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Dimension Data’s Chief Technology Officer, Ettienne Reinecke says digital is about
building truly customer-centric business models on IT including the network, data
centre, applications, and other infrastructure - which may be on-premise, or
cloud-based. “Today, there’s no such thing as a digital strategy – just
strategy in a digital world. And while the digital age is creating a degree of
uncertainty for some organisations, it’s also opening the doors to exciting
possibilities and ushering in an era of infinite potential.”

Reinecke cites ownership and access to data – and metadata – as a key theme.
“In the year ahead, control and ownership of data and metadata will emerge as a
point of discussion - and indeed contention.

That’s because data and metadata are the ‘gold dust’ that allow organisations
to glean rich insights about customer behaviour. In addition, metadata allows
organisations to identify specific behavioural patterns, derive business
intelligence, and make informed business decisions,” Reinecke explains.

As a result, organisations are becoming increasingly protective of their metadata,
and wary of who has access to it. “Organisations don’t just want ownership and
control of their data for compliance reasons: they want it to perform analytics. We
expect that this will trigger some interesting discussions between businesses and
their cloud providers. For example, where are the boundaries with respect to
ownership, especially around metadata. We foresee this issue resulting in a bit of
‘push and pull’ among the various parties.”

Other IT trends that Dimension Data predicts will make their mark in 2017 include:

– Intelligence is driving the predictive cybersecurity posture
Cybercrime is big business. Over the last few years, cybercriminals have been
re-investing much of the ill-gotten gains into developing more sophisticated
capabilities, using more advanced technologies. Despite ongoing innovation in the
cybersecurity industry, much of the effort remains reactive. Cybersecurity will
become more predictive, rather than proactive.

– Machines are being embedded in the workspace for tomorrow
A new generation is starting to show up at work, and they’re not millennials, or
even Gen Z: they’re machines. And it won’t be much longer before holographics,
augmented reality, and virtual reality begin to move from B2C into B2B. Also, over
the next two to three years these technologies will drive a fundamental
transformation of the workspace.

– The Internet of Things is delivering on the promise of big data
IoT will deliver on the promise of big data. Increasingly, big data projects are
going through multiple updates in a single year – and the Internet of Things (IoT)
is largely the reason. That’s because IoT makes it possible to examine specific
patterns that deliver specific business outcomes, and this has to increasingly be
done in realtime. This will drive a healthier investment, and faster return in big
data projects.

– Container technology is the new disruptor in the data centre and a key
enabler for hybrid IT
In 2017 we’ll see more widespread adoption of containers, but the transition to a
fully containerised world will take few more years. In addition, we’ll see
increasing adoption of network function virtualisation (NFV) when cloud-enabling
existing networks, and for new networks to be architected with hybrid cloud in
mind.