Top information management technology trends
February 9, 2017 6:30 AM
Top technology trends well see in 2017 (part three)
Intelligent data management, the AI-driven Internet, and a billion dollar security breach are just some of the trends we can expect this year. Tech leaders share their predictions here on those topics, and more.
Business users will drive more decisions around data management
There is a stock of cleansing rules, integration processes, and so on that business users employ to get data into the shape they want, explains Jake Freivald, vice president of marketing at Information Builders. These rules are frequently used once, or used only by a specific person, and then thrown away. Those are intellectual resources that shouldn't be wasted. Think of a data scientist creating data cleansing rules for an analytical process that leverages a data lake. The knowledge that goes into her processes can be captured, stored, and applied to downstream feeds, data governance processes that correct source systems, and integrated views of the data for others.
The future of enterprise infrastructure is not speeds and feeds
but intelligence and self-management, and, in 2017, that differentiator will separate those storage companies that thrive from those that fade away, predicts, Rod Bagg, vice president of analytics and customer Support at Nimble Storage. Predictive analytics and artificial intelligence enable companies to sharply reduce downtime and ensure optimal application performance, essentially switching from firefighter mode to a more proactive IT strategy. This year, it will become painfully obvious which industry players are holding on to the speeds and feeds model, because they will be the ones falling behind.
AI-Driven Internet cashes in on 3D technology
We are beginning to enter the initial stages of consumer use of the AI-driven Internet, says Hossein Rahnama, chief executive officer and founder at Flybits. This new era of Internet is a shift from what we have traditionally experienced, interacting with two-dimensional interfaces for 2D experiences, such as using a smartphone or computer screen. The AI-driven Internet will utilize 3D interfaces to generate 3D experiences. Your physical environment with become your Internet interface. Take Uber for example; in which you interact with a digital service that takes into account your real-time environment and it creates a physical result, by sending a car to your exact location. We will begin to see many more of these services emerge this year.
Security community will utilize big data more effectively
2016 was the year of big data. However, organizations find themselves over their heads when they realize that the data clutter that comes with it makes informed security decisions as difficult as ever, says Matt Rodgers, head of security Strategy at E8 Security. Organizations have the information they need; but they cannot find it. In 2017, companies will start looking at their data sets through advanced analytics to identify trends and risks. Big companies are already starting to augment their existing SIEM technology with behavior analytics capabilities to this end.
Digital transformation means putting customer first
Today, theres no such thing as a digital strategy just strategy in a digital world. And while the digital age is creating a degree of uncertainty for some organizations, its also opening the doors to exciting possibilities and ushering in an era of infinite potential, explains Ettienne Reinecke, chief technology officer at Dimension Data. In the year ahead, control and ownership of data and metadata will emerge as a point of discussion - and indeed contention. Organizations dont just want ownership and control of their data for compliance reasons: they want it to perform analytics. We expect that this will trigger some interesting discussions between businesses and their cloud providers. For example, where are the boundaries with respect to ownership, especially around metadata. We foresee this issue resulting in a bit of push and pull among the various parties.
Comfort in the Cloud
The concerns about security and loss of control in the cloud will be a thing of the past in 2017, predicts Christian Gonzalez, chief executive officer and co-founder of Wovenware. For a remote and highly mobile workforce, the cloud, which only requires an Internet connection to be accessed, has become an attractive delivery model. Yet what will drive a new level of cloud worshippers in 2017 is the growth of PaaS solutions, which provide a platform for customers to run and manage their applications in the cloud without the complexity of building the associated infrastructure or algorithms. As AI-based predictive analytics and other complex solutions continue to take hold, companies will realize how difficult they are to develop in the data center and they will increasingly rely on PaaS-based solutions.
When it comes to security threats, nothing will change
Attackers will continue to discover and exploit zero-days, cautions Dan Lacey, with the Threat Research Center at WhiteHat Security. Companies large and small will continue to lose data and money to the usual attacks, often because they didnt take basic security precautions. Individuals will continue to lose money in the usual ways, often because they lack basic knowledge of Internet safety. Manufacturers will continue to produce Internet-connected devices with no security, or easily by-passable security, enabling attackers to hijack them. Someone might pass laws mandating that new Internet of Things devices have security, but those laws will be unenforceable and impossible to apply retroactively.
Acceleration of ditch digging R.O.T. = redundant, obsolete and trivial content
Studies have shown that up to 70 percent of data in an enterprise is R.O.T. redundant, obsolete and trivial, says Ankur Laroia, solutions strategy and security leader at Alfresco. As enterprise content ages, its value to the business declines, and the risk that content poses to the organization also goes up. For example, in Edward Snowdens case, the documentation he uncovered at work wasnt particularly relevant to Booz Allen, but it was extremely relevant and damaging to the US Government. Booz Allen clearly didnt have the proper internal content controls, policies and procedures in place; that has been a loud and clear lesson for CISOs that previously didnt invest significantly in content lifecycle management. All of the information being created cant just linger indefinitely without posing future risks. You have to ultimately delete some of it. In the information management discipline, it is a well-known fact that as content ages, its value to the corporation decreases and the risk increases by an exponential factor.
Intelligent data management is no longer a luxury, but a necessity
Enterprises will rush to deploy intelligent data management technologies as it becomes increasingly clear that traditional data management solutions simply cant handle their growing need for a platform that can manage the interaction between their various data lakes, transparently protect all their data and ensure compliance with new EU and other data governance regulations, according to Don Foster, senior director of solutions marketing and technical alliances at Teradata. Only intelligent data management can automate access to, transfer between and the synching of data between dozens of applications, databases and various other enterprise data lakes automation that is needed if enterprises do not want their IT administration costs to skyrocket and their business processes to slow to a crawl. In addition, intelligent data management is required if enterprises hope to eliminate manual data protection jobs and operations, and instead make data protection transparent, continuous and automatic.
We will see a billion-dollar breach
Costs for Anthem's breach reached hundreds of millions of dollars within a few months of their early 2015 disclosure that affected nearly 80 million accounts, recounts Michael Patterson, vice president of strategy at Rook Security. Yahoo's acquisition by Verizon could see a devaluation or termination of the $4.8Bn deal value as a result of Yahoo's recent breach disclosure, in which 500m+ accounts were compromised and Yahoo revealed it had known of the intrusion for nearly 18 months, faces more than 20 lawsuits and that it had no cyber policy for protection. If we are at the point where a big breach at a large enterprise can quickly generate hundreds of millions of dollars in costs or cost shareholders hundreds of millions of dollars in share purchases, we aren't far from a new breach in 2017 taking us over the $1Bn mark or having Anthem, Yahoo or another victim finally top $1Bn in costs-to-date.
The writing is on the (networks) wall. Death of traditional DPI accelerates
Theres a sure-fire certainty in 2017. Social media and OTTs will launch even more services, and this adds to the cocktail of diverse traffic on mobile networks, predicts Matt Halligan, chief technology officer at Openwave Mobility. Just look at some of the developments in 2016. WhatsApp launched video calls, YouTube started 4K live streaming and Snapchat introduced Spectacles. Operators have the unenviable task of delivering this data and managing subscriber Quality of Experience (QoE). To handle the ever-changing protocols mobile operators need Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) solutions that have evolved to be agile, accurate and virtualized. Existing DPI solutions are a dead piece of investment. The protocols and signatures they are looking out for now wont even exist by the end of 2017.
The Internet of Things is delivering on the promise of big data
IoT will deliver on the promise of big data, says Ettienne Reinecke, chief technology officer at Dimension Data. Increasingly, big data projects are going through multiple updates in a single year and the Internet of Things (IoT) is largely the reason. Thats because IoT makes it possible to examine specific patterns that deliver specific business outcomes, and this has to increasingly be done in real-time. This will drive a healthier investment, and faster return in big data projects.
IoT gets dumber, not smarter
A lot of attention has been given to smart devices as proof of IoTs growing influence, notes Matt Dircks, chief executive officer at Bomgar. The reality is a connected device doesnt make it a smart device. The things that are being connected are in many instances fire-and-forget in their simplicity, or are built-in features and tools we may not even know are there. This leads to a mindset of ignoring these dumb devices without paying attention to the fact that these devices, while inherently dumb, are connected to the biggest party-line ever made: the internet. The challenge we face today with the explosion of connected devices is as overwhelming as the period when companies realized they could monetize the internet.
