According to a recent report by IDC, digital transformation spending is expected to surpass $6 trillion dollars within the next four years, and it’s believed that enterprises globally will spend more than $1 trillion on digital transformation before the end of 2019 alone.
The report also notes that industries like process and discrete manufacturing and transportation will be some of the biggest spenders. These investments are fueling the growth of machine learning (ML) and the internet of things (IoT) to improve customer experiences and operational efficiency and accuracy. As companies have begun adopting digital transformations, there are a few things I’m looking forward to seeing more of in 2020.
1. Big Data Grows To Ginormous Data
According to a Network World article, “IDC predicts that the collective sum of the world’s data will grow from 33 zettabytes this year [2018] to 175ZB by 2025, for a compounded annual growth rate of 61%.” (One zettabyte is equal to one trillion gigabytes.) This means that we’ll see not only a massive increase in the amount of IoT-generated and real-time data, but an abundance of new data created and managed by enterprises.
By 2025, nearly 60% of the 175 zettabytes of data will be created and managed by enterprises versus consumers. Driving this growth is IoT edge devices sending waves of information to the cloud.
2. IoT And ML Are No Longer Future Technologies
The workforce is just not equipped to analyze such large amounts of data, so enterprises will be (and already are) looking for new ways to do so using ML and augmentation. As a consequence of ginormous data, IoT should be viewed as the backbone of today’s data-driven economy. To make sense of this data, the evolution of IoT products and services will become less focused on core technology and more focused on technologies that make better use of the data gathered.
3. Data As A Service
With all of the data developed day to day — in 2020, every person will create 1.7MB of data per second — it only makes sense to use this data to make more knowledgeable business decisions.
For example, KAR Global has released a platform that gives automotive dealers a wide-angle view of cars currently in demand. The platform also shows the best ROIs and how dealers can move less-desirable vehicles, in addition to inventory segmentation analyses and recommendations for remarketing. All of this uses data available from KAR and its customers in a proprietary way that benefits the auto sales industry as a whole. We should expect other industries to begin using the DaaS model in the same way for decision-making.
4. The Decline Of Packaged Apps
Instead of downloading apps, soon progressive web apps (PWAs) will be much more commonplace. PWAs are accessed the same way as those downloaded from app stores, but they load faster, they are more secure and they are far smaller in size. Companies such as Lumavate help developers in industries such as motorsports, medical manufacturing, construction, and financial services move from native applications to cost-effective PWAs that ultimately deliver a better user experience and free up space on devices.
5. Prescriptive Analytics…
