Deloitte releases 5th annual tech trends report

NEW YORK, USA: Disruptive technologies provide an opportunity in 2014 to reshape organizations, change business models and transform industries according to Deloitte's 5th Annual Tech Trends Report, released today.

According to Bill Briggs, chief technology officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP, and author of the annual research:"Disruptive technologies - from wearable devices to cognitive analytics to crowdsourcing - present unprecedented opportunities to reimagine how work gets done, how businesses grow, and how markets and industries evolve. But they also represent threats - and real challenges on how to balance experimentation for tomorrow with the realities of today. Our report examines how these forces are changing business as usual and opening the door for information technology executives to inspire, provoke and harvest emerging technologies to transform how businesses operate, compete and innovate.

Deloitte's 5th Annual Tech Trends Report, titled Inspiring Disruption, examines the changing landscape of technology and how multiple disruptive technology forces are converging on and impacting business today. The study focuses on the next 18-24 months and is divided into two categories - enablers and disruptors.

Disruptors represent opportunities for technology executives to create sustainable positive changes in IT capabilities, business operations and business models. The current report features: CIO as Venture Capitalist, Cognitive Analytics, Industrialized Crowdsourcing, Digital Engagement, and Wearables.

Enablers are technologies in which many organizations have already invested, but new developments and opportunities have inspired new business applications, thereby warranting a fresh look. The current report features: Technical Debt Reversal, Social Activation, Cloud Orchestration, In-memory Revolution and Real-time DevOps.

With detailed case studies and a section titled "Lessons from the front lines," the report provides an in-depth look at the latest technology developments that have the potential to impact the complex nature of today's business challenges. The report highlights examples of organizations putting the trends to work. It also features a "My Take" for each chapter, including an external perspective from a client executive, academic, or industry luminary. For additional information and to access the full report, please visit here.

This year, in collaboration with Singularity University, the Technology Trends research also added a section on Exponential Technologies. The fields highlighted have far-reaching, transformative impact and represent the elemental advances that have formed technology trends both this year and in the past. Five exponentials with wide-ranging impact across geographies and industries were featured: artificial intelligence, robotics, cyber security, additive manufacturing and advanced computing. The report provides a high-level introduction to each exponential-a snapshot of what it is, where it comes from and where it's going.

Example of trends that Inspire Disruption includes:

CIO as venture capitalist - CIOs who want to help drive business growth and innovation will likely need to develop a new mindset and new capabilities. Like venture capitalists, CIOs should actively manage their IT portfolio in a way that drives enterprise value and evaluate portfolio performance in terms that business leaders understand-value, risk and time horizon to reward. CIOs who can combine this with agility and align the desired talent can reshape how they run the business of IT.

Wearables - Wearable computing has many forms, such as glasses, watches, smart badges and bracelets. The potential is tremendous: hands-free, heads-up technology to reshape how work gets done, how decisions are made, and how you engage with employees, customers, and partners. Wearables introduce technology to previously prohibitive scenarios where safety, logistics, or even etiquette constrained the usage of laptops and smartphones. While consumer wearables are in the spotlight today, we expect business to drive acceptance and transformative use cases.

Cloud orchestration - Cloud adoption across the enterprise is a growing reality, but much of the usage is in addition to on-premises systems-not in replacement. As cloud services continue to expand, organizations are increasingly connecting cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-core systems-in strings, clusters, storms and more-cobbling together discrete services for an end-to-end business process. Tactical adoption of cloud is giving way to the need for a coordinated, orchestrated strategy-and for a new class of cloud offerings built around business outcomes.

Social activation - Over the years, the focus of social business has shifted from measuring volume to monitoring sentiment and, now, toward changing perceptions. In today's recommendation economy, organizations should focus on measuring the perception of their brand and then on changing how people feel, share and evangelize. Organizations can activate their audiences to drive their message outward-handing them an idea and getting them to advocate it in their own words to their own network.

Adds Briggs, "Each of the 2014 trends is relevant today. Each has significant momentum and potential to make a business impact. And each warrants timely consideration-even if the strategy is to wait and see. C suite executives should keep in mind/keep top of mind: whatever you do, don't be caught unaware; or unprepared. Use these forces to inspire, to transform. And to disrupt."