The last couple of years have been tumultuous to say the least and already, companies around the globe say competition from digital startups is incentivizing them in IT infrastructure and digital skills leadership. However, information technology (IT) experts say companies should expect even more disruption this New Year.
Dell EMC, in a recent report revealed that nearly one in two companies don’t even know if they’ll be around in three to five years’ time due to the rate of innovation and disruption by tech startups.
Stakeholders and experts in the IT industry have predicted that immersive creativity will go mainstream in 2017. With the way technology is transforming the world we live in, it more than likely that very soon, creators will be able to weave their magic with some super powerful technology – and in time, this technology will be adopted by the wider population.
“Builders and architects will walk onto project sites and use their devices to see full-scale models of buildings before any works have even begun. Hobbyists will see and do with a twist of a knob, swipe of their finger, or scribble of a pen. Using touch and totem rather than point and click, kids will draw their way onto Minecraft,” says Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman of Operations and president of client solutions at Dell.
67 percent of respondents in the Dell global Future Workforce Study have gone on the record saying they would be willing to use Augmented Reality /Virtual Reality products in their professional lives. Over the next few years, expect VR/AR to reach a tipping point.
Hands-free devices will propel people into parallel worlds, in which their only limitation will be their imagination. They’ll learn new skills, provide services and engage with people, without bumping into the time and cost constraints of physical media.
The blurring of the physical and virtual worlds could well herald the end of lectures, binders and incessant note-taking, by bringing education to life with more immersive senses like touch.
Also some technologically forward individuals have heard that some cars need software updates. In the age of the connected world – practically anything with an IP address can be hacked. The 2015 incident with the Jeep Cherokee is a case in point.
Therefore in 2017, we should expect the attack perimeter to widen and encroach upon other areas of the business beyond the IT network. Understanding that it is not just your data that needs to be protected, but also items like heating, ventilation and air conditioner (HVAC) infrastructure, is going to be a critical awakening for businesses going forward.
Also, Research and Development (R&D) teams are constantly working to surprise and delight customers who are waiting for the next new thing and just when people thought 5K resolution would supplant 4K as the next industry standard, rumors of large displays with double the resolution are starting to circulate.
In 2017, people’s experiences of living in Technicolor will be upgraded further, until the real-world will look dim in comparison, experts say.
Predictions made by Dell state that in the future, Chief IoT Officers will become more important than Chief Digital Officers, because companies will experience mounting pressure to bridge the gap between operations and IT.
Clarke says; “They’ll be the change agents, responsible for pulling their firms into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a world which pulses to the rhythm of eight billion connected devices on the planet today. By 2031, we forecast this will grow to over 200bn devices or more – 25 times more than the number of people on the earth).
IDC predicts that by 2020, nearly 20 percent of operational processes will be self-healing and self-learning.
In Nigeria, technology and innovation experts at the 2016 TechPlus conference organised in Lagos a few months back called on the Nigerian youth to see technology as a springboard for the next phase of growth in the country and create disruptive technologies to keep the country at pace with the global community.
Jumoke Akiyode
