IDC’s top 10 predictions for New Zealand CIOs in 2015

Credit: dreamstime

Prediction 10: Cloud brokerage will evolve to solve the trend for multi cloud adoption. New Zealand organisations are adopting cloud-based solutions across their organisations. The challenge to integrate these solutions increases as organisations mature and use cloud for a greater variety and more sophisticated range of business reasons. Cloud brokerage will evolve to solve this, through a focus on API based integration at a platform level. CIOs will demand these platforms as a mechanism for governing pan-organisation adoption.

Prediction 9: Wearable devices won't get worn. Despite all the hype there will be no widespread take-up of wearable devices in the mass market. Specific industries will, however, find applications such as cameras/glasses to show architects and engineers where existing building services are located on site.

Prediction 8: The proliferation of sensor technologies, embedded devices and public sector use cases will kick start the NZ big data market. The Sensing City project in Christchurch will become a petri dish for how to derive value creation from big data and the Internet of Things. This will be held up as a best practice example of how to shift from big data opportunities in theory to one of reality, with real world solutions to real world problems.

Prediction 7: There will be at least one high profile ICT security scandal in 2015about organisational data and/or IP loss. Security is seen as the top priority strategic initiative for businesses in 2014. However, its functional priority has been seen as supportive to other third platform (mobile, social, big data and cloud) investment, increasing the risk of some form of breach or loss.

Prediction 6: Social business will take off in CRM. The use of social media and analytics will evolve beyond a couple of staff managing customer complaints and monitoring of ‘likes’, to a full blown channel to market for innovative companies as they experiment with the crossover of big data and social, to evolve channel to market strategies.

Prediction 5: The PC will make a recovery against the tablet as notebook technical specifications and price points evolve. The plethora of notebooks with various configurations combined with price drops is anticipated to give users the flexibility of choosing the best device to suit their specific needs.

Prediction 4: The focus and enthusiasm over investing in third platform technologies to transform existing businesses will lead to critical shortages in appropriately qualified IT staff to execute. The ICT skills shortage will plague the market until at least 2018, as the nuts and bolts of the newly launched ICT Graduate School are sorted out.

Prediction 3: The evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) will lead to opportunities for New Zealand to be a leader in niche areas such as rural. ICT was NZ’s third biggest export sector in 2013 (behind dairy and tourism). NZ’s strong focus on smart management of agriculture and the established use of M2M technology makes for wider export opportunities in the rural sector.

Prediction 2: There will be an evolving challenge on how to prioritise IT investment decisions. Lines of business (LOB) heads are increasingly being involved in decision-making and holding budgets for IT investment and this will lead to more matrix type decision-making.

Prediction 1: New Zealand’s enterprise mobility sector will gain in maturity as vendors increase focus. IDC predicts NZ enterprises will continue to mature in their approach to and execution of mobile solutions but that the going will be slow. 2015 will see more and more organisations deploying mobile application platform and unified collaboration solutions, while some organisations will still struggle with BYOD. Successful vendors in this space will master consultative selling that requires significant early work to frame-up what problem the customer is trying to solve.

Louise Francis (lfrancis@idc.com) is IT spending research manager at IDC New Zealand.

Are there any other key business technology trends CIOs need to prepare for? Send comments to divina_paredes@idg.co.nz or via Twitter: @divinap

Follow CIO New Zealand on Twitter:@cio_nz

Sign up for CIO newsletters for regular updates on CIO news, views and events.

Join us on Facebook.