2015

• 10 ways 3D printing can change the world - The World Economic Forum 
• Empire of the geeks - The Economist  

Please see below selected recent intelligence about technology. Please contact Dominic Kelleher with any questions.  

June 2015

• MIT Technology Review published its lists of the 50 Smartest Companies in 2015. Massive solar panel factories, fertility treatments and friendly robots are among the companies reshaping the technology business.

• The majority of organisations fail to have a uniform process for archiving data types, according to analysis by the Computer Business Review. Businesses are failing to capture potential revenues due to poorly managed data archives. Large volumes of data are resulting in many organisations being unable to successfully leverage the value in their data archives. However, a subset of organisations which are successfully leveraging the data are making as much as $10m more in revenue due to streamlined IT and customer service operations. Research published by Iron Mountain, "Mining for Insight: Rediscovering the Data Archive", an IDC white paper, showed that organisations with a well-defined data archive process stand to realise value from cost savings and added revenue from monetising the archives.

• The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) is demanding new initiatives toward enterprise architecture, data services and integration, according to a survey of 675 application developers, which finds broad support for IoT initiatives, but a lot of work ahead. The study, conducted by Harbor Research and underwritten by Progress, found that at least 45% of developers are working on IoT initiatives, and 75% felt IoT is going to deliver positive results. However, at this point, only 50% of developers say they have the skills, resources and technological tools to deliver on IoT expectations, the survey finds. That's because there are many new moving parts that will need to be added to already complex IT infrastructures.In fact, nearly a third experience data overload and feel overwhelmed trying to manage it all when managing data sets for contextualised IoT apps,

• The Era of Living Services report from Accenture and Fjord, described how brands will use the Internet of Things and powerful data analytics to create services that come to life; predicting and reacting to consumers’ changing needs and circumstances. In other words, branded services that are personalised and change in real-time for every individual wherever they are and whatever they are doing. It looked at the effect Living Services will have on most aspects of our lives – from our homes, finances and work; to our health, shopping and the future of travel.

• By 2020, 62% of organisations will be running 100% of their information technology in the cloud. But younger startup companies are already close to that point. That’s the prediction from BetterCloud, which surveyed 1,500 of its customers to determine what direction they will be taking cloud in the next few years. Currently, 12% of companies run all of their IT in the cloud, so it looks like this number will quintuple over the next five years.

• London is the technology capital of Europe, with more than 1,000 “tech investment projects” started between 2005 and 2014 based in London, while only 281 are in Paris, the next most popular city in Europe, the data from professional services firm EY2 reveals. Below Paris were Dublin with 162, Madrid with 139 and Amsterdam with 126 start-ups. According to a report by Oxford Economics, London's digital technology sector has grown by 46 per cent since the Tech City UK programme was launched, with tech companies based in the capital now employing almost 200,000 people.

• Deloitte predicts that in 2015 one billion wireless Internet of Things (IoT) devices will be shipped, up 60% from 2014, and leading to an installed base of 2.8 billion devices. The IoT-specific hardware (which could be a more expensive cellular modem, or a much cheaper Wi-Fi chip) is likely to be worth $10 billion, and the associated services enabled by the devices worth about $70 billion. Services include all of the data plans that may be necessary to connect a device over a network, the professional services (consulting, implementation, or analysing the data) and then things like an insurance policy discount for a telematics device in a car or a wearable device for health purposes.

• Ventana Research recently completed what it claims is the most comprehensive evaluation of analytics and business intelligence products and vendors available anywhere. Analytics and business intelligence is now a fast-changing market and Ventana scrutinised 15 top vendors and their product offerings in seven key categories: usability, manageability, reliability, capability, adaptability, vendor validation and return on investment.

• The Internet of Things is rapidly building connections between devices, starting with wearables, cars and appliances. A recent report from Gartner forecast that, “4.9 billion connected things will be in use in 2015, up 30 percent from 2014, and will reach 25 billion by 2020.” Breakthroughs have been made with regard to processing chips and internet speed that are making IoT a reality. 20 years ago, the cloud technology that is current driving these changes did not exist, but today the Internet of Things is being compared to the Industrial Revolution.