International Data Corporation recently presented their top technology predictions for 2014. Frank Gens, Senior Vp and Chief Analyst at IDC hosted a webinar presenting the investigation firm�s predictions for 2014 such as the research firm�s latest cloud computing market forecast. You are able to see a replay with the webinar and obtain the predictions documents at IDC Predictions 2014. They are briefly summarized below: - Cloud Computing market size
Emerging markets will return to double-digit growth of 10%, driving nearly $740B or 35% of worldwide IT revenues and, the first time, greater than 60% of worldwide IT spending growth. IDC also predicted that in 2014 the amount of smart connected devices shipped in emerging markets will almost double that shipped in developed markets. Furthermore, IDC predicts that over the subsequent seven years emerging markets cloud spending will grow seven-fold versus three-fold in developed markets. IDC is predicting IT spending in Western Europe will be marginally up, with U.S. and Japan spending marginally down.
Worldwide IT spending will grow 5% annually to $2.1 trillion in 2014. Spending is going to be driven by 3rd Platform technologies, which will grow 15% annually and capture 89% than it spending growth. Smartphones and tablets may lead 2014 growth, making up over 60% of total IT growth. Excluding mobile phones, IT growth will simply by a modest 2.4%. The graphic demonstrated to the proper was shared through the webinar today, explaining the next platform and its contribution to market growth.
Within another Platform, value will start to migrate �up the stack�, from infrastructure like a service (IaaS) to platform as a service (PaaS) and from generic PaaS to data-optimized PaaS. The latter will be best shown as Amazon Web Services rolls out an avalanche of platform-as-a-service offerings for developers and higher value services for businesses. This can force incumbent IT suppliers - the companies that won market leadership inside the 2nd Platform era - to urgently reconfigure themselves to battle for position inside the 3rd Platform marketplace.
The mobile device onslaught will continue in 2014 with sales of tablets growing by 18% and smartphones by 12%. The Android community, led by Samsung, will maintain its volume edge on Apple, while Apple holds onto its value edge with higher average selling prices as well as an established ecosystem of apps. But Google Play (Android) app downloads and revenues are earning dramatic gains as well as the �app ecosystem value gap� will probably be significantly narrowed in 2014. As well as the clock will probably be ticking louder for Microsoft, which needs to quickly double mobile developer fascination with Windows. Frank Gens presented these graphic to aid this prediction:
Cloud spending, including cloud services and also the technology to enable these types of services, will surge by 25% in 2014, reaching over $100B. IDC explained the $100B figure includes software, services and cloud infrastructure. IDC also expects to determine a dramatic increase in the number of datacenters as cloud players race to achieve global scale. This is accompanied by a similar expansion inside the number of workload-specialized cloud infrastructure services, leading to new types of differentiation among cloud companies. Finally, a pitched battle will be joined for that developers that can make the cloud-based applications and solutions that will fuel the market�s growth. IDC predicts that by 2017, 80%+ of recent cloud apps will be hosted on six PaaS platforms.
Spending on big data technologies and services will grow by 30% in 2014, surpassing $14 billion as demand for big data analytics skills continues to outstrip supply. Here the race is going to be onto develop �data-optimized cloud platforms�, effective at leveraging high volumes of data and/or real-time data streams. Value-added content providers information brokers will proliferate as enterprises (and developers) search for interesting data sources along with applications that help them to understand their clients, products, as well as the markets where they exist. IDC is also predicting that big data analytics services 2014 spending will exceed $4.5B, growing 21% over 2013.
Social technologies will become increasingly built-into existing enterprise applications on the next 12-18 months. Not only is it a strategic component in virtually all customer engagement and marketing strategies, data from social applications will feed the product and service development process. IDC expects enterprise social networking sites can become increasingly available as standard offerings from cloud services providers. This can enable enterprises to further embed social to the workflow, instead of having a separate �social layer.� IDC also predicts that by 2017, 80% of Fortune 500 companies will have an energetic customer community, up from 30% today. By 2016, 60% of the Fortune 500 will deploy social-enabled innovation management solutions.
Datacenters represent the physical foundation beneath the cloud, and are thus a crucial part of another Platform. As cloud-dedicated datacenters grow in number and importance, the marketplace for server, storage, as well as networking components will increasingly be driven by cloud providers, who have traditionally favored highly componentized and commoditized designs. The incumbent IT hardware vendors, who have struggled to market into this market, is going to be instructed to adopt a �cloud-first� strategy, designing new innovations for initial release and widespread adoption in cloud service provider datacenters.
The 3rd Platform will give you the next generation of competitive advantage apps and services which will significantly disrupt market leaders in virtually any industry. A key to competing during these disrupted and reinvented industries may be to create industry-focused innovation platforms (like GE�s Predix) that attract and let large communities of innovators - dozens to hundreds will emerge over the following a few years. IDC predicts that most of these industry platform players is not going to reinvent the cloud underpinnings they want, but will expand top Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce, and others� platforms. In 2014, it'll be crucial of these IT leaders to locate these emerging industry platform players and win their business.
The 3rd Platform is constantly expand beyond smartphones, tablets, and PCs in 2014 to the Internet of Things (IoT). With IoT momentum building in 2014, IDC expects to find out new industry partnerships to emerge as traditional IT vendors accelerate their partnerships with global telecom providers and semiconductor vendors to create integrated offerings within the consumer electronics and connected device spaces. This kind of collaboration and coordination will probably be essential to attain the 30 billion autonomously connected end points and $8.9 trillion in revenues that IDC believes the IoT will generate by 2020. - Cloud Computing market size
