Hot New Tech for 2016

When 2015 dawned upon us, it also brought forward the ensuing buzz around hot new technologies that were much talked about during the previous year- Smart cities, IoT, Digital India, Mobility, Ecommerce, Cloud Computing, and so on. At the outset, all these technologies promised a lot of action and advancement in the way we live and how we conduct our businesses. So it was natural for people expect a lot of action around them in 2015—in the way people devised their strategies around them, the budget they allocate, and collaborations amongst vendors to finally implement them. Well we were not to be disappointed and actually witnessed a lot of talk around all these key building blocks. Now as another year beckons us, it’s only logical that we look forward and analyse what direction these technologies are headed towards.
Ecommerce and Online Retail: Benefitting from changing consumer behaviour
What used to be a retailer’s turf about two years back, with sellers controlling the buying behaviour of consumers, the advent of budget smartphones and big online marketplaces have completely changed how consumers shop. With information available at the swipe of a mobile screen, the pressure is on retailers to offer competitive prices to even survive let alone grow in the market. Marketing automation tools, customer data analysis through algorithms, content marketing, and customer interaction management technology are some of the sought after technologies that retailers need today to gain more insights about consumer behaviour. And companies that don’t, are at the receiving end of customer despair and stagnant or zero growth, ultimately leading to extinction. Ecommerce value in India is said to hit $16bn by the end of 2015 and cross the $100bn mark in the next five years. Even if technology is accounted for this transformation, changing customer demands and interaction platforms is what is fuelling the change.
IoT: A lot more waiting to unleash
Whenever you think of IoT, you start thinking about a million, maybe a billion, smart devices and how they could be made to interact for a broader network of connected, intelligent devices. Closer home to reality, you already see intelligent devices around in the form of fitness bands, watches and eyeglasses that assist you in daily tasks, providing data such as fitness tracking, vital figures and weather amongst others. We also know that IoT has a great potential to revolutionize fields such as healthcare, automobiles, personal appliances and industrial equipment, amongst others. Driverless cars are a great example of IoT in action, wherein the car collects real time traffic data from GPS to navigate the best possible routes and also communicates with other cars to avoid collisions. In healthcare, IoT devices can enable remote health monitoring to measure blood pressure, heart rate and also management of advanced devices such as pacemakers and hearing devices.
Cloud adoption is expected to increase significantly in the near future due to improved cloud hosting facilities and faster internet speeds. So, tailor-made IoT cloud service connected with smartphones and tablets will plausibly become the norm, allowing users to analyze and use vast datasets in real time for improved efficiency.
Cyber Attacks: How they threaten Smart Cities
Smart Cities inherently inculcate the basic tenets of IoT while adopting solutions that address the myriad problems including parking and traffic, clean water, air pollution, landfill waste, and deforestation. Inevitably, these cities shall witness a massive flow of information from devices especially when you consider the evolution of analytics, availability of real-time information and the proliferation of devices within them. This is where the security risks come in. Anything connected to Internet is vulnerable to a cyber-attack and can be easily compromised using a number of threat factors such as Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, web application attacks and insider misuse.
Having said that, it is rather difficult to be absolutely certain about what the specific risks are with since IoT is still in a very nascent stage. But, what we do know is that of the estimated five billion enterprise devices that will exist in 2020, only a few will be internet-visible, and still fewer will be used to transmit sensitive data. The benefits do outweigh the risks involved in the implementation of this concept. But the fear of the evolution of these risks remains, which could result in utter chaos across different factions in the world.
Smartphones and mobile devices: Get ready for more
As the smartphone industry grows by leaps and bounds, manufacturers are gearing up to entice users by giving them more processing power and speed, and at all possible price points. Exterior design will not be the center of attraction in 2016 as we have already seen slimmer, bigger screen size and even curved display smartphones this year like LG G Flex. Next year major vendors like Apple, HTC, Samsung and Xiaomi are looking on the inside components to stay ahead of each other. We have been witnessing more powerful chips with each passing year and 2016 won’t be any exception. Chips next year are expected to deliver better battery life, virtual reality and other features to offer seamless user experience.
Storage: More bytes, less bucks
Though a long way to go, but flash-based products like SSDs are surely going to be the game changer in the next couple of quarters at least in the professional series desktop and laptop segments. With very low power consumption, extremely fast data speeds, small foot print, availability in a wide range of configurations, these are surely going to be the segment to watch out in the near future. As the cost of flash declines, we believe flash adoption in the enterprise will continue to grow as a result. According to an APJ survey conducted by IDC, organizations in India emerged as strong early adopters of all-flash array (AFA) storage systems, with 21.3% of the organizations already having the systems in production.
Smart Automobiles: That’s where the world’s driving towards
Greater integration between the technologies in automobiles, mobile devices and infrastructure will change how we interact with the devices that move us from one destination to another. The existing infrastructure for motor vehicles simply cannot sustain the sheer number of vehicles expected to be on the road in the coming years. The future roadmap, therefore, has to include not only smarter cars but smarter roads and smarter cities. It’s an approach that recognizes that sometimes the solution may not just be a smart private car but shared ownership models, ride sharing through mobile apps, or a multi-modal journey that requires a combination of different types of transportation solutions.
In the pages that follow, you get to know a lot more about the action happening within these IT domains, with key instances of Indian organisations are going to be impacted, and lots more.