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At the beginning of each year we read the tea leaves, throw the bones and gaze into our crystal ball, and predict TMT developments and trends for the year ahead. But our credibility as fortune tellers depends, of course, on the accuracy of our past predictions. So let's see how our 2010 predictions fared ...
Our 2010 TMT predictions
1. The year of the tablet
Prediction: Expect a large increase in sales as consumers become attracted to the combination of screen size, light weight and strong web-browsing capabilities offered by the new generation of tablet PCs. Apple's announcement of the iPad will significantly influence consumers, and a number of other manufacturers are following Apple's lead and introducing tablet PCs in 2010. We predict that tablet PCs will generate around US$1 billion in global sales this year.
Outcome: 2010 certainly was the year of the tablet. Following its highly anticipated release in April, Apple had sold more than 7.5 million iPad units by the end of September 2010, capturing over 95% of the tablet market, and in the process generating approximately US$5 billion in revenue. The iPad’s success has ignited the Apple v Android v BlackBerry v all-comers ‘tablet wars’.
2. Software as a Service (SaaS) will continue to grow
Prediction: Expect to see continued strong growth in the uptake of SaaS for a number of years to come as the architecture underpinning the technology continues to improve. Gartner forecasts that SaaS usage will continue to grow consistently for years to come, and will generate up to US$14 billion in revenue in 2013.
Outcome: SaaS saw strong growth in 2010, with enterprise spending on SaaS exceeding US$9.2 billion: a 15.7% increase according to Gartner.
3. The National Broadband Network (NBN) will begin to shape the future
Prediction: While it is still a few years away from becoming operational, greater clarity in the functional and operational design of the NBN will emerge in 2010. As a result, expect to see companies begin positioning themselves with innovative approaches and new business models to ensure they are able to best benefit from the NBN.
Outcome: In December 2010, the Federal Government released the business plan for NBN Co, which set out (amongst other things) details of the NBN's functional and operational design. The business plan clarified, for example, that NBN Co will increase the number of Points of Interconnect (PoI) (the plug in points for retail service providers) from 14 to 120 in order to satisfy certain concerns expressed by the ACCC. This was a win for retail service providers, who claimed traffic aggregation through a small number of PoIs would render many of their backhaul assets redundant. With various details of the NBN now clearer, businesses are considering how the NBN will affect consumer behaviour and current business models, and the strategies required to leverage new opportunities.
4. Mobile VoIP usage will grow significantly
Prediction: 2010 will see strong growth in the use of mobile VoIP, as consumers begin to utilise its benefits through mobile networks, rather than just as a fixed line service. Some analysts predict mobile VoIP could be worth US$30 billion globally within three years.
Outcome: Mobile VoIP usage grew in 2010; however, enterprise uptake was slower than predicted. Analysts have attributed this to concerns relating to security, patchy performance and the need for constant wi-fi access, as well as increases in cellular network spectrum and bandwidth.
5. Flash memory will make it big
Prediction: Expect to see a doubling in the overall use of flash memory as a storage solution in 2010 and for the next 2-3 years after, as users start to rely more heavily on flash memory.
Outcome: According to iSuppli, an industry research firm, the NAND flash memory segment grew by approximately 40% in 2010 as a result of uptake of flash memory for storage in portable devices and PCs (not quite as high as we predicted).
Overall, it's fair to say that our predictions for 2010 were, in most respects, close to the mark. Will our predictions for 2011 fare as well?
Our 2011 TMT predictions
1. Increase in cloud computing models
Cloud computing models exist along a spectrum that include public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds and virtual private clouds (a private cloud existing in a public cloud). Because of security, privacy and performance concerns, enterprise adoption of cloud technologies has been relatively slow. While not necessarily achieving the efficiencies of public clouds in terms of economies of scale, private cloud implementations can offer enterprises many of the benefits of public cloud computing — self-service, efficiency, scalability, and elasticity — with the additional benefits of control, security and customisation that come with having dedicated resources.
Prediction: 2011 will be a year of cloud computing experimentation, with many organisations transferring non-critical applications to various cloud computing models, whilst still maintaining business critical applications within their current infrastructure.
2. Cloud security services - a burgeoning market
The increased deployment of computing clouds have opened markets for a range of cloud-related technologies and services to address security, privacy, availability and performance issues.
Prediction: Expect to see cloud security and privacy services become a burgeoning market in 2011. Forrester Research estimates that the cloud security market could be worth US$1.5 billion by 2015.
3. SaaS uptake will accelerate
As a corollary of the growth in cloud computing, offerings of SaaS by cloud will grow and become more sophisticated and customised. Gartner expects the enterprise SaaS market will total approximately US$10.7 billion in 2011.
Prediction: Expect to see enterprise, governments and NGOs increasingly embrace SaaS
4. The National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout will spawn new e-services
As the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) continues in 2011, the high speed broadband it will provide will underpin — and act as a catalyst for — a new era of e-services.
Prediction: Expect to see a surge in the uptake of domestic high definition video-on-demand (VOD) services and expect that this will occur through both set-top box implementations (such as Telstra’s T-Box) as well as PCs, TVs and gaming consoles.
5. Growth of social media in business as firms seek to monetise social media
There's no denying that social media has become an integral part of modern life and an ubiquitous method of communication. Gartner predicts that by 2016, social media technologies will be integrated within most business applications, and forecasts enterprise social media software revenues for 2011 at US$769.2 million (an increase of 15.7% from 2010).
Prediction: Expect many organisations to implement internal social networks and allow employees to use personal social network accounts for business use. This will in turn see social networking compete with email for business communication and will increase the adoption of new applications that combine the functionalities of email, instant messaging and social networking. In doing so, businesses will need to devise, implement and enforce internal social media policies and protocols. Also expect many organisations to capitalise on social networking for their business and become more aggressive in their social media marketing campaigns.
6. Enterprise uptake of mobile VoIP will face resistance
Despite a slow uptake, there is no doubt that enterprise consumers stand to benefit from an increase in mobile VoIP offerings and solutions tailored to business. Further technological developments in this space should gradually alleviate concerns regarding security, service continuity, wi-fi access and cellular network capacity that have so far prevented a faster rate of adoption. According to a Frost & Sullivan report, the next five years will see a large increase in the demand for mobile VoIP services, with revenues expected to grow to US$29.57 billion by 2015, largely driven by the uptake of mobile VoIP solutions by enterprise users.
Prediction: Notwithstanding the potential, we do not expect a rapid surge in enterprise adoption of mobile VoIP to occur during 2011, particularly as telecommunications carriers fight to protect their existing voice businesses.
7. A new era of GPU computing
General Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) is the technique of using a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), which typically handles only computer graphics computations, to perform computations normally handled by Central Processing Units (CPUs) (often referred to as ‘GPU computing’). Whereas multi-core CPUs can have up to 12 general-purpose cores, a GPU can have over 448 specialised cores. If these cores are utilised with algorithms that can optimise parallelism within the GPU, speed improvements in computations in the order of hundreds of times faster than CPUs could be achieved. As a result, GPU computing can make hitherto impossible simulations a reality.
Prediction: Expect GPU computing to emerge in 2011, particularly in the high performance computing arena. The adoption of GPU computing will also be driven in part by an increasing focus on ‘green IT’ because of its high performance-per-watt profile. Also expect GPU computing to proliferate in consumer markets as an increasing number of applications become optimised to take advantage of the processing power of GPUs.
8. Solid state drives (SSDs) will erode hard disk drive (HDD) market share
Outcome: Mobile VoIP usage grew in 2010; however, enterprise uptake was slower than predicted. Analysts have attributed this to concerns relating to security, patchy performance and the need for constant wi-fi access, as well as increases in cellular network spectrum and bandwidth.
5. Flash memory will make it big
Prediction: Expect to see a doubling in the overall use of flash memory as a storage solution in 2010 and for the next 2-3 years after, as users start to rely more heavily on flash memory.
Outcome: According to iSuppli, an industry research firm, the NAND flash memory segment grew by approximately 40% in 2010 as a result of uptake of flash memory for storage in portable devices and PCs (not quite as high as we predicted).
Overall, it's fair to say that our predictions for 2010 were, in most respects, close to the mark. Will our predictions for 2011 fare as well?
Our 2011 TMT predictions
1. Increase in cloud computing models
Cloud computing models exist along a spectrum that include public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds and virtual private clouds (a private cloud existing in a public cloud). Because of security, privacy and performance concerns, enterprise adoption of cloud technologies has been relatively slow. While not necessarily achieving the efficiencies of public clouds in terms of economies of scale, private cloud implementations can offer enterprises many of the benefits of public cloud computing — self-service, efficiency, scalability, and elasticity — with the additional benefits of control, security and customisation that come with having dedicated resources.
Prediction: 2011 will be a year of cloud computing experimentation, with many organisations transferring non-critical applications to various cloud computing models, whilst still maintaining business critical applications within their current infrastructure.
2. Cloud security services - a burgeoning market
The increased deployment of computing clouds have opened markets for a range of cloud-related technologies and services to address security, privacy, availability and performance issues.
Prediction: Expect to see cloud security and privacy services become a burgeoning market in 2011. Forrester Research estimates that the cloud security market could be worth US$1.5 billion by 2015.
3. SaaS uptake will accelerate
As a corollary of the growth in cloud computing, offerings of SaaS by cloud will grow and become more sophisticated and customised. Gartner expects the enterprise SaaS market will total approximately US$10.7 billion in 2011.
Prediction: Expect to see enterprise, governments and NGOs increasingly embrace SaaS
4. The National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout will spawn new e-services
As the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) continues in 2011, the high speed broadband it will provide will underpin — and act as a catalyst for — a new era of e-services.
Prediction: Expect to see a surge in the uptake of domestic high definition video-on-demand (VOD) services and expect that this will occur through both set-top box implementations (such as Telstra’s T-Box) as well as PCs, TVs and gaming consoles.
5. Growth of social media in business as firms seek to monetise social media
There's no denying that social media has become an integral part of modern life and an ubiquitous method of communication. Gartner predicts that by 2016, social media technologies will be integrated within most business applications, and forecasts enterprise social media software revenues for 2011 at US$769.2 million (an increase of 15.7% from 2010).
Prediction: Expect many organisations to implement internal social networks and allow employees to use personal social network accounts for business use. This will in turn see social networking compete with email for business communication and will increase the adoption of new applications that combine the functionalities of email, instant messaging and social networking. In doing so, businesses will need to devise, implement and enforce internal social media policies and protocols. Also expect many organisations to capitalise on social networking for their business and become more aggressive in their social media marketing campaigns.
6. Enterprise uptake of mobile VoIP will face resistance
Despite a slow uptake, there is no doubt that enterprise consumers stand to benefit from an increase in mobile VoIP offerings and solutions tailored to business. Further technological developments in this space should gradually alleviate concerns regarding security, service continuity, wi-fi access and cellular network capacity that have so far prevented a faster rate of adoption. According to a Frost & Sullivan report, the next five years will see a large increase in the demand for mobile VoIP services, with revenues expected to grow to US$29.57 billion by 2015, largely driven by the uptake of mobile VoIP solutions by enterprise users.
Prediction: Notwithstanding the potential, we do not expect a rapid surge in enterprise adoption of mobile VoIP to occur during 2011, particularly as telecommunications carriers fight to protect their existing voice businesses.
7. A new era of GPU computing
General Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) is the technique of using a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), which typically handles only computer graphics computations, to perform computations normally handled by Central Processing Units (CPUs) (often referred to as ‘GPU computing’). Whereas multi-core CPUs can have up to 12 general-purpose cores, a GPU can have over 448 specialised cores. If these cores are utilised with algorithms that can optimise parallelism within the GPU, speed improvements in computations in the order of hundreds of times faster than CPUs could be achieved. As a result, GPU computing can make hitherto impossible simulations a reality.
Prediction: Expect GPU computing to emerge in 2011, particularly in the high performance computing arena. The adoption of GPU computing will also be driven in part by an increasing focus on ‘green IT’ because of its high performance-per-watt profile. Also expect GPU computing to proliferate in consumer markets as an increasing number of applications become optimised to take advantage of the processing power of GPUs.
8. Solid state drives (SSDs) will erode hard disk drive (HDD) market share
As we predicted, 2010 saw a significant growth in flash memory. However, HDDs still cost significantly less than SSDs and are available in much higher storage capacities than SSDs. Yet, as the performance of next-generation SSDs continue to improve and prices fall, SSDs will encroach HDD market share, particularly in the mobile storage market.
Prediction: We expect that use of flash memory and SSDs will steadily grow in 2011 and that hybrid HDDs — incorporating both a conventional HDD and solid state components — will become prevalent in 2011 and dominate the middle ground before SSDs ultimately replace conventional HDDs entirely.
9. The sequel to the year of the tablet: growth to accelerate
2010 was the year of the tablet and we anticipate 2011 to be the sequel as consumers have more options with a wave of new models expected this year - including the iPad 2 which it is speculated will be announced as early as next month. According to Gartner, the tablet market is expected to grow from the 19.5 million tablets sold in 2010 to 208 million tablets by 2014.
Prediction: Expect the growth of tablets in 2011 to be driven by enterprise uptake. However, the pace of this growth will be tempered by an inability of cellular providers to increase capacity of mobile data networks in pace with the demand due to spectrum and bandwidth capacity constraints.
10. Moore’s law will continue unabated
Despite consolidations in 2009, the rebound in the semiconductor industry in 2010 surpassed all forecasts, with global revenues of approximately US$304 billion, up about one-third from US$229.5 billion in 2009. However, many argue that the growth of semiconductor manufacturing cannot be sustained according to Moore's Law, which predicts that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. Moore's Law is often used as a metric for the growth of semiconductor technology, but may be harder to sustain due to Moore's Second Law - that the capital cost of a semiconductor increases exponentially over time.
Prediction: Expect Moore’s Law to continue to hold in 2011 and beyond due to the potential for continued innovation in semiconductor technology. For example, last year, physicists at the University of Bonn successfully managed to turn photons (the wave/particles we see as light) into a super particle (a Bose-Einstein condensate). This was previously thought to be impossible, and this development may lead to the manufacture of even smaller transistors on microchips, because it will allow x-rays (instead of UV light) to be used to construct micro-circuits. Although commercial application of the Bose-Einstein condensate may be some time off, this type of innovation may yet safeguard Moore's Law for some time.
Partner: Paul Kallenbach
Prediction: We expect that use of flash memory and SSDs will steadily grow in 2011 and that hybrid HDDs — incorporating both a conventional HDD and solid state components — will become prevalent in 2011 and dominate the middle ground before SSDs ultimately replace conventional HDDs entirely.
9. The sequel to the year of the tablet: growth to accelerate
2010 was the year of the tablet and we anticipate 2011 to be the sequel as consumers have more options with a wave of new models expected this year - including the iPad 2 which it is speculated will be announced as early as next month. According to Gartner, the tablet market is expected to grow from the 19.5 million tablets sold in 2010 to 208 million tablets by 2014.
Prediction: Expect the growth of tablets in 2011 to be driven by enterprise uptake. However, the pace of this growth will be tempered by an inability of cellular providers to increase capacity of mobile data networks in pace with the demand due to spectrum and bandwidth capacity constraints.
10. Moore’s law will continue unabated
Despite consolidations in 2009, the rebound in the semiconductor industry in 2010 surpassed all forecasts, with global revenues of approximately US$304 billion, up about one-third from US$229.5 billion in 2009. However, many argue that the growth of semiconductor manufacturing cannot be sustained according to Moore's Law, which predicts that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. Moore's Law is often used as a metric for the growth of semiconductor technology, but may be harder to sustain due to Moore's Second Law - that the capital cost of a semiconductor increases exponentially over time.
Prediction: Expect Moore’s Law to continue to hold in 2011 and beyond due to the potential for continued innovation in semiconductor technology. For example, last year, physicists at the University of Bonn successfully managed to turn photons (the wave/particles we see as light) into a super particle (a Bose-Einstein condensate). This was previously thought to be impossible, and this development may lead to the manufacture of even smaller transistors on microchips, because it will allow x-rays (instead of UV light) to be used to construct micro-circuits. Although commercial application of the Bose-Einstein condensate may be some time off, this type of innovation may yet safeguard Moore's Law for some time.
Partner: Paul Kallenbach
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