For the past few years, data scientists are highly sought after to analyse data that can help organisations better understand their business, customers and trends. But, it looks like artificial intelligence-based solutions may be taking over that role in the near future.
Global IT spending is expected to grow to US$3.7 trillion in 2018, an increase of 4.5 percent from 2017, according to Gartner.
One of the biggest fears amid the excitement about artificial intelligence (AI) is the loss of jobs. Many are afraid of being made redundant as AI becomes more pervasive.
The role of the CIO is changing, according to a Gartner survey of 3,160 CIO respondents in 98 countries.
The findings revealed that the CIO role is transitioning from delivery executive to business executive, from controlling cost and engineering processes, to driving revenue and exploiting data.
Ninety-five percent of CIOs expect their jobs to change or be remixed due to digitalisation. While world-class IT delivery management is a given, it will take up less and less of the CIO’s time.
With prominent ransomware attacks that affected many organisations, it is unsurprising that many are investing more in security products and services. According to Gartner, worldwide spending on information security products and services is expected to reach US$86.4 billion in 2017, an increase of 7 percent over 2016. This is expected to grow to US$93 billion in 2018.
Within the infrastructure protection segment, Gartner forecasts fast growth in the security testing market (albeit from a small base) due to continued data breaches and growing demands for application security testing as part of DevOps. Spending on emerging application security testing tools, particularly interactive application security testing, will contribute to the growth of this segment through 2021.
Security services will continue to be the fastest growing segment, especially IT outsourcing, consulting and implementation services. However, hardware support services will see growth slowing, due to the adoption of virtual appliances, public cloud and software as a service editions of security solutions, which reduces the need for attached hardware support overall.
Global semiconductor market is expected to grow 10.2 percent in 2017, to US$77.7 billion, according to Gartner.
This growth rate is up from the previous quarter’s forecast of 1.4 percent, due to continued aggressive investment in memory and leading-edge logic which is driving spending in wafer-level equipment.
“Spending momentum is more concentrated in 2017 mainly due to strong manufacturing demand in memory and leading-edge logic. The NAND flash shortage was more pronounced in the first quarter of 2017 than the previous forecast, leading to over 20 percent growth of etch and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) segments in 2017 with a strong capacity ramp-up for 3D NAND,” said Takashi Ogawa, Research Vice President of Gartner.
PC shipment in the Asia-Pacific region surpassed 21,5 million units, down 5.1 percent in Q2 compared to the same period last year, according to Gartner.
The dip was due to primarily due to market dynamics in India and China. In India, the pent up demand after the demonetisation cooled down after Q1, coupled with the absence of a large tender deal compared to a year ago and higher PC prices, brought about weak market growth. China was hugely impacted by the rise in PC prices due to the component shortage.
Overall, global PC shipment totaled 61.1 million units in Q2, a 4.3 percent decline from the same quarter last year.
Global demand for devices — PCs, tablets and smartphones — are expected to dip slightly this year, with Gartner projecting shipment exceeding 2.3 billion units, a decline of 0.3 percent from 2016.
However, the market is forecast to return to growth in 2018 with a 1.6 percent increase in shipment.
“Overall, the shipment growth of the device market is steady for the first time in many years. PC shipments are slightly lower while phone shipments are slightly higher — leading to a slight downward revision in shipments from the previous forecast, “said Ranjit Atwal, Research Director of Gartner.
Robots driven by artificial intelligence (AI) are replacing workers in various labour-intensive and service sectors but doctors, lawyers and even IT professionals are at risk of being made redundant. Or at least, certain aspects of each of these practices.
According to Gartner, smart machines and robots may replace highly trained professionals in tasks within medicine, law and IT by 2022 — that’s just five years more!
“The economics of AI and machine learning will lead to many tasks performed by professionals today becoming low-cost utilities. AI’s effects on different industries will force the enterprise to adjust its business strategy. Many competitive, high-margin industries will become more like utilities as AI turns complex work into a metered service that the enterprise pays for, like electricity,” said Stephen Prentice, Vice President and Gartner Fellow.
The growth of cloud and industrialised services and the decline of traditional data centre outsourcing (DCO) indicate a massive shift toward hybrid infrastructure services, according to Gartner.
In a report containing a series of predictions about IT infrastructure services, Gartner analysts said that by 2020, cloud, hosting and traditional infrastructure services will come in more or less at par in terms of spending.
“As the demand for agility and flexibility grows, organizations will shift toward more industrialised, less-tailored options. Organisations that adopt hybrid infrastructure will optimise costs and increase efficiency. However, it increases the complexity of selecting the right toolset to deliver end-to-end services in a multisourced environment,” said DD Mishra, Research Director of Gartner.
The public cloud services market in the mature Asia-Pacific (APAC) region — Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea — is forecast to grow 17.7 percent in 2017 to total US$10 billion, up from US$8.5 billion in 2016, according to Gartner.
By 2019, Gartner predicts that total public cloud services spending in these countries will rise to US$13.6 billion.
Public cloud services are shared, meterable, elastic and scalable multi-tenanted IT offerings delivered as a subscription-based service to external customers using internet technologies.
While the economic looks to be getting better in some instances, worldwide shipment of PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones are projected to remain flat in 2017.
According to Gartner, worldwide shipment for these devices are projected to total 2.3 billion in 2017, the same as 2016 estimates.
There were nearly seven billion phones, tablets and PCs in use in the world by the end of 2016. However, Gartner does not expect any growth in shipments of traditional devices until 2018, when a small increase in ultramobiles and mobile phone shipments is expected.
Advances in various technologies will drive users to interact with their smartphones in more intuitive ways, said Gartner. It expect that, by 2019, 20 percent of all user interactions with the smartphone will take place via virtual personal assistants (VPAs).
“The role of interactions will intensify through the growing popularity of VPAs among smartphone users and conversations made with smart machines,” said Annette Zimmermann, Research Director of Gartner.
Gartner’s annual mobile apps survey conducted in Q4 among 3,021 consumers across three countries (US, UK and China) found that 42 percent of respondents in the US and 32 percent in the UK used VPAs on their smartphones in the last three months. More than 37 percent of respondents (average across US and UK) used a VPA at least one or more times a day.
Worldwide combined shipments for devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones) are expected to drop three percent in 2016, according to Gartner.
This will mark the second consecutive year of decline as the global devices market fell by 0.75 percent in 2015. And the immediate future remains bleak for this market.
“The global devices market is not on pace to return to single-digit growth soon,” said Ranjit Atwal, Research Director of Gartner.
Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is expected to slide 0.7 percent in 2016, to US$64.3 billion, according to Gartner. This is up from the estimated 2 percent decline in Gartner’s previous quarterly forecast.
“Economic instability, inventory excess, weak demand for PC’s, tablets, and mobile products in the past three years has caused slow growth for the semiconductor industry. This slowdown in electronic product demand has driven semiconductor device manufacturers to be conservative in increasing production,” said David Christensen, Senior Research Analyst of Gartner.
“Looking ahead, it appears the second half of 2016 may see improved demand. However, following Brexit, semiconductor inventory levels may rise in the third and fourth quarters, which could lead to reduced production volumes,” he added.
Worldwide security software revenue hit US$22.1 billion in 2015, a 3.7 percent increase in from 2014, according to Gartner.
Security information and event management (SIEM) remained the fastest-growing segment in 2015, with 15.8 percent growth, while consumer security software showed the sharpest decline at 5.9 percent year on year.
In 2015, the top five vendors together accounted for 37.6 percent of the security software revenue market share, down 3.1 percentage points from 2014. These vendors also displayed a collective decline of 4.2 percent in 2015, while the rest of the market (Others) grew strongly at 9.2 percent year on year.
Worldwide IT spending is forecast to be flat in 2016, totaling US$3.41 trillion, according to Gartner, Inc. This is up from last quarter’s forecast of negative 0.5 percent growth. The change in the forecast is mainly due to currency fluctuations.
“The current Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast assumes that the UK would not exit the European Union. With the UK’s exit, there will likely be an erosion in business confidence and price increases which will impact UK, Western Europe and worldwide IT spending,” said John-David Lovelock, Research Vice President of Gartner.
While the UK has embarked on a process to change, that change is yet to be defined. The “leave” vote will quickly affect IT spending in the UK and in Europe while other changes will take longer. Staff may be the largest immediate issue. The long-term uncertainty in work status will make the UK less attractive to new foreign workers. Retaining current non-UK staff and having less access to qualified new hires from abroad will impair UK IT Departments.
The public cloud services market in India is projected to grow 30.4 percent in 2016 to hit US$1.26 billion, according to Gartner.
The highest growth will come from cloud system infrastructure services (infrastructure as a service [IaaS]), which is projected to grow 32.5 percent in 2016, with platform as a service (PaaS) projected to grow 31.7 percent.
“We are witnessing a shift from legacy IT services to cloud-based services. Cloud services are growing due to organizations pursuing a digital business strategy,” said Sid Nag, Research Director of Gartner.
Despite a slowing global economy, CEOs are still making business growth their top priority in 2016, according to a Gartner survey. After growth (54 percent), the second and third business priorities are customers (31 percent) and workforce (27 percent).
The Gartner CEO and senior business executive survey of 400 senior business leaders in user organisations worldwide was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2015, asking questions about 2016/2017. Most responding organisations were those with annual revenue of US$1 billion or more. The survey results show that while business conditions are challenging, CEOs remain confident enough to sanction strategic investments, particularly when it comes to digital business transformation.
“The big rise of explicit mentions of the word ‘customer’ was very noticeable in the results of this year’s survey, “CEOs seem to be concerned about improving customer service, relationship and satisfaction levels. At the same time, CEOs have become much more concerned about employee issues than a couple of years ago. The emphasis is as much on benefits, retention and training of mainstream staff. It is not constrained only to senior grade ‘talent’ issues,” said Mark Raskino, Vice President and Gartner Fellow.
Worldwide PC shipment shed 9.6 percent to 64.8 million in Q1, according to Gartner. This was the sixth consecutive quarter of PC shipment declines, and the first time since 2007 that shipment volume fell below 65 million units.
In the Asia-Pacific, PC shipment dropped 5.1 percent to 23.3 million units. The ongoing fragile Chinese economy and weak global demand continued to dampen consumer sentiment in the region.
With high PC penetration in the major cities, it was a challenge to invoke PC replacements on the appeal of new technology. The PC life cycle is lengthening as many consumers are waiting until their PC breaks down before purchasing a new one.
Worldwide semiconductor revenue declined 2.3 percent to US$334.8 billion in 2015, according to final results by Gartner.
The combined revenue of the top 25 semiconductor vendors fell by 0.5 percent during 2015. This was a better performance than the rest of the market, however, which saw a 6.9 percent revenue decline. The top 25 vendors accounted for 73.5 percent of the market, down slightly from 74 percent in 2014.
“The worldwide semiconductor market declined in 2015 as slowing demand for key applications combined with strong currency fluctuations to subdue the market. 2015 saw a mixed performance by the different device categories, unlike 2014 when all categories posted positive growth. Non-optical sensors performed best due to increased usage of fingerprint sensors in smartphones, while discretes saw the strongest decline due to a mix of weak demand and currency issues,” said Andrew Norwood, Research Vice President of Gartner.
Global smartphone sale is expected to experience just a single-digit growth this year, according to Gartner.
It estimates that global smartphone sale will reach 1.5 billion units, a seven percent increase from 2015. The total mobile phone market is predicted to reach 1.9 billion units in 2016.
“The double-digit growth era for the global smartphone market has come to an end. Historically, worsening economic conditions had negligible impact on smartphone sales and spend, but this is no longer the case. China and North America smartphone sales are on pace to be flat in 2016, exhibiting a 0.7 per cent and 0.4 per cent growth respectively,” said Ranjit Atwal, Research Director of Gartner.
While smartphone sales will continue to grow in emerging markets, the growth will slow down. Gartner predicts that, through 2019, 150 million users will delay upgrades to smartphones in emerging Asia-Pacific, until the functionality and price combination of a low-cost smartphone becomes more desirable.
The global economy is hitting IT spending, with Gartner predicting just a 0.6 percent increase over 2015 spending of US$3.52 trillion.
2015 saw the largest US dollar drop in IT spending since Gartner began tracking IT spending. US$216b less was spent on IT in 2015 than in 2014 and 2014 spending levels won’t be surpassed until 2019.
“The rising US dollar is the villain behind 2015 results. US multinationals’ revenue faced currency headwinds in 2015. However, in 2016 those headwinds go away and they can expect an additional five percent growth,” said John-David Lovelock, Research Vice President of Gartner.
Lenovo remained the top PC vendor amidst a 9.5 percent global PC shipment decline in Q2, according to Gartner. On the whole, Lenovo suffered along with the rest of the industry with a year-on-year shipment decline for the first time since Q2 2013.
HP also experienced a shipment decline after five consecutive quarters of PC shipment growth. It was impacted by tight inventory controls in the consumer market before the Windows 10 launch.
Worldwide PC shipment totalled 68.4 million units in Q2 with 2015 shipment expected to drop 4.4 percent.
Software revenue in India rose 8.3 percent to hit US$4 billion in 2014, according to Gartner.
“The enterprise software marketplace is dynamic and ever-changing. Its growth and structure are being shaped by the factors and forces of decentralised purchasing, consumerisation and mobility, influence of emerging markets, cloud-based implementations, and new consumption models. Improvement in global economic conditions has somewhat relaxed the strain on the Indian economy, thereby boosting corporate sentiments. Along with a new stable government at the center, this has helped in alleviating concerns about economic growth — to a certain extent — with early signs of spending in growth initiatives beginning to emerge,” said Bhavish Sood, Research Director of Gartner.
Several leading trends include:
E-commerce giant Amazon has emerged tops in Gartner’s 11th annual Supply Chain Top 25 ranking, which identifies global supply chain leaders and highlights their best practices.
Fast food chain McDonald’s came in second and consumer goods maker Unilever third.
“In this edition of the Supply Chain Top 25, we have several longtime leaders with new lessons to share and a number of more recent entrants from the high-tech, consumer products, retail and industrial sectors,” said Stan Aronow, Research Vice President of Gartner.
PC vendors will have to raise the prices of PCs to offset the effects of currency devaluation, according to Gartner. Prices of PCs in the Eurozone and Japan will increase by up to 10 percent during […]
Shipment of devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles, and mobile phones) in Asia Pacific are expected to hit 1.2 billion units in 2015, an increase of 3.2 percent over 2014, according to Gartner.
“Device penetration is very high in Asia Pacific – at or beyond saturation point in mature markets and major cities in the emerging markets. Market saturation, along with consumers extending the lifetime of their tablets, has caused a re-calibration in the growth trajectory in the market. From 2016, we expect the tablet market to resume growth from a stabilised base,” said Lillian Tay, Principal Analyst of Gartner.
The computing devices market is forecast to drop 1.9 percent this year, affected by weak demand for tablets. The PC market overall will continue to grow slightly, as shipment in the premium ultramobile category compensate for a decline in sales of traditional desk-based and notebook PCs.
Business intelligence and analytics are the top priorities of CIOs in Southeast Asia (SEA), according to a Gartner survey.Next on their list are mobile, ERP and cloud.
Eighty-four percent of CIOs in SEA recognise the need to adapt their leadership style in the next three years to succeed in digital business, compared with the global average of 75 percent. To achieve this, 69 percent said that they want to decrease their controlling approach to focus on significantly increasing their visionary and coaching attributes.
The annual survey covered more than 2,810 CIOs worldwide, representing more than US$397 billion in CIO IT budgets in 84 countries. It included responses from 117 CIOs from Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Lenovo maintained its pole position in the PC market, holding off HP and Dell. However, the gap between Lenovo and HP narrowed as HP garnered 18.8 percent of the market in Q4, relative to Lenovo’s 19.4 percent, according to Gartner. Dell remained third with 12.7 percent market share.
Overall, worldwide PC shipment totalled 83.7 million units in Q4, a one-percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2013. These results indicate a slow, but consistent improvement following more than two years of decline.
“The PC market is quietly stabilising after the installed base reduction driven by users diversifying their device portfolios. Installed base PC displacement by tablets peaked in 2013 and the first half of 2014. Now that tablets have mostly penetrated some key markets, consumer spending is slowly shifting back to PCs,” said Mikako Kitagawa, Principal Analyst of Gartner.
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