Technology Trendlines 2015: Embrace and Excel in the Era of Digital Economy

Aiming to help local CIOs and their businesses to excel in the era of digital era, local technology leaders offer suggestions when making investment decisions in the following top 10 enterprise IT areas in 2015. This article reviews the 10 major enterprise technology trends in Hong Kong during 2014 and it’s upcoming direction in 2015.

Applications and Cloud Computing

Cloud use blossomed in 2014 and sprang towards strategic initiatives, will it continue in 2015?

Bottom Line:

• Use of public cloud for development and testing became mainstream
• Hybrid cloud adoption grew to support strategic and complex initiatives
• Enterprises look for multiparty systems integration to counteract shadow IT
• Data security and user experience will become two big hurdles of cloud adoption

Enterprise use of public cloud for development and testing has moved mainstream
– Brian Groen, IBM

Hong Kong enterprises have started to embrace the concepts of “openness” and “freedom of choice” of cloud computing
– Peter Man, Red Hat

Companies need new, intelligent solutions to help them adapt and defend themselves inside the network, not just at its edge
– Flora Yu, Microsoft

Data Networks and Infrastructure

Are Hong Kong enterprises ready to exploit SDN and NFV for network agility and flexibility?

Bottom Line:

• The increasing Hong Kong-China network traffic is driving enterprises to seek network flexibility
• Local enterprises will move from exploring to investing in SDN and NFV in 2015
• Speed is not limited to network traffic, but extended to IT operations

2015 customers should be making decisions on SDN and NFV
– Brian Hutson, Juniper

Business agility is no longer an option but a necessity for organizations
– Garrick Ng, Cisco

Managed Services

How to leverage the blurring lines between cloud and IT services offerings?

Bottom Line:

• Hong Kong enterprises are demanding integrated cloud and managed services offering
• Cloud-based unified communications lead adoption
• Local vendors bring enhanced governance offerings, on-board services and
• multiple SLAs to differentiate from global cloud providers

Servers and Data Centers

What does the booming cloud market mean for enterprises that are spending on data center services and servers?

Bottom Line:

• Data center services get holistic
• Scalable and flexible data centers in demand
• Technology and personnel skills gap
• Fast and huge data volumes is the future

Security in relation to cloud computing continues to be at the top of enterprise customers’ agendas
– Alex Tam, Equinix

As end users continue to demand services instantaneously, organizations will have to make sure they are able to deliver
– Jihann Pedersen, Digital Reality

Security Technologies

How does predictive preventive and detective security help to fight against cyber threats in 2015?

Bottom Line:

• More intelligence is required in security products and policies
• IT leaders need to bridge the widening gap of security budgets and needs
• Cloud and mobility bring new perspectives in security

Corporations move at the speed of red tape, while hackers move at the speed of the Internet
– Michael Gazeley, Network Box

IT executives and CSOs are beginning to consider security not as a separate entity in the organization, but an integral team to help develop, automate and protect company resources
– Andy Leung, Juniper

Document and Content Management

What are the strategies to manage overflowing unstructured data?

Bottom Line:

• Cloud-based ECM brings flexibility
• Widespread use of social media has huge impact on ECM environment
• Be strategic about data management

Information governance and compliance are becoming more critical and will be one of the major challenges
– Sabharinath Balasubramanian, IDC

Big Data and Analytics

What it takes to harvest big data for fast, factual decisions?

Bottom Line:

• Data analysis that is fast, smart and mobile
• Democratization of the big data model
• Big data analytics reaches further to socially significant issues

True value of big data lies not just in having it, but in harvesting it for fast, fact-based decisions
– Wilfred Wah, SAS Institute

The increasing dominance of large social platforms—such as Facebook—is a trend we expect to remain important across the region
– Barry Adams, Experian

Companies are struggling to use this [unstructured machine] data in a meaningful and effective way
– Andy Ho, Splunk

Virtualization and Platform Management

Mobile office and BYOD call for total infrastructure virtualization, are you ready for that?

Bottom Line:

• IT to balance between services brokerage and resources control
• Biggest growth in desktop virtualization, hybrid cloud management, mobile cloud solutions
• Economy and political instability drives BCP growth
• IT spends were flat, but spending from LOB managers are emerging

Enterprise Mobility

Consumerization of mobile IT enters the second phase in 2014, how to prepare for the upcoming cloud Wi-Fi momentum?

Bottom Line:

• Security and Wi-Fi management were major mobility concerns in 2014
• Mobility is driving businesses to rethink analytics and ROI
• 2015 marks the beginning of next-generation mobile engagement

Scale doesn’t matter much. Client experience does.
– Alex Chan, IBM

Storage Technologies

Have you embraced storage optimization and prepared for the third platform transition?

Bottom Line:

• Traditional storage disk market is slowing down
• Big data initiatives are driving storage optimization investment
• For 2015, enterprises rely on solid IT foundation to adopt the third platform technologies

Flash technologies have experienced exponential growth compared with last year, banks and financial institutions being the key customers
– Gabriel Leung, EMC

One key emerging trend in 2014 was leveraging big data for greater business value
– Jimmie Chang, Gartner

Source: Technology Trendlines 2015