Predictions 2015

Following several years of austerity and reduced budgets, the increase in enterprise IT spending that we saw in 2014 is likely to continue in 2015.

We will see increasing maturation and acceptance of private and hybrid cloud and in particular a scenario where private cloud is adopted for new workloads by organisations. Terms like “Service Catalogue” will enter the lexicon of IT users and administrators.The continued explosion in unstructured data will remain a key challenge. The industry has deployed huge resources to enhance the storage, management and availability of data and that challenge will continue in 2015. But we are also seeing organisations beginning to examine how best to leverage the vast pool of data and we expect to see a closer examination of analytics technologies to convert raw data into business intelligence.

All flash arrays have been available for a few years but the cost per GB ensured that they remained relatively niche until now. With a cost per GB which is now much closer to traditional spinning disk, we expect to see significant growth in all-flash storage platforms. All-flash arrays will provide sustained low latency throughput of more than 100,000 IOPS, which will transform response-time and application performance. All-flash platforms will also be a fundamental enabler for advanced analytics technologies, returning results in a matter of seconds that would take hours using traditional storage technologies.

The increasing complexity of the modern virtualised data centre is also leading to far greater interest in converged infrastructure platforms which offer dramatically simplified management by comparison with the “separates” approach that we have used for decades. A converged system provides single pane management of SAN, LAN, storage and server, which removes the overhead created by individual device management. The removal of custom integration points effectively allows the converged platform to behave as a single system, and consolidates management of firmware updates for integrated server, storage, network, SAN and HBAs into a single movement.

We will also see Software Defined Data Centre gaining real traction in the enterprise during the coming year. In particular, we will see software defined storage making gains where the increased flexibility and lower cost per GB for large, infrequently accessed data stores will see them increasingly decoupled from traditional vendor arrays.
 
 

The discovery of the Regin virus and recent repeated episodes of hacking at Sony Pictures is a clear indicator of things to come in 2015.The question CIOs and CEOs should be asking themselves is; if the Sony breach happened in my organisation, could it have been contained?Are there processes in place to intercept such a breach before it occurs?What safeguards can you put in place to mitigate the risk of a breach of such magnitude?What would be the impact on your brand?The danger and sophistication of these viruses cannot be questioned and 2015 could see more colossal disruptions coming to the fore, creating more administrative headaches for CIOs and Heads of IT.

What is most shocking is how sinister and calculating these hackers can be. Not only are the threats and embarrassment of these breaches immediate; the attacks are targeted, pre-meditated and continue long after the event as the hackers rejoice in slowly drip-feeding us another excerpt of the stolen information. It is clear that no one is immune.A recent report showed the total number of personal records lost since 2013 is in excess of 2.4 billion and still growing. This trend is set to continue in 2015.As more companies adopt cloud technology, security and the protection of personal data will continue to dominate the headlines. The growth of cloud providers could also bring greater potential for hacking and the exposure of customer data.In 2014, privacy was a major issue at the National Data Protection Conference in Dublin Castle held every year on January 28th, European Privacy Day.

Data protection officers, decision makers, legal specialists and policy makers will start 2015 balancing privacy issues, marketing demands and the threat to their brand at the 2015 Conference. These are challenges that will always exist, unfortunately new EU regulation provides no respite either.

Draft EU Data Protection regulation is expected to be completed and signed into law in 2015 with emphasis to be placed on EU Data Protection Regulation. Organisations will have two years to become compliant.Post 2015, the challenge may lie with understanding new data privacy concepts such as Privacy by Design, Data Protection Risk impact Assessments and Mandatory Breach Notifications.

The growth in membership of ADPO in 2014 is clear sign that companies are better prepared than ever before. We are confident that 2015 will bring many more new members ensuring the safety of all of our personal information.

Data Will Become a Physical Asset: 2015 is the year that we see data becoming as much of a physical asset as the building that your business is in. But there are three crucial steps that an organisation needs to consider to get the most of the data’s physical value.
• Data consumption — how data (structured/unstructured) is taken from its current systems.
• Integration -how the organisation integrates and develops insights and asks better questions of that data.
• Sharing – How data is published and visualised for both other people and how is it shared by other application programme interfaces (API) formats to allow other individuals and agencies to make use of that data.

But It Has A Shelf Life: The days of 18-24 month data projects are over, as organisations need to start extracting data intelligence within weeks. Ultimately, get the tools and start experimenting with the data quickly. Start with the everyday tools like Excel and SharePoint which will get you off to a good start.We will see the rise of the data analyst within organisations that will use tools like Microsoft Dynamics to get a real time picture and actionable insights.

Information That Follows You Will Be a Killer Advantage For Irish SMEs: We will see the Cloud going from being a repository of disparate information to a shared hub with information that will follow you on any device. The barriers between tablet, PC and Phone will erode with the only distinction being screen size. SMEs and start-ups who understand this and using tools like Office365 and Azure can leapfrog larger organisations.

Cloud Finally Becomes Mainstream In 2015: Forrester predicts that in 2015, cloud adoption will accelerate forcing organisations to adapt to this reality by learning how to add value to their company’s use of these services. The days of fighting the cloud are over. Even the most conservative of businesses will see the benefit and flexibility of Cloud Computing and how it can help them modernise and stream line their business.

The cloud will also play an important role in the expansion and utilisation of the Internet of Things (IoT): 2015 will see an increased focus on the software, and especially the cloud services to connect sensors, upload data, and drive analytics to unlock crucial insights to help grow business.