The real and the ephemeral
Alex Meehan looks at the numbers, the pressures and the potentials for the new year
When you get right down to it, can anybody say for sure what will happen in 2017? Truthfully probably not. But there are some trends that proved to be significant in 2016 that show no signs of slowing up and are worth looking at for an indication of what the coming year has in store.
First and foremost, the trend that looks most set to leave its mark on 2017 is that of growing spend on IT across the industry. Gartner is forecasting that worldwide spending on technology will climb to $3.5 trillion (€3.37 trillion) in 2017, up 2.9% from 2016’s estimated spend of $3.4 trillion (€3.27 trillion).
It also says this will be driven by growth in software and IT services, with software spending projected to grow 7.2% in 2017 to total $357 billion (€343 billion), and IT services spending to increase 4.8% in 2017 to reach $943 billion (€908 billion).
Just how this will break down for Ireland and the UK remains to be seen, but it seems likely that the onset of Brexit will be sure to play a role. The exit process is expected to start in March, with full negotiations scheduled to begin before the end of 2017.
In the meantime, a whole host of business relationships between companies and their subsidiaries in the UK and elsewhere in the EU will need to be reassessed. The overall effect is likely to include a stifling of growth as companies wait to see what the fallout will be before committing large amounts of capital to projects that could be adversely affected.
This uncertainty could have a chilling effect on investment, but is probably good news for Irish companies, as sterling becomes a more expensive currency in which to do business.
Elsewhere, one of the main trends that will continue to exert an overarching influence on enterprise IT is the consumerisation of IT. As more and more people get used to intuitive graphic user interfaces and software that can be figured out on the fly on their smart phones, smart watches, laptops and in apps and general consumer technology, they will continue to expect the same flexibility at work.
This in turn will present security concerns, as a growing range of malware makes the leap to mobile. If 2016 can be thought of as the year of malware —Kaspersky Labs said it can — then it is likely that 2017 will see a lot more malicious movement against mobile operating systems.
“As adoption of desktop operating systems suffers from a lack of enthusiasm, and as more of the average user’s digital life is effectively transferred to their pockets, we expect to see the rise of primarily mobile espionage campaigns. These will surely benefit from decreased attention and the difficulty of attaining forensic tools for the latest mobile operating systems,” said Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade, senior security expert with Kaspersky’s global research and analysis team.
Kaspersky Lab also expects to see a rise in ephemeral infections, or malware that sits in memory and carries out general reconnaissance and credential collection. This type of malware has no interest in persistence.
“In highly sensitive environments, stealthy attackers may be satisfied to operate until a reboot wipes their infection from memory if it means avoiding all suspicion or potential operational loss from the discovery of their malware by defenders and researchers,” said Guerrero-Saade. “Ephemeral infections will highlight the need for proactive and sophisticated heuristics in advanced anti-malware solutions.”
Meanwhile, 2017 will see also augmented and virtual reality increase in importance, with more companies using the technologies to deliver customer experiences and products over the next five years. According to a report published by research firm Forrester, the coming year will see several existing limitations to these technologies start to erode.
“Computing power and economics will continue to improve, making artificial and virtual reality more accessible and effective. Developers will continue to grapple with a new and diverse set of tools; no dominant centre of gravity will emerge in 2017. This means complexity and angst over choosing the ‘right’ frameworks will grow — but so will the opportunity to invent and test different approaches,” said Forrester.
“There is no single killer artificial and virtual reality app or use case, which will limit budgets and attention. In other words, this will not be a race-to-the-moon type of acceleration; it will be an evolution where companies factor in customer expectations, competitor threats, and first-market advantage in a systematic manner.”
Meanwhile, in the area of the Internet of Things (IoT), IT consultancy Bearingpoint predicts that we are on the verge of seeing a fourth industrial revolution which will blur the lines between physical, digital and biological.
“Society is entering a new era of technological advancement spurred on by the IoT. This ‘fourth industrial revolution’ will create completely new industries and services, and radically transform the way we interact with businesses, machines, cities, the environment and even each other,” said Simon Torrance, senior advisor in digital ecosystem management at BearingPoint.
“This change is already underway. Technology advances at a lightning-fast pace, so much so that the lines that divide the physical, the digital and the biological are already being blurred. Decision-making techniques like lean start-up thinking, or ‘ninja IT’, when combined with easy-to-use platform-as-a-service (PaaS) software, mean ideas, products and services can be delivered to market quickly and cost-effectively, then tested and refined based on customer feedback.”
According to Bearingpoint, cognisance and execution of these strategies make up a new business discipline it calls digital ecosystem management, which it believes should be adapted by organisations of all types in 2017.
Alex Meehan, contributor
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