Digital Lifescapes

Hybrid IT deployments continue to gain favor with CIOs and CTOs, but cloud computing will now drive a greater share of the ongoing investment in business technology. Those combined platforms are enabling digital transformation projects across the globe. Total spending on IT infrastructure products for deployment in cloud environments reached a total of $46.5 billion in 2017, with year-over-year growth of 20.9 percent, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Cloud Infrastructure Market Development Public cloud data centers will account for 65.3 percent of this spending, growing at the annual rate of 26.2 percent over the IDC forecast period. Hosted off-premises private cloud environments will represent 13 percent of cloud IT infrastructure spending, growing at 12.7 percent year-over-year. On-premises private clouds will account for 62.6 percent of spending on private cloud IT infrastructure, and will grow 11.5 percent year-over-yea...

Distributed ledger technologies (DLT) will gain new momentum this year. Worldwide spending on blockchain solutions is forecast to reach $2.1 billion in 2018, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). The industry analyst expects blockchain investment to grow over the 2016-2021 forecast period with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 81.2 percent -- with total spending to reach $9.2 billion in 2021. Blockchain Application Market Development "Interest and investment in blockchain and distributed ledger technology is accelerating as enterprises aggregate data into secure, sequential, and immutable blockchain ledgers, transforming their businesses and operations," said Bill Fearnley, research director at IDC . The United States market will see the largest blockchain investments and deliver more than 40 percent of worldwide spending throughout the forecast period. Western Europe will be the next largest region f...

A cryptocurrency is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange that uses cryptography to secure its transactions, to control the creation of additional units, and to verify the transfer of assets. The quest to discover meaningful commercial applications for blockchain, beyond cryptography apps, has begun across the globe. 451 Research revealed that 28 percent of enterprises are now evaluating or using blockchain, although fewer than 3 percent have any production applications. Blockchain Market Development According to the study, 20 percent of organizations surveyed are using blockchain in a discovery or evaluation phase, 4 percent running trials or pilots, 2 percent in test and development environments, 2 percent undertaking initial implementations of production applications and less than 1 percent have broad implementation of production applications. Furthermore, the market is rife with vendor misrepresentation about blockchain apps, and there is little understan...

Across the globe, more CIOs and CTOs are planning significant IT infrastructure investments, as part of their organization's digital transformation growth agenda. Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.7 trillion in 2018 -- that's an increase of 4.5 percent from 2017, according to the latest forecast by Gartner. "Global IT spending growth began to turn around in 2017, with continued growth expected over the next few years," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner . "Projects in digital business, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), and progression from big data to algorithms to machine learning to artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to be main drivers of growth." Enterprise IT Market Development Enterprise software continues to exhibit strong growth, with worldwide software spending projected to grow 9.5 percent in 2018, and it will grow another 8.4 percent in 2019 to total $421 billion. Organizations are expected...

The latest global fintech market study shows that the insurance segment will drive revenues for platform providers, which is the largest proportion of revenues in 2018. This is based on the vast potential for digital distribution within the traditional insurer industry. That said, wealth management will also grow rapidly, based on the increasing popularity of intelligent software agents called 'robo-advisors'. As the underlying technology improves, roboadvisors will become increasingly autonomous. Roboadvisor Market Development The new study from Juniper Research found that roboadvisor platform revenues will reach $25 billion by 2022 -- that's up from an estimated $1.7 billion in 2017, as the automation of wealth management revolutionizes the way individuals invest. Their research discovered that roboadvisors will make investments more compelling to high net worth individuals and lower income individuals, with average fees estimated as low as 0.6 percent of assets u...

As 2017 came to a close, IT infrastructure vendors continued to respond to trends that favored Hybrid IT multi-cloud solutions. Most enterprise IT leaders invested in combinations of on-premises platforms and public cloud-based services. Meanwhile, the cloud hyperscale service providers still drive demand. Vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT -- including public and private cloud -- grew 25.5 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2017 (3Q17) reaching $11.3 billion, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Cloud IT Infrastructure Market Development Public cloud infrastructure revenue grew 32.3 percent year-over-year in 3Q17 to $7.7 billion and now represents 30.2 percent of total worldwide IT infrastructure spending -- that's up from 26.3 percent one year ago. Private cloud revenue reached $3.6 billion for an annual increase of 13.1 percent. Moreover, t...

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are already very sophisticated. Gartner predicts that by 2022, AI-enabled personal devices will know a lot more about that person's emotional state. Moreover, AI is a disruptive force that will reshape the way we interact with many personal devices. "Emotion AI systems and affective computing are allowing everyday objects to detect, analyze, process and respond to people's emotional states and moods to provide better context and a more personalized experience," said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner . "To remain relevant, technology vendors must integrate AI into every aspect of their devices, or face marginalization." Emotion AI Market Development The current wave of emotion AI systems is being driven by the proliferation of virtual personal assistants (VPAs) and other AI-based technology for conversational systems. As a second wave emerges, AI technology will add value to more and more customer experie...

Many CIOs and CTOs in the global financial services sector will be working on significant new IT infrastructure projects in 2018. Digital transformation within the banking industry is about applying new business technology to break free from prior constraints, with the intent to enable the creation of a more appealing online financial services portfolio. While most banking leaders worldwide acknowledge the need to transform their business model to compete with new industry players, many have yet to plan and execute a digital transformation strategy, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Key findings from the IDC study include: All banks worldwide acknowledge the importance and complexity of transforming their businesses to compete in the new digital economy. However, nearly 40 percent are still at the ad-hoc or opportunistic stages of maturity, meaning that they have not yet executed on a sustainable digital transformation strategy. Fewe...

Mobile network service providers are upbeat about their new revenue sources in the future. The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technologies continue to gain momentum in the Global Networked Economy, as more organizations explore the application possibilities. Berg Insight released their latest study findings about the market for cellular M2M terminals. About 4.9 million cellular M2M terminals were shipped globally during 2016 -- that's an increase of 28 percent from the previous year. M2M Technology Market Development Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.8 percent, Berg Insight believes that this number is expected to reach 13.7 million M2M terminals in 2022. Berg Insight defines cellular terminals as standalone devices intended for connecting M2M applications to a cellular network. These include primarily general-purpose cellular routers, gateways and modems that are enclosed in a chassis and have at least one input or output...

Worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 10.8 percent year-over-year to $2.99 billion during the third quarter of 2017 (3Q17), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). The market consumed 1.96 exabytes of new storage capacity during the quarter, which was up 30 percent compared to the same period a year ago. "The converged systems market expanded on multiple fronts, most notably within hyperconverged solutions," said Eric Sheppard, research director at IDC . "While hyperconvergence is not the sole source of market growth, it has undeniably driven an expansion of this market into new environments at a very rapid pace." Converged Systems Market Development IDC's converged systems market view offers three segments: certified reference systems and integrated infrastructure, integrated platforms, and hyperconverged systems. Certified reference systems and integrated infrastructure are pre-integrated, vendor-certi...