Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

If I was to choose just one technology that will dominate 2017 it would be Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (or Deep Learning if you must use that term).

Some are calling 2016 the year of AI, and it was indeed top-of-mind for many.

But don’t expect that the interest in AI/ML to not die down anytime soon. Instead expect that even more interest to develop around the uses of AI in 2017.

More companies are investing in AI/ML with a large amount of acquisitions of start-ups in 2016. And there are even more start-ups around AI/ML.

Businesses in the Caribbean should consider the ways that they can use AI/ML in their operations. The technology is available for anyone’s reach now and we should take advantage of it.

Internet of Things and Edge Computing

The IoT also featured greatly in the news, but unfortunately not all was good.

More needs to be done to secure these devices. We, unfortunately, cannot depend on the vendors to keep it secure, so we have to do our best to ensure that we address the risks of deploying such devices.

Even with the risks, the IoT still offers great advantages for businesses and individuals alike, and I fully expect that far more devices, services and tools will become available to make the IoT for accessible to everyone.

I also expect that even more standards will come out for IoT making a real standard for adoption even further out of reach.

Edge computing would likely become a thing too. Edge computing is to have some of the processing happen at the edge of the network before transmitting to the Internet. This is intended to save bandwidth and speed up some of the processing of sensor data. I believe that Cisco popularised the idea with their “fog computing”, but they have no ownership of it.

I see more interest in the Caribbean about the IoT and hopefully, we would continue to build on that.

Blockchain

Blockchain is a distributed ledger that provides a mechanism for establishing trust between untrusted parties without requiring a trusted, centralised 3rd party. Blockchain is the technology underlying Bitcoin.

There is a huge amount of hype around Blockchain, especially around Bitcoin. There are literally hundreds of startups experimenting with Blockchain, and even major banks are getting into it.

I’m still cautious about this one as I’m unclear about the implications and risks for financial applications. However, the use case for smart contracts and distribution of digital goods is a good one.

There is at least one startup in the Caribbean that’s doing work with Blockchain – Bitt – so there is hope that more people will take up the interest and do something with it.

Virtual and Augmented Reality

Pokemon Go showed the viability of AR and the popularity of Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR has improved the availability of VR apps on Android. With Microsoft’s HoloLens, there might be some commercial applications, however, the US$3,000 starting point might be too hard for some to swallow.

In the Caribbean, a few entrepreneurs have developed apps around VR and AR for marketing and information services. There are probably others that I don’t know of.

Either way, expect 2017 to have some great applications to come out beyond games.

Software Defined Networking and Network Functions Virtualisation

I keep adding this to my list and each year the interest is strong, but growth, not so much. 2016 was no different, and at this point, I’m unsure if there’s really a trend or just wishful thinking on my part.

With more and more interest into SDN and NFV, especially by telecommunications providers, I fully expect that greater advancements this year. Whether those advancements would happen in the Caribbean is another question.

More?

Do you think there are any trends that I missed in my list? Or do you think I’m wrong about anything here?
Let me know in the comments section below.

I take this opportunity to wish you a happy and prosperous 2017.

Original article: Technology Trends for 2017

©2025 Interxect Services Limited. All Rights Reserved.

Based on the progress that was made in 2015, There are a few great things that businesses could look forward to in the new year.

Here are what I consider the major technology trends to look at in 2016.

The Trends

The Internet of Things

I predicted that 2015 was going to be a growth year for the IoT, and, sure enough, it has been.

Cisco suggests that in ten years there are going to be over 50 Billion devices connected to the Internet and the entire market will be worth US$14 Trillion. That’s no small figure.

And more so the security and privacy concerns, with cars being hacked, and Barbie dolls possibly being able to leak private information.

I see no end to the hype, and I predict that this trend will continue. More and more “internet connected” devices will proliferate the market including wearables, along with more security concerns.

We may actually see some standards happening this year.

Virtual and Augmented Reality

Virtual reality is about creating and seeing virtual worlds. Augmented reality is about adding more information to the world that we live in.

And both is expected to take a pretty big leap this year.

While VR and AR have been around for decades (anyone remembers the movie, the Lawnmower Man?), with expected commercial releases this year of Facebook’s Oculus Rift and Microsoft’s HoloLens, there is a greater chance of these technologies going mainstream.

While Google Glass didn’t fare too well, I do think that the releases by Facebook and Microsoft will help move the technology along. Besides, Google took a step back and brought you Google Cardboard.

Artificial Intelligence

AI was a huge deal this year.

First Google open-sourced TensorFlow, the software engine that it uses for its deep learning services. Then later, a group that includes Elon Musk and Sam Altman unveiled a US$1 billion non-profit called OpenAI that will share all of its AI research to the world.

Of course, Google and OpenAI aren’t the only players in the game, and other players such as IBM’s Watson has been around for quite some time. But these developments open AI to everyone, and will help push development along.

AI has been a touchy subject. Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Steve Wozniak have all sounded alarms over the rise of AI, including AI in warfare. This is one of the reasons that Musk put money behind OpenAI to begin with.

AI along with advances in robotics will make automation easier by creating intelligent robots. It means that routine manual labour, including dangerous tasks, may soon be able to be performed by robots. This automation is causing concerns among some people. Oxford University researchers have estimated that 47 percent of U.S. jobs could be automated within the next two decades.

I, on the other hand, see huge potential for both business and society as a whole.

Trends that didn’t happen in 2015

Before we go, let’s take a look at my 2015 predictions that didn’t quite pan out, but I still think might do well this year.

Wider adoption of enterprise wireless networks

The adoption rate has been slow for the newer IEEE 802.11ac standard, albeit growing. The slow adoption has been blamed for either the lack of endpoints that support the standard, as well as the cost of the access points. However, growth is expected to pick up this year as more end-points are released that support the AC standard, and the access points become cheaper.

Software Defined Networking

SDN in the data centre didn’t happen as I expected. While development of an SDN standard still continues, the adoption of SDN has been slow.

Slow growth in the data centre can be attributed to lack of readiness in both the infrastructure and the people, the cost of implementation, the cost of related hardware and software, and a lack of perceived value of such systems.

One area where it has grown though is in the Software Defined WAN. Quite a few providers have solutions to help manage WAN traffic such as Cisco’s Intelligent WAN. Carriers have also invested heavily into SDN and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV).

At this point, I still expect growth of SDN in the data centre, but it will be slow.

Greater IT security within organisations

Against my hopes, the rash of breaches in 2014 didn’t quite stem the breaches in 2015. In fact, there seemed to have many more high profile breaches. The Ashley Madison hack was probably the most famous, and apparently didn’t seem to stem the growth of users allegedly looking for extra-marital affairs.

But the most serious hack, in my opinion, is the VTech data breach, where 5 million customer accounts and kids’ user profiles were breached. Luckily, it appears as there was no ill-intent to the breach, however, it should make us wonder in this connected world, how great is the threat to our children.

I could only hope that 2016 would bring some sense to people to properly secure their data.

More?

Do you think there are any trends that I missed in my list? Or do you think I’m wrong about anything here?

Let me know in the comments section below.

I take this opportunity to wish you a happy and prosperous 2016. Be safe out there.

Original article: 3 technologies businesses should look out for in the new year'">Technology Trends for 2016 3 technologies businesses should look out for in the new year

©2025 Interxect Services Limited. All Rights Reserved.

The Caribbean is still trying to keep up with global development trends, but that’s not to say that we are not making any successes.

Despite the downturn in many of our economies, and the high-debt in some cases, we’ve had new entrepreneurs launch businesses, and organisations make large investments in new infrastructure.

So interest and investments are there.

These are what I see as trends that you should look at for the year ahead. There’s a lot of hype behind these trends, so take them with a pinch of salt.

1. The continued exponential growth of the Internet of Things…

The Internet of Things (IoT) continues it’s hype and growth trend, and for good reason. The IoT offers some of the greatest opportunities at this time and has the power to impact chain management, energy management and personal healthcare.

The continually decreasing costs of electronic sensors and computing power, coupled with a rapidly expanding maker movement has added fuel to the growth.

My prediction is that the IoT will continue to grow, along with privacy and security concerns.

2. … followed by the continued growth of big data, data analytics and visualisation…

With the sheer amount of data being produced by normal business operations, the addition of the data from IoT will now pose a challenge on how that data can be used. This is where data analytics come into play, with a new position within the company called the data scientist, whose role will be to help make sense of all this data, which includes visualisation.

So far, businesses have not had much success getting returns from big data, nor are they implementing large scale deployments, but it has not stopped them from making investments in big data technologies.

My prediction is that businesses will continue to invest in big data, but still struggle to get returns from it. Data scientists are going to make a killing though.

3. … and adoption of reliable enterprise wireless networks

Too many organisations use consumer grade wireless access points (WAP) in their network to provide wireless access to users. These devices may have a lot of security weaknesses, and further, there may be no management capabilities built in. You can’t tell how the wireless network is performing, and worst, can’t tell if someone is trying to break in. The only indication that you have that something is wrong, is when users complain.

Many of the sensors used for the IoT requires wireless access, and organisations hoping to take advantage of those technologies now have to re-look at their wireless infrastructure and replace it with enterprise grade devices with centralised control and management, and far greater security features.

This is not to say that only if you have an IoT project at hand you should consider enterprise wireless networks. Unless you’re a home user, you should always consider enterprise wireless network infrastructure.

My prediction is that with the proliferation of mobile devices, and the IoT, you will find enterprises implementing enterprise wireless infrastructure.

4. Software defined everything

Software Defined Everything is really the virtualisation of hardware via software and includes Software Defined Networking (SDN), Software Defined Storage (SDS) and Software Defined Data Centre (SDDC). SDN is the main leader in this trend, with many competing technologies available. Commercialisation has already started with offerings available from leading vendors such as VMWare and Cisco.

My prediction is that businesses heavy in VMWare technologies may move to adopt SDS and SDDC, however, the current trend of few businesses adopting SDN will continue until a major standard emerges.

5. Automating the enterprise

This is not new, but new technologies are making it easier to automate processes and keep track of changes. Products such as Puppet and Chef, and programming capabilities built into virtualisation as VMWare has.

My prediction is that as more services are being brought online, IT departments will need to look for automation technologies to help manage the new services and infrastructure. IT staff will have to learn to write code and scripts, with some becoming increasingly fearful of automating themselves out of a job.

6. Greater adoption of cloud services and mobility

In the Caribbean, companies are slowly moving services into the cloud, but concerns about costs and reliability of Internet services pose challenges.

Microsoft has been generally successful with getting users of its office suite to move into the cloud, but I’m not exactly sure if the businesses are actually using the cloud services, or just taking advantage of the lower licensing costs. I’ve only come across one company utilising Microsoft’s Azure to run internal services.

That’s not to say that adoption is not coming. On the contrary, I’m seeing much more renewed interest in the cloud and expect more organisations to make the switch this year, especially to Microsoft Office 365.

With the growing adoption of cloud services, I predict that more mobile access will be requested by end users and management to allow them to work on the road. Meanwhile, data loss due to theft of mobile devices will increase.

7. Greater IT security within organisations

This is really a hope rather than a trend. With the rash of high profile hacking that took place last year (Sony, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Home Depot), many companies should take a deep look at their security processes and infrastructure.

But I don’t expect to see that in the Caribbean, because you don’t hear about any attempts or breaches in the Caribbean. While I may hear something from someone who knows someone, there is no requirement to report breaches, and the cybersecurity monitoring and response mechanisms are almost non-existent at this time.

My prediction is that organisations within the Caribbean will continue to take security for granted with one high profile attack happening this year to change things around.

More?

Do you think there are any trends that I missed in my list? Let me know in the comments section below.

I take this opportunity to wish you a happy and prosperous 2015. Be safe out there.

Original article: 7 IT Trends to expect for 2015

©2025 Interxect Services Limited. All Rights Reserved.