Published on the 11/12/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
As 2013 ebbs away and 2014 looms, computer vendors are polishing their crystal balls and issuing year-end predictions about just what enterprise will invest in during the new year…
“Cloudy with a chance of intelligence” just about sums up the forecast for 2014 as computer vendors predict what the new year will hold. Enterprise customers are widely predicted to make greater use of utility style information services to deliver more flexible, nimble and mobile solutions to their workforce.
According to VMware managing director Duncan Bennet, 2014 will be the year when “we start thinking about cloud as IT-as-a -service,” which will cast the CIO as a broker of IT services – some provided internally, others brought in from elsewhere. Bennet said that the trend was driven by an understanding that without faster IT services provision companies could find themselves marginalised by nimbler rivals.
He’s in good company as technology analyst Gartner recently forecast that by 2018, 20 percent of spending on new technologies will be on fully integrated as-a-service platform solutions as enterprise seeks out faster responses to end-user needs.
But security company Websense has warned that having more enterprise information in clouds, also makes them valuable targets for attack, recommending that companies which do offload processing and data storage to the cloud perform rigorous due diligence to ensure that their data is properly secured.
The company has also predicted that in 2014 although the volume of malware attacks will decline, the value will be increased as exploits are targeted to high net worth individuals. According to regional director Gerry Tucker, future attacks will not be about causing disruption. “It’s about acquiring assets. They are really looking to infiltrate networks. The volume may decline but the risk will increase.”
And CIOs will have to ensure that corporate information is protected wherever it is located, be that on enterprise servers, in the cloud or increasingly on employee-owned technology.
Releasing its forecast for 2014, Citrix has predicted that employees will increasingly set the IT agenda in 2014 and beyond as BYOD becomes entrenched in the enterprise, placing greater demands on companies to support employee-owned technology and provide mobile access to corporate information.
Big data is also expected to continue to intrigue corporations. Although relatively few enterprises have yet deployed big data strategies, next year is expected to see a further trickle of activity from market leaders.
Telecommunications consultant Paul Budde predicts meanwhile that the telecommunications industry will have another challenging year with stagnant or even declining revenues for many vendors as telcos continue to attempt to transform themselves to truly digital businesses. In terms of enterprise use of technology Budde forecasts organisations will investigate how to benefit from the so called “internet of things” which connects sensors or devices over the internet delivering a much richer data fabric that can be exploited by organisations, although he acknowledged this could introduce a range of privacy issues.
As far as Australia’s National Broadband Network and New Zealand’s Ultra Fast Broadband Network are concerned, Budde forecast a sharp uptick in consumer and enterprise demand as the networks rolled out to more areas. He said that in Australia in areas where the NBN had reached there was evidence of 50-60 percent uptake.
