| Unified comms and collaboration norm | |
| “While Irish businesses have traditionally opted for UC solutions on-premises, we have seen a significant move towards hosted UC solutions over the past year. We expect this to accelerate in 2016” | 
Damovo Ireland Michelle Murray, marketing manager |
| 2016 is set to be the year when unified communications and collaboration solutions finally become the norm for most Irish organisations. With the continued rise of mobile working and BYOD, most Irish businesses have realised that integrated and flexible communications systems are absolutely necessary to facilitate changing work practices.In tandem, unified communications technologies have matured for the corporate market and are being delivered in a way that suits each organisation’s needs, whether that’s on-premises or via the cloud.
The increasing sophistication of mobile devices has made it easier for businesses to integrate these fully with their communications infrastructures. Many new and improved unified communications applications have been developed for these devices and they make it completely seamless for mobile workers to remain connected and available while away from their desks. 
The improvements of processing power, together with greater integration with corporate telephony solutions and faster broadband connectivity, mean that productivity levels away from the office are higher than ever before. Integrated and powerful collaboration tools are enabling better communications flows across phone, video, instant messaging, presence and social media platforms, as well as deep and secure integration with business applications. In terms of UC delivery, we expect that Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) will grow in popularity in 2016. While Irish businesses have traditionally opted for UC solutions on-premises, we have seen a significant move towards hosted UC solutions over the past year. We expect this to accelerate in 2016 as continued enhancements in UCaaS delivery will see optimised levels of performance across a wider range of devices, more extensive APIs and the highest levels of business continuity. Managed Service Providers will play an increasingly important part in the support of cloud-based solutions, such as UCaaS, as Irish businesses turn to MSPs like Damovo to provide independent advice, technical expertise, local market knowledge and to remove any complexities of having applications delivered via the cloud. Managed services and outsourcing will grow significantly across a wide range of ICT services this year as organisations look to focus on their own business growth, safe in the knowledge that a trusted partner is taking care of their evolving ICT needs. Finally, there’s a significant change happening in forecasting methods which can give Irish organisations much better insight and control of their IT infrastructures. This is a shift from historical tracking to predictive analytics which applies a range of forecasting analytical techniques to sets of data to work out scenarios that are most likely to occur in the future. Damovo has launched a predictive analytics service which transforms business forecasting. The results enable end-users to ask more intelligent questions, more often and by getting answers quickly and visually, Damovo is now even better at helping its customers to improve their processes, make better investment decisions and ultimately grow their businesses. At Damovo, we’re very excited by the growth opportunities that exist in the marketplace and the ongoing developments and innovations in our business. We’re looking forward to making further significant strides in our goal to become one of the largest Unified Communications providers in Europe in the next 3-5 years.
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| Hyperscale goes mainstream | |
| “Thinking of cloud as just another outsourcing model misses the point. The risk/reward decision based on agility and scalability of cloud is completely different” | 
Microsoft Martin Cullen, SMSP director |
| In our view, 2016 will be the year that hyperscale cloud goes mainstream. With the rise of IoT devices and the explosive growth of cloud computing, the technology is evolving at an accelerated pace. But we are seeing a lag in understanding of what this means for organisations and partners.Principally the customer’s psychology of the cloud has not moved on to embrace this change. Thinking of cloud as just another outsourcing model misses the point. The risk/reward decision based on agility and scalability of cloud is completely different. We are also seeing vendors and ISVs not actively articulating the move, as it is a disruptive model change.We are also seeing traditional business and organisations not making the leap to hyperscale. Set policies and procedures will limit their ability which will potentially impact upon their ability to fully engage with and maximise benefits from the cloud.There is a major opportunity for SMEs and start-ups can take full advantage of the hyperscale cloud, but no one is actually educating this sector about hyper scale and the ability to leverage agility, limitless capacity and global presence.For 2016, Microsoft set out a road map for the sequence of events to start the move to hyperscale cloud. With over 300 new features delivered to Azure in 2015 and new versions of SQL Server, Windows Server and System Centre in the pipeline, customers have more compelling reasons that ever to modernise, thus enabling the seamless extension of their operations into the cloud. This we predict will drive migration to hybrid cloud computing. While you could see this as Microsoft talking up its services, Gartner recently endorsed our hybrid model of cloud computing, so expect to see hyperscale cloud become a serious business and technology trend in 2016. |
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| 3D printing comes of age | |
| “Cloud and software as a service will be another area of interest. It will enable us to manage the image from lens to invoice” | 
Canon Ireland Philip Brady, director head of Canon Ireland |
2016 is set to be a major year for 3D printing (3DP), cloud computing and services. As we roll out 3DP technology and services, we expect to see a lot of myths being laid to rest, as customers get to trial 3DP. It will enable cheaper production through removal of assembly costs and prototyping. For example, outside of prototyping, we’re seeing architects using the technology for client and concept models in addition to full model printing while we’ve also seen universities using the technology for fashion, food production, fine art, jewellery, medical, chemistry and physics-related purposes.Cloud and software as a service will be another area of interest. It will enable us to manage the image from lens to invoice. It will bring some key advantages to us, such as:
Finally, UniFLOW Online: It is a single solutions platform for managing print delivered through the cloud. Through investments in cloud solutions, Canon are able to provide their customers with lower cost, higher value-add cloud solutions for printing and managing documents that are easier to adopt and to adapt as business needs change.
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