IDC has shared top predictions for the IT industry that will assist enterprise CIOs to plan better for their organizations.
# ICT spending will grow 3.8 percent in 2015 to more than $3.8 trillion. Majority of the spending growth will be focused on 3rd Platform technologies, with spending on the 2nd Platform expected to slip into recession. ICT spending in emerging markets will grow 7.1 percent, while mature markets will achieve 1.4 percent growth.
# In the telecom services industry, spending on wireless data will be $536 billion with 13 percent growth. Carriers will develop platform- and API-based services that add value and attract developers to their networks. They will seek rapprochement with over-the-top (OTT) cloud services providers through performance and revenue-sharing arrangements.
# Sales of smartphones and tablets will reach $484 billion, accounting for 40 percent of IT spending growth (excluding telecom services), while Chinese vendors capture a significant share of the market. Mobile app downloads will start to slow in 2015, but enterprise mobile app development will double.
# Spending on Cloud services will be $118 billion. Adoption of cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) will grow 36 percent as market leader Amazon comes under attack from all directions. There will be competition among Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers as competitors engage in battles to attract developers and their apps and Software as a Service (SaaS) players accelerate their adoption of PaaS and cloud marketplaces.
# Spending on big data-related software, hardware, and services will grow to $125 billion. Rich media analytics (video, audio, and image) will emerge as an important driver of big data projects. Big data supply chains (i.e. Data as a Service) will grow in importance as cloud platform and analytics vendors offer clients value-added information from commercial and open data sets. There will be important new developments in cognitive/machine learning and Internet of Things (IoT) analytics.
# The Internet of Things is one of the most important Innovation accelerators for growth and expansion of IT-based value in the 3rd Platform era. The invention of intelligent and connected things will drive the development of new 3rd Platform solutions. One third of IoT spending in 2015 will be focused on intelligent embedded devices outside the IT and telecom industries. Predictive maintenance will emerge as an important IoT solutions category.
# Datacenters are undergoing a fundamental transformation in the 3rd Platform era as the majority of raw compute capacity and raw storage capacity moves to cloud-, mobile-, and big data-optimized hyperscale datacenters operated by cloud service providers. There will be 2-3 large consolidations next year.
# IDC believes a number of industry disruptions, driven by 3rd Platform developments, will emerge in 2015. Examples include alternative payment networks in financial services, expansion of IoT technologies into city safety, public works and transportation systems, and the expansion of location-based services in the retail industry.
# In addition to the Internet of Things and cognitive/machine learning systems, two other Innovation accelerators will become important growth drivers in 2015. 3rd Platform-optimized security solutions will help to secure the edge of the cloud (i.e. biometric security on mobile devices) and the core (i.e., encryption in the cloud will become the default practice). Threat intelligence will emerge as a killer Data as a Service category. 3D printing will see significant activity among conventional document printing companies as they lay the groundwork for a looming battle for commercial and industrial markets in 2016.
# China will experience skyrocketing influence on the global ICT market in 2015 with spending that will account for 43 percent of all industry growth, one third of all smartphone purchases, and about one third of all online shoppers. With a huge domestic market, China’s cloud and ecommerce leaders (Alibaba in ecommerce, Tencent in social, and Baidu in search) will rise to prominence in the global marketplace. Chinese branded smartphone makers will capture more than a third of the worldwide smartphone market.