A new year is here! To find out what it holds for technology, I spoke with thought leaders and executives at four global companies to get their predictions for the big news of 2018 in their fields:
Consulting and general trends: Avanade predicts virtual assistants will rise in popularity, that augmented and virtual reality will become part of regular shopping experiences, and just as “customer experience” has been a big thing, now it’s time for “employee experience” as business casts its mind back to its staff. Read more here.
Security: Forcepoint predicts we will see the likes of Equifax again, with another big data aggregator experiencing a breach and exposure of data from an attack vector which was predictable and avoidable, and that we will see intelligent malware watching out for SSL/TLS inspection and hiding itself, that the Internet of Things will experience the “disruption of things”, and that the privacy debate will be re-ignited. Read more here.
Disaster recovery: Zerto states while the move to the cloud will continue relentlessly, it’s important for business not to neglect disaster recovery and resilience, while predicting tape backup will finally die in 2018. Read more here.
Software: SUSE Linux says open source software will drive innovation and enterprises will need to keep watch and integrate open source, possibly engaging outside experts to help, that containers will become mainstream and a common delivery method for commercial software, and the cloud will be commonplace even for regular non-technology businesses. Read more here.
David M Williams 