insecurity of the connected Mesh that is clearly on everyone’s mind, when security is being discussed.
A critical point that Symantec has raised is the need for cyber insurance that will be strong in 2016. Cyber attacks are expensive in more ways than one. So in 2016, many organizations will prefer to go the insurance way, to make good their losses- both business and reputational. However, this is a tricky quicksand- constantly evolving definitions of threats, losses and requirements will need organizations to keep their antennae up for their understanding of what’s secure and what’s not.
Storage
As the cloud takes over, storage could actually go completely hybrid. As with everything becoming software defined, storage will take the same route in 2016. Solutions will be key, all over enterprise, and the gradual reduction of form-factor, and increasing invisibility. This will be the year of vendors and integrators who have deeper knowledge of traction and interactions across the entire data storage stack.
Convergence is one of the fastest growing segments in enterprise infrastructure as it involves the biggest issue most organisations have, that is the shortage of IT skills. The transition of workflows can help IT teams refocus their staff to take on tasks that achieve and further business goals. “In 2016, products and solutions will respond to market needs for simplicity, easier management and better economic returns and a need to integrate data management across the hybrid cloud. Converged infrastructure will minimize the drudgery of hardware integration and free up customers to experiment with software innovation. It is designed in a way to increase IT responsiveness to businesses while reducing overall costs of computing, opines Lee Caswell, VP of Product, Solutions & Services Marketing, NetApp
In 2016, he adds, the All-Flash Data Center will become a practical reality. “The worldwide Flash-array market grew to USD 11.3 billion in 2014, at the rate of 101% over a year, in the second quarter of 2015. In 2016, Flash capacities will be larger than disk drives and lower pricing will make them more viable. Flash management savings will drive flash adoption as users simplify performance tuning and eliminate disk drive failures,” he added.
Also, the hybrid cloud market is growing at an annual compound rate of 29.22% over the period of 2014-2019, giving enterprise a flexible and responsive tool.
Overall View
With software now squarely at the center of the business, organizations are digitally transforming by embracing agile practices and new technologies that deliver innovations to market quickly and securely.
“Businesses are facing greater urgency to commit to their digital transformation journey in a bid to stay ahead of the competition in today’s application economy. Across Asia Pacific, businesses will need to embrace agile practices to keep pace with evolving market demands,” said Kenneth Arredondo, President & General Manager, Asia Pacific & Japan, CA Technologies.
Some lesser focused technologies are all set to create a ground for enterprise transformation as well.
3D printing will surely take the top slot here. According to Gartner, 3D printing is used in a wide range of materials and is driving user demand. With practical applications for 3D – beyond enterprise in aerospace, medical, automotive, energy and the military, the market will see massive growth in 2016. .
Design Space
Electronic design is also undergoing a silent transformation. Says Jaswinder Ahuja, Corporate Vice President and Managing Director, Cadence Design Systems (India) Pvt. Ltd., ”India has also seen mergers and acquisitions of electronics and semiconductor design services companies in 2015. This points to the rising relevance of such services in the semiconductor ecosystem. The mergers have created large groups with much more financial strength, market reach and broader offerings and will create new and larger opportunities for the design services companies based out of India.
He points our design evolution in 2016 as a continuing trend from 2015. He foresees an increasingly sophisticated designs coming directly from system companies serving many end-applications including consumer electronics, enterprise cloud/data centers, IoT, and automotive. “This is a big challenge for both hardware and software development. Traditionally software is written and tested only once the silicon is taped out. Now, thanks to shorter time to market windows, optimization and testing of software needs to be done in parallel to hardware development, necessitating hardware/software co-verification,” says Ahuja.
2016 will also see higher System Design Enablement, creating and offeringwhole systems or end products including chips, packages, boards, embedded software, and mechanical components. The market, he adds, will become increasingly vertical. Going forward, markets like consumer, automotive, and industrial sectors will have differing needs and will need optimized tools and IP.
COLLABORATION not merely Communication
Communication, moving beyond mobility, will take up evolved form- collaboration. Says Geoff Thomas, President, Polycom Asia Pacific ,” Organisations today have moved away from questioning the need and use for collaboration technology. Instead, it’s proliferation that is high on the list of concerns – how to equip and deploy in every space, how to scale up or down as necessary, how to account for the different modalities required, and so on. The key for vendors here is to bring all the pieces of the puzzle together and provide a customer experience that is consistent, uninterrupted, and as painless as possible.”
According to Polycom, collaboration technology will move to the centre of the room.
New solutions are developed with this in mind, with human-centred design for use in open space environments as well as traditional meeting rooms. They will also incorporate features such as intelligent 360-degree video, automatic muting and noise blocking, and advanced camera technologies which frame the active speaker, ensuring natural human instincts are a key consideration for improving collaboration tools. In this scenario, Cloud-based apps will converge for simpler workflows. On the cloud today, the range of apps is exploding and new solutions which stitch together workflows that go through these apps –‘cloud on cloud’ solutions so to speak – are set to rise in the future. “In the real-time collaboration space, opportunities are opening up to integrate audio, video and content within workflows in the cloud, making it faster and easier to deploy to multiple customers at once. This model would eliminate the need for software distribution and remote support to customers on an individual basis. Instead, upgrades and improvements can be managed from one central data centre as a faster and continuous process,” he adds.
Needless to say, the increasing role of Big Data and analytics will influence collaboration strategies more than ever in the coming year.
Document Management 2016
“Document Management provides extensive tools and techniques for data retrieval too. Retrieving information and data is one of the imperative parts of any process operation. This involves facets such as time, accuracy as well as integrity of records and information, affecting the whole process in terms of resource, labour and money,” opines Cássio Vaquero Regional Director, Information Management Division, for Asia-Pacific and Latin America. The document management sector will see great opportunity for technology to play a major role in improving efficiency and increasing the bottom line.
In 2016, organizations will want to synergize effectiveness and efficiency of supporting services across the company by applying multiple service delivery models, including elements of shared services, outsourcing, off-shoring and IT solutions. As with every other sector, Big data will define a new dimension for document management. Also, Web-based document management, that allows for scalability and offers ease of access and reduced costs, drives the best document management systems. The cloud ensures that documents are available at anytime, anywhere. Document management software needs to be accessible from mobile devices – and the experience must also be user-friendly. So the concept of mobile document management is increasingly in demand, and as a practice it is playing an important role in the current technological landscape.
Digital records that have a long-term retention are at risk when hardware devices, software applications and file formats become obsolete. In 2016, enterprise architecture and records management professionals must be open to collaboration, working cross-functionally with business users and jointly developing their technical roadmap for the identification and exploration to store corporate records. Regulations now cover the broader spectrum of information stored electronically e.g., video, social media or instant messaging etc, and Information archiving is emerging as a term that better describes and supports a holistic, life cycle view of the creation, use and protection of digital information.
2016 will see Artificial Intelligence based solutions that allow organizations to deliver more accurate responses on the first interaction, reduce handling times, minimize transaction costs, and increase staff productivity. These offerings can reduce the time spent looking for business-critical information and significantly improve productivity whilst providing a richer user experience.
2016 Digitalization on the Rise
According to Ettienne Reinecke, Dimension Data’s Group Chief Technology Officer, social, mobile, cloud, analytics, Internet of Things, and bimodal IT are all hot topics in the IT industry which divide IT functions and teams in organisations worldwide. But, he says, “All of these trends and technologies serve a larger purpose, because they enable the transformation of an organisation to become a digital enterprise. In other words, the business uses IT to respond faster to market opportunities and threats, and prioritises the experience of the people it works with, whether they’re customers, employees, or business partners.”
So, in 2016, it’s all going to be about Digital Infrastructure – how to understand data … and how to exploit it.
The second trend he identifies is about collaborative workspaces of tomorrow that are driven by connected world instances like social media and single platform collaboration. “These technologies encourage the creation of communities; living, working, shopping, and interacting ‘out loud’; sharing ideas; easily finding people and information; collaboration; and faster decision-making. These behaviours will make their way into more and more organisations in 2016, allowing end users to work together seamlessly from different geographies, and at different times of the day,” he adds..
Parag Arora, Area Vice President & Country Head – India Subcontinent, Citrix, sums up the outlook for 2016,” We will see the renewed focus of CIOs towards enabling and empowering the business users to provide their organizations’ customers a differentiated experience. Also, IT services will be built with an integrated approach on workspaces leveraging hybrid clouds and not on a one restrictive cloud approach. In 2016, Software defined solutions will continue to see innovation. A Software-Defined Workplace can result in dramatic improvements across multiple dimensions for organizations. In 2016, software will create the primary experience and business value of a product or a service, including all the workspace services. And lastly, CIOs will continue to focus on technologies and platforms that allow them to integrate and co-exist (and help build a solid connecting bridge) traditional applications and data with the next gen applications and services. Business productivity will be a key driver for this need.”
