It’s December – it’s that time of the year when half the world recedes into a holiday mood only to wake up with a new year in tow and tons of things to do, trends to watch for, predictions to make, and resolutions to break. At Network Pro, we always love December because it’s the time for us to reflect on the year that passed and look forward to the year that’s coming in boatloads of promises.
So, what are those promises for 2013? We see some things clearly; we are unsure about a few other trends. We’ll share them anyway but we’ll keep it limited to 3 trends:
IT Spending Will Smash Records
You’d think that IT spending should be going down what with the recession and new technologies like cloud computing that should make IT management more affordable. The fact is that cloud computing does make IT much more manageable and cost effective. The IT spending is going up by 2013 because of the new influx of companies that will take to the cloud.
IDC reports that worldwide IT spending is set to exceed $2.1 trillion by 2013 (a 5.7% increase from the current year). IT spending in emerging markets is project to grow at the rate of 8.8% to total at $730 billion with twice the rate of growth in emerging economies compared to that of developed countries.
Mobile, Mobile, and More Mobile
There’s a reason why we dwell so much on mobile on our blog – it’s a phenomenon, which changes everything. Did you know that PC use is going to shrink by 15 million users in the next four years? At the same time, number of mobile users will increase by 91 million.
IDC also expects that mobility will drive this spending as smartphones and tablets sales will grow by 20% and will single-handedly push 57% of all IT growth. Wondering about the impact mobile has on IT growth? Without the smartphone and tablets, the overall IT growth is just at 2.9%.
Please, Just BYOX…
We covered BYOD extensively this year. We pointed out that there’s a new trend emerging called BYOS (Bring Your Own Services), and the world is set to await more such BYOs. Whether or not more trends occur here, BYOD security is in for a lot of work to do on security policies. The rising complication of big data, data access and sharing, will force a change on IT administration – it will call for a new way to do things. Will social media networks and cloud services act as a new foundation for enterprise authentication? Only time will tell.
Meanwhile, what do you predict is going to happen in 2013? What’s coming up? Please share your thoughts and views in the comments below.