By Freya Purnell
Analyst firm IDC predicts the ‘third platform’ – big data, mobile, cloud and social business – will continue to transform the Australian ICT marketplace this year.
Cloud services consumption is expected to expand beyond IT to the business user, as a cloud brokerage-based delivery model emerges. This will not be limited to service providers, with CIOs also able to take advantage of this model to become enterprise service brokers of both IT and business services.
“The four pillars of IDC’s third platform – big data, cloud, mobile and social will really be the key growth drivers for 2014,” said Graham Barr, research director, telecommunications at IDC Australia.
“The third platform marketplace will drive significant disruption through the market in 2014. This marketplace is being built on new technologies and new economic models with higher volumes, lower prices, and faster cycle times, delivering new solutions developed by many new developers and innovators.”
In the mobility arena, in line with a shift from mobilising people to mobilizing business processes, IDC expects to see enterprises move from bring your own device (BYOD) to choose your own device (CYOD). This will help organisations to manage the complexity of delivering, managing and supporting mobile applications on the breadth of devices chosen and owned by the end user employee, while still giving users some level of choice.
“Without CYOD, enterprises will continue to struggle to reap the benefits from these types of initiatives as the costs, including the costs of securing the devices and content as well as supporting the users, far outweigh the perceived productivity benefits,” IDC said.
As more software-defined networks (SDNs) are introduced into the market, customers will have greater choice in what products they purchase, but also how they design and build networks to support application workloads.
The move will open the market for vendors and channel partners – both resellers and integrators – to deliver SDN professional services to enterprise customers.
The coming year will also see a change in IT purchasing decisions and budgets – moving away from IT towards other line-of-business (LOB) managers, and from capex to opex, with shorter return on investment cycles. Organisations are driving innovation through business process redesign, platform upgrades and increased ICT investments, particularly mobility and cloud solutions.
As cloud, big data, mobility and social business becomes more strategic to organisations, roles such as ‘Director of Mobility’ to oversee all aspects of mobility strategy and a role such as ‘Chief Data Scientist’ will also arise within the organisations.
“Decisions around telecoms purchases, especially mobility, will be increasingly influenced by LOB executives, and we expect to see a new role emerging – a senior manager responsible for mobile strategy,” said Barr.
