Here is a snapshot of the mega-trends and predictions for 2013.
- Your personal data locker will become increasingly important to you and, if you haven't got one you already, you should probably consider it.
According to Forrester Research the business of managing personal data, which is already worth billions, will grow substantially in the next two years. Taking the US as an example, more than $2 billion is spent each year collecting data from third parties.
A
cloud-based data locker has been described
by CNN as "part virtual safe and part personal digital assistant.
"Dave Siegel, author of Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform
Your Business, argues these cyber vaults will eventually replace PCs,
tablets, iPhones, and Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows and Apple's (AAPL)
Macintosh operating systems. Yes, Google (GOOG) Android, too."
2. Home Sweet Home:
The Connected Home is a component of the Internet of Things; where devices talk to devices, in many cases without human intervention.
Cloud-based smart home systems allow you to monitor and control your house from your smart phone, tablet, or computer, no matter where in the world you are at the time. An example of this is
Lowe's Iris system.
Iris can be installed directly by the home owner and the basic level of monitoring service is free. This includes text alerts to the home owner when alarms are triggered; remote control of connected devices, thermostats and locks; and access to remote video streaming from cameras in the home via smart phone or computer. Lowe has partnered with
AlertMe to produce this product.
3. Programmatic buying will get bigger
Programmatic buying allows advertisers to bid, often in real time, on ad space largely based on the value they have assigned to the consumer on the other side of the screen. It uses a range of technologies to achieve this. As
this New York Times article notes, "major advertisers and many of the world’s largest ad agencies creating private exchanges to automate the buying and selling of ads."
4. A Sense of Touch and Smell
IBM believes that in the future computer devices will be able to mimic our ability to touch, taste, smell and hear. Sophisticated algorithms will be able to analyse why people like certain tastes and the chemical structure of food.
5. Cyber Security or insecurity?
If you own a cyber security company you could be in the money as many predict that banks and other online transactions sites, who have been seen a surge in cyber attacks, are anticipating that these will get even more sophisticated as time goes by. As a result these entities will increasingly turn cyber security firms to combat these intrusions.
We are still slack about cyber security matters. A
recent study found that 35% of all data required data protection in 2010, but despite this, less than 20% of it is actually protected.
Ericka Chickowski,
writing for Dark Reading believes that security research firms will turn away from less lucrative vendor contracts in 2013 and instead sell the information they glean about software vulnerabilities on the open market.
"Cyber-mercenaries are becoming more protective of their discoveries as the technology involved becomes more complex and the secrets more valuable".
Now this should be a worry to all as these cyber-mercenaries don't need to reveal who they have sold their research to although some like
Vupen are on record as saying that they wouldn't sell their findings to oppressive governments or criminals.
eWEEK has also compiled
some 2013 predictions to help organisations prepare to counter increasingly sophisticated hacks and malware.
6. The amount of Data will grow and grow.
By 2020 that amount of data on planet earth will be 40
Zettabytes; one Zettabyte is 2 to the 70th power bytes. According the
Computer Weekly that equates to 57 times the number of all the grains of sand on all the beaches on earth. I 'll have to take their word for it as counting grains of sand is simply soporific! Machine generated data is the main contributor to this increase, rising from the current 11% of all data top 40% by 2020.
Predictions from other sources.
Juniper Research predicts the following for wireless in the year ahead:
- Big Data to Become Big Business
- Smart Glasses & Other Wearables: 2013, the year of ‘announcements’
- BYOD trend on the rise, as security issues escalate
- Retail to embrace the in-store mobile strategy
- Operators to adopt seamless WiFi & LTE connectivity
- Mobile Becomes the Connectivity Hub
- The Year of Microsoft
- The multi-screen, seamless user experience becomes a reality
- New mobile and tablet form factors to emerge
- Social Gaming is on the Rise
CIO sees an end to offshore outsourcing. IT robots and autonomic systems will be taking over. So you will no longer need to be an engineer to create software or intelligently manage IT infrastructure. An example is
Blue Prism; giving companies a software development toolkit and methodology to create their own software robots to automate rules-driven business processes. According to the company there are significant cost savings with its robot full-time equivalents (FTEs) costing a third of offshore FTEs.(video below)
And finally, the digital playing field is levelling out thanks to Cloud computing with developing countries able expand their role in the global economy. The University of California, San Diego's Dean of International Relations and Pacific Studies, Peter F. Cowhey, and Senior Fellow at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, Michael Kleeman,
found that Third World countries can now utilise the cloud in the same way developed countries have in the past. This is due to the lower costs, resulting in higher Internet adoption rates.
Emerging market businesses can now access similar storage, compute, and uses application services as the Global 2000 do.
