Top technology trends we'll see in 2017 (part two)
February 7, 2017 6:26 AM
Top technology trends well see in 2017 (part two)
Data management, machine learning, and cloud cost models will be top-of-mind for organizations this year. Tech leaders sound off on the other top technology trends that we will see in 2017.
Data scientists continue to master broad range of skills
The response from some colleges and universities has been to provide a degree in data science that is basically an overview of all three of these skill sets -- Statistics (predictive, classification methods, etc.); computer science (architecture of Big Data platforms); business intelligence (analysis of business problems needing to be solved, communication with business, Tableau, and other visualization tools) --says Elizabeth Elhassani, director of analytics and insights at LexisNexis . Once companies realize this, they will then return to hiring mathematician/statisticians for analytics, and computer scientists for the big data demands and business analysts for the visualization tools. I predict that there will be a new focus on integrating business communication studies into the computer science, statistician and data visualization studies in order to strengthen the graduate as a candidate that can drive forward data science team initiatives in the workplace. This will replace the notion that a siloed data science degree is needed to connect the three sectors in data science.
Containers hype hasnt yet translated into massive enterprise adoption
We can expect that to change in 2017, says Dave Kresse, vice president of products and alliances at Nimble Storage. This coming year will mark the mainstreaming of containers in enterprise production environments. Solutions like Kubernetes and Apache Mesos are gaining traction, as they play a key role in making containers enterprise-ready. Their rise and the subsequent rapid adoption of containers will be a focal part of the IT market in 2017.
Mobile concierge services grab consumer attention
The way we interact with our mobile devices is shifting and users now expect more intelligence and personalization, says Hossein Rahnama, chief executive officer and founder at Flybits. In 2017, mobile apps usage will become less siloed and we will see more consumer use of concierge services that are able to integrate and interact with various functions and services to provide personalized assistants. These services will understand and anticipate a users unique needs and contextual data. We have already seen examples of successful implementations in the travel and entertainment industries, in which a single service assists users in a number of activities from finding deals or points of interest near them, directions, schedule notifications, and much more.
Security and ease of access will drive hosted desktops apps
Although full adoption of hosted desktop applications is still two to three years away, we will see a spike in adoption rates in 2017, predicts Chanel Chambers, director of product marketing at Citrix. Concerns about security are top of mind for every size business this year and organizations will seek out ways to keep data safe without investing hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, hosted desktops apps provide ease of access to company data, allowing employees to access their files from anywhere and any device.
Vendor security risk will become more manageable
Vendor security risk, a known area of concern due to ad-hoc processes and lack of transparency from vendors, is undergoing transformation, explains Asma Zubair, director of product management at WhiteHat Security. In 2016, several sections were added to PCI standard 3.2 to clarify the responsibilities of service providers in the PCI compliance process. More recently, the Vendor Security Alliance published a questionnaire to help organizations assess and benchmark third party product and service risk. In 2017, we should expect vendor security risk management processes to be more streamlined and automated.
Growth of nearshoring
The rapid pace of technology advances will only grow in 2017, and companies will be under pressure to continually enhance software to improve business value, and provide market differentiation and competitive advantage, explainsCarlos Meléndez, chief operating officer and co-founder at Wovenware. Emerging smart solutions, which continually become more intelligent as they accumulate user data, need to be maintained and updated and can be extremely complicated to develop, requiring the specialized expertise of software engineers and data scientists. Because of the expertise required for these cognitive solutions and the rapid fire of product enhancements, its no longer feasible for most companies to develop them in-house, and many will turn to third-parties for product development and maintenance.
Will IoT kill the Internet in 2017?
2016 saw one of the largest DDoS attacks to date, as the Mirai IoT botnet wreaked havoc on large parts of the net, says Indranil Chatterjee, senior vice president of product and sales at Openwave Mobility. The internet was designed to survive a nuclear attack, but if something infected it from within it could be fatal. Many fear that DDoS could eventually undermine the internet. While flashy IoT gadgets usually grab the headlines, 2017 may see the proliferation of unsecure IoT devices open more avenues for security attacks. Mobile operators have a major role to play for example accurate traffic management tools could identify unsafe UDP traffic.
The Year of the Business User
A consumer-led, digital-focused market has made customer experience the siren call for companies everywhere, says Carlos Meléndez, chief operating officer and co-founder at Wovenware.Most of the worlds largest companies will use intelligent solutions to improve the experience of business users in 2017 to address their expectations for the same type of digital experience they have in the consumer world. The new year will focus on new solutions that improve the business user experience, including intelligent apps which make it easier to perform every-day tasks in the office. Technologies, such as virtual personal assistants (VPAs) and customer service solutions, will deliver this new level of business user functionality by incorporating AI.
The rise of applied governance to unstructured data
Earlier this year, more than 20,000 pages of top-secret Indian Navy data, including schematics on the their Scorpene-class submarines, were leaked. Its been a huge setback for the Indian government, explains Carlos Meléndez, chief operating officer and co-founder at Wovenware. Its also an unfortunate case study for what happens when you lack controls over unstructured information, such as blueprints that might be sitting in some legacy engineering software system. Now, replace the Indian Navy scenario with a situation involving the schematics for a Nuclear power plant or consumer IoT device, and the value of secure content curation becomes even more immeasurable. If unstructured blueprints and files are being physically printed or copied, or digitally transferred, how will you even know that content now exists? Tracking this dark data particularly in industrial environments will be a top security priority in 2017.
Organizations recalculate cloud cost models
An increase in the hybridization of data centers also increases the ebb and flow of data that moves from between the cloud and on-premise, and current egress models werent developed with this level of data transfer between a variety of locations in mind, says Don Foster, senior director of solutions marketing and technical alliances. As enterprises increasingly embrace hybrid infrastructure models, the current pricing models from cloud service providers for moving data back and forth between on-premise and the cloud is becoming unsustainable. In 2017, these pricing models will need to adjust, or existing cloud providers could see new competitors steal their market share.
IT will start automating the choices for data management and analysis
BI tools have been making more decisions for people and automating more processes, notes Jake Freivald of Information Builders. The knowledge for doing this -- e.g., choosing one chart type over another -- was embedded into the tools themselves. Data prep and management tends to be different, because the required rules are specific to the business requirements rather than being inherent in the data. Rule-based data management will enable IT to define rules that the business uses in its analytics processes, making business analysts more productive while still ensuring reliability and reproducibility. For a use case, consider a data scientist who sources data externally, and lets the data tools automatically choose which enterprise data prep and cleansing processes need to be applied.
Connected cars, smart homes and a 5G reality check
There will be over 20 billion connected devices by 2020, yet some mobile operators still are not sure how they will manage and monetize them, notes Aman Brar, vice president, SDM & Global Alliances, at Openwave Mobility. In 2017 forward-looking operators will deploy IoT frameworks and start preparing to manage their IoT subscribers with User Data Repositories. Looking to 5G and beyond, a number of operators have started to explore their options with network slicing. But be careful not to put the cart before the horse. Operators will need capacity and reporting tools which are key for spectrum planning and management.
Machines are being embedded in the workspace for tomorrow
A new generation is starting to show up at work, and theyre not millennials, or even Gen Z: theyre machines, explains Kelly Looney, director of DevOps consulting, and Dan Jones, director of product management, at Skytap. And it wont be much longer before holographics, augmented reality, and virtual reality begin to move from B2C into B2B. Also, over the next two to three years these technologies will drive a fundamental transformation of the workspace.
The power of privilege
Security prevention is dead, proclaims Bomgar chief executive officer Matt Dircks. Its all about privilegehackers want high level access, which they get through targeting credentials of privileged users like IT professionals, CEOs and vendors. Organizations have applied security to the systems, applications, and data that are most critical to their business. In 2017, theyll get serious about security around their most privileged usersidentifying them, monitoring their access, and closing off access to what they dont need.
Focus is on on-premises cloud
While SaaS vendors will move away from their own cloud to the public cloud, 2017 will see more enterprises attempting to build an onpremises cloud, explains explains Kelly Looney, director of DevOps consulting, and Dan Jones, director of product management, at Skytap. This will include migrating workloads from existing public clouds to onpremises. Public cloud providers will respond with a greater emphasis on migration, usage visibility, and cost control features.
