NYT’s Bits blog covered the recently released annual prediction reports from IDC, Gartner, and Forrester. IDC and Gartner’s reports include several 35 year predictions. Forrester’s report focuses on 2016, but reinforces the predictions of the other firms.

Although we’re generally after forecasts that address the everyday life of the average American, the forecasts in this set have broad economic and employment implications that certainly will affect a large number of people, and certainly the technology tools we use every day.

IDC’s report features several predictions for the 20182020 period, meant to provide guidance for business and industry strategists in the coming year. Here are a few excerpts via Bits as well as the original report:

•By 2018, corporations pursuing digital transformation strategies would “more than double the size of their software development teams.”

•By 2018, the number of Internet of Things devices will more than double, prompting the development of 200,000 new apps. By 2020, devices will triple and apps will exceed 250,000.

•By 2018, 65% of all IT assets used by companies will be housed offsite in collocation, hosting, and cloud data centers and one third of IT “staff” will actually be employees of organizations’ third party managed service providers.

•By 2020, more than 30 percent of today’s tech suppliers will “not exist as we know them today,” having been acquired or failed.

•By 2020, spending on cloud services and related hardware and software will be more than $500 billion, three times the current level.

•By 2020, providers of underlying cloud infrastructure will significantly consolidate,” with “six or fewer cloud platform vendors” holding 80 percent or so of the market. Probably Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, IBM, Alibaba and Tencent.

•By 2020, over 70% of 3rd Platform IT spending will be driven by doing entirely new things, rather than on using new technologies to do traditional things in a new way.

•By 2020, 50% or more of e-commerce transactions will be enabled or influenced by Facebook and other regional social network leaders (e.g., Tencent’s Weibo in China).

•By 2020, one of the more frenetic IoT segments, wearables, will consolidate, as over half of today’s players will exit the market.

 

Gartner issued a similar set of predictions to 20182020, including the following:

•By 2018, 20 percent of business content will be authored by machines (eg: shareholder reports, legal documents, market reports, press releases, articles and white papers).

•By 2018, six billion connected things will be requesting support.

•By 2018, more than 3 million workers globally will be supervised by a “robo-boss.”

•By year-end 2018, 20 percent of smart buildings will have suffered from digital vandalism.

•By 2018, 45 percent of the fastest growing companies will have fewer employees than instances of smart machines (eg: fully automated supermarket, drone-only surveillance services).

•By year-end 2018, customer digital assistant will recognize individuals by face and voice across channels and partners.

•By 2018, two million employees will be required to wear health and fitness tracking devices as a condition of employment (eg: emergency responders, pro athletes, political leaders, airline pilots, industrial workers, remote field workers).

•By 2020, autonomous software agents outside of human control will participate in five percent of all economic transactions (eg: banking, insurance, markets, exchanges, crowdfunding).

•By 2020, smart agents (virtual personal assistants) will facilitate 40 percent of mobile interactions, and the post-app era will begin to dominate.

•Through 2020, 95 percent of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault.

 

Forrester’s report only looks out as far as 2016, and doesn’t offer as many numeric predictions, but the concepts are similar. Excerpts:

•Leaders will understand and anticipate individual needs to deliver personalized experiences, sharply increasing their lead in the market.

•We will see extraordinary leadership disruption as companies adapt to a customer-led market.

•Leaders will invest in culture to accelerate both the pace of change and their speed of business.

•Cutting-edge algorithms will give leaders a leg up over competitors drowning in data and using run-of-the-mill analytical tools.

•Privacy will move from a niche consideration to a value to which customers will respond.

 

Sources

Steve Lohr. November 4, 2015. “Digital Transformation Going Mainstream in 2016, IDC Predicts”. Bits. New York Times.

Frank Gens. November 2015. “IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2016 Predictions — Leading Digital Transformation to Scale.” IDC #259850.

October 6. “Gartner Reveals Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2016 and Beyond.” Gartner.

October 2015. “The 2016 Top 10 Critical Success Factors To Determine Who Wins And Who Fails In The Age Of The Customer.” Forrester.