Kevin Bloch - Chief Technology Officer of Australia and New Zealand, Cisco
5. Security - Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse
The single biggest threat to the digital or knowledge economy is trust and the security of the data that it will depend on.
As a result, security is the highest priority in spending with 82 percent of CIOs expecting to increase spending on information security in 2016. Attacks are now professional and organised.
Modern cybercrime is predominantly financially motivated spawning powerful industries in countries like Russia.
The sophistication of attack techniques will accelerate and the attack surface will expand driven in particular, by cloud, IoT and mobile.
6. Networking, Software Defined - Evolution, not revolution
In a connected world, the role and relevance of the network escalates as it connects and touches everything. It too is going through dramatic change.
The latent promise of SDN and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) will begin to materialise (and monetise) particularly in the telco sector.
SD-WAN will become a popular use-case for SDN and advanced forms of SDN, such as Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), will become mainstream in the cloud.
Wifi will continue its rapid pace, for example, with availability of 10 Gbps (Wave 3) chipsets. NBN will be challenged by wireless, the “Netflix effect” and Net-neutrality.
7. Cognitive Systems - From human-scale to machine-scale
Computers and digital technology enable us to see more than humans can and do what the brain can’t.
For an increasing number of applications, computers far exceed human capability (e.g. numeracy) taking us into new territory and possibilities.
Virtual personal assistants will augment apps that bring information to you, transforming the user interface.
Advanced systems will autonomously learn to perceive the world on their own, making machines appear ‘intelligent’ and challenge what it means to be human.
This will raise further concerns regarding the threat of intelligent machines.
8. Connected Cars - The hottest mobile computing device
The year Detroit takes on Silicon Valley. While traditional PC sales drop, connected cars are expected to grow six-fold. Users are prepared to pay more for vehicle connectivity and it is becoming a buying feature.
Authorities begin to provide incentives for ‘vehicle-to-vehicle’ and ‘vehicle-to-infrastructure’ (V2X) capabilities.
Car manufacturers announce ‘death-proof’ cars by 2020’.
The connected car industry dynamic will display all the critical attributes of the fourth industrial revolution including disruption, cognitive systems, connectivity, instrumentation, cross-industry convergence, new regulation and new business models.
9. New Tech - Top picks: Quantum, Batteries & Blockchain
The long-term growth of an advanced economy is dominated by the behaviour and speed of technical progress. While we expect innovation across a broad range of areas, we highlight three in particular.
Quantum computing has the potential to change perspectives of what is possible with traditional computing and the laws of classical physics and it will impact existing systems such as cyber security.
Battery storage will disrupt the energy sector, raising prospects for renewables.
Blockchain will find roles as a distributed ledger in the digital economy beyond bitcoin. It will challenge and be embraced by the financial services sector.
10. Innovation - Thinking beyond growth and cost reduction
Although indicators such as VC investments and the number of startups are already trending upwards, the signal is clear - it is a national priority to innovate towards an ‘algorithmic, data-rich economy’.
Industry consolidation continues and M&A increases within and across industry.
