Kevin Bloch - Chief Technology Officer of Australia and New Zealand, Cisco
“The strongest weapon to shift geopolitical balances isn’t nukes or missiles, it’s technology,” says Kevin Bloch, Chief Technology Officer of Australia and New Zealand, Cisco.
In offering insight into the next twelve months for the local ICT market, Bloch believes that while commodity prices have plummeted, the value of digital, algorithm-based assets has escalated.
“The fourth industrial revolution is upon us and it is characterised by a knowledge or algorithm-based world fuelled by data,” Bloch says.
“This shift is underpinned predominantly by information technology.”
With IT spending expected to rise 1.5 percent to $3.6 trillion globally, over five million things are being connected per day (about 64 per second) in order to generate and collect that data.
“To do this, spending on Internet of Things (IoT) hardware will exceed $2.5 million every minute in 2016,” Bloch forecasts.
Looking ahead, Bloch offers his take on the top 10 trends for 2016:
1. Digital Transformation - Moving at the speed of digital
The fourth industrial revolution has the potential to overturn incumbents and reshape markets faster than perhaps any force in history.
The time to digital disruption in most industries is three years, yet nearly half of companies still do not view “digital disruption” as a board-level concern. It’s not too late.
Across 16 private sectors, companies captured an average of only 20 percent digital Value at Stake globally in 2015.
Industries realising highest digital value share two characteristics - they are “IT-intensive” and they display greater convergence between IT and operational technology (OT).
Data will be a priority and new businesses, models and technologies will develop around data exchange - there is no opting out for going digital, but be wary of economic dislocation.
2. Internet of Things - The instrumentation of everything
The journey has begun towards “ubiquitous computing", in which every light, every doorknob will be connected to the internet.
In 2016, 5.5 million new ‘things’ will get connected to the IoT every day.
Instrumentation and connectivity will provide data to enable, for example, safer roads, better healthcare and a cleaner planet.
This year will see a convergence of IoT standards and an increased focus on IoT platforms, apps, security, analytics and most importantly, awareness of the need to measure our world so that we can make it even better.
3. Cloud - Core of app turbulence
The cloud has become the foundation and engine room for most digital initiatives large and small.
In 2016, most new IT spending is expected to be in the cloud and is expected to reach 70 percent of investments by 2020.
Private cloud gives way to hybrid cloud and the majority of enterprise will have hybrid cloud deployments.
Disruption is occurring in the way collaboration (and video) technology is delivered and the way applications are going to be built, deployed and operated.
Today’s screen of apps is going to change dramatically towards app streaming; micro-services and containers will enable agility and scale; hyper-converged systems will become more popular.
4. Mobile - Fastest growing giant industry ever
The mobile handset is now considered by many to be their most valuable device, to be close at all times and checked on average 221 times a day.
Now a multi-trillion dollar global business, it is expected that two-thirds of global IP traffic will originate from mobile connections by 2019.
The mobile industry is expanding its focus on people to things, the Internet of Things.
Mobile provides a critical pipe for data in and out of any ‘thing’ anywhere, anytime. IoT standards will consolidate in both licenced and unlicenced spectrum around NB-IoT and LoRa.
5G is still years off but there will be interim options like 4.5G.
