Silver Linings and Their Clouds – A Forecast for Tech Industry Challenges
You can’t swing a cat-5 cable without someone telling you about what’s going to be the next big thing. It could be the Internet of Things, 5G, the coming cryptocurrency explosion (“no really, this time it’s going to happen”), or how machine learning is going to impact your industry. You’ve most likely got a decent grasp of one or more of these topics as they seem to keep popping up on your radar. When change is coming it’s easy to direct our focus only on what’s right in front of you but being able to navigate and even capitalize off the implications of these changes can be a key component of your future success.
With that in mind, we wanted to swim downstream a little and bring up a few things that you should keep in mind as technological change marches tirelessly forward.
Mobile Device Growth
The ubiquity of mobile devices will be a primary feature of the tech landscape for the new future. According to Dataconomy, the number of phones, tablets, and devices connected to the internet will reach around 30 million by 2020, and that’s before we all get smart blenders and self-driving cars. The quality of the devices and the improvement of compression and networking will cement mobile devices as our internet-connected terminals of choice. If you’re the forward-thinking type, what should you be thinking-forward about?
The necessity for expanding our idea of cybersecurity
The current landscape of internet security is notoriously fluid, and somehow that unreliability has been fairly consistent for about a decade. As more smart devices come online and begin to take their place in the Internet of Things, they’ll offer an entirely new category of devices to be hacked or secured, depending the whiteness or blackness of your hat. While these devices will offer enormous benefits to consumers, the quality of their safeguards may represent a weak point that will force us to expand the way we view cybersecurity as a whole.
Increased bandwidth needs
Being prepared for future bandwidth needs is a fact of life that’s baked into the server industry, so we know that the next generation of hardware is going to take these changes in stride. As more data starts flowing through your racks, will you be ready as well? You might find yourself needing new connectors, improved cabling, and it wouldn’t hurt to make sure that you’ve got an HVAC or ventilation plan that’s ready to deal with the increased temperatures that comes with all that extra activity.
Financial forecasting
As we move into a period where networked computing and cloud-based applications take up larger and larger shares of our IT expense, it presents unique opportunities and challenges as firms try to predict their cash flow and expense situations. Off-site data storage will take on a new life as physical, cables-in-the-walls IT systems give way to cloud-based networks where a whole company can exist with nothing more than a series of laptops and a robust Wi-Fi connection. Before your CFO gets too excited about the savings, remind them that the other side of that coin has a new set of requirements for maintenance, security, and licensing.
Physical device management
At its most basic, the anticipated growth of connected devices means that there’s going to be a whole lot of physical stuff. There will be more phones to drop, screens to crack, and batteries that need to be replaced. Motherboard has reported that Apple is lobbying legislators to kill legislation that would support the right-to-repair movement. This legislation is still moving its way through the state houses, but it promises to have a direct effect on the maintenance cost of our most-used devices.
The increase in mobile equipment also creates new opportunities for producers of lithium-ion batteries, as well as the number of firms that can safely dispose of or recycle these power cells.
Adapting is a way of life, but you can count on CDR Global to attack every change as an opportunity. If you’d like to see what we’re doing to get ready for what’s next, get in touch and let’s talk! We always love to talk shop, and we’d love to discuss what CDR could do to help you succeed in these dynamic times.