As the new year quickly approaches, it’s a good time to look at the IT trends that 2015 will likely bring. A recent report by market research firm Ovum found that telecom budgets are likely to increase in the new year and will bring large investments in network infrastructure and asset optimization and improved service quality. Other big IT trends for 2015 include the Internet of Things, cloud computing and enterprise mobility, according to the study.
Mobility
With the transition to bring-your-own-device policies becoming more popular, mobility in the enterprise has mostly been fuelled by the consumer market. This is causing problems, leading to what Ovum predicted will become “mobility mismatch” – a situation in which the demands brought by employees aren’t able to be met by internal IT departments. To keep this from happening, or fix the issue if it already has, organizations will have to look beyond BYOD and employ a more managed approach to enterprise devices.
“The telecoms industry is witnessing a long-term shift in spend towards client-oriented systems and processes to improve client satisfaction,” said Peter Dykes, one of the authors of the study. “Investment will be geared towards telecoms infrastructure (cloud platforms and BSS/OSS systems to support LTE implementations) and online channels to support the move towards digital lifestyles.”
Internet of Things
The IoT is one of the biggest buzzwords in the industry right now. Everyone is talking about it, but not many have implemented it – yet. Ovum researchers predict that 2015 will be the year of the IoT, as it become a more permanent fixture in the enterprise with more devices connecting to one another in an ever-expanding network. The report suggested that enterprises will begin to leverage the existing systems that have to support IoT use cases.
Cloud
As mobility and IoT programs are used more frequently, cloud infrastructures will be even more important to the enterprise as a secure place to host the influx of data becomes necessary.
“Cloud-based IoT platforms will continue to gain traction and play a key role in the first wave of IoT adoption by enterprises,” the report stated.
Saurabh Sharma, one of the authors of the study, noted that adopting agile approaches to integration will become a bigger priority for organizations as the cloud, IoT and mobility play a larger role. Sharma predicted that large portions of next year’s IT budgets will be spent on modernizing existing infrastructure to support the new middleware necessary for mobile and IoT initiatives.