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2016 TechTrends PDF
2016 TechTrends PDF
Smart Machines
Advanced Robotics
Quantum
Computing
Maturity
Brain-Computer Interface
Mainstream
Autonomous Memristors 5G Early adoption
Vehicles
Cognitive Computing Biocomputer Adolescent
Swarm Computing Emerging
Internet of Everything
Self-Adaptive Security
3D Printing Exascale
Privacy-Enhancing
Technologies
Ubiquitous PIM
SDx
Blockchain
Insight Immersive Fabric-Based Computing
Platforms Experience
Wearable Computing Virtual Assistants
Deep Natural User
Interfaces Context Broker
Learning Semantic
Technologies
Digital Workplace
Edge Computing Distributed
Web-scale Trusted Devices Social Networks
Computing
Wireless Power
LPWAN
WebRTC
In-Memory Computing Location-Based Plastic Transistors
Cloud Service Services NG
Containers
Integration
Advanced Data Visualization IPv6
Biometrics Digital Signage
NFC Open Source Hardware
The radar diagram provides a pictorial view of our findings, allowing you to quickly understand how disruptive emerging technology is
likely to be and the actions you might consider taking. Polar co-ordinates depict the likely time to impact your business along with the
potential size of the impact, while colors represent the current maturity of each topic.
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Each trend has been analyzed from three perspectives: potential size of impact on your business;
likely time to impact your business and maturity.
around one to two milliseconds, enabling more natural ways to understand patterns will be democratized through mainstream
innovations such as the connected car and relationships in complex data sets. solutions.
• Expected to improve wireless capacity Many solutions also enable interaction with • Data sets are no longer static and, as
1,000-fold and, as such, deliver the these data sets (manipulating the data and such, being able to visualize and explore
capacity needed for mobile video changing viewpoints, for example), allowing real-time (or quickly evolving) data sets is
streaming, video conferencing and more us to explore them in more depth, reveal useful and sometimes necessary.
• Projected to save up to 90 percent on hidden relationships, find relevance among • The paradigm of the data warehouse
energy, mainly from the radio access a large number of variables and more. is progressively becoming obsolete: as
network the volume of available data increases,
• Forecast to connect more than seven We also need a means to explore the rather than digging into three years, three
trillion wireless devices serving over massive volumes of near instantaneous months or even three days of historical
seven billion people in the IoT data provided by our increasingly data, we will need to explore massive
• Accelerates new service time-to-market, connected world. With a growing number amounts of nearly instantaneous data.
potentially reducing the average creation of data sets no longer static, advanced
time cycle from 90 hours to 90 minutes dataviz solutions enable the visualization Issues
and exploration of rapidly-evolving real-time • High interactivity visualization can be
Evolution data sets. quite complex, demanding very specific
• Current research is focused on the 5G knowledge.
network’s architecture, functionality and In some cases, visualization can go • Even as tooling improves, data
capabilities. beyond the 2D screen, providing a 3D visualization is still relatively low-level and
• First 5G deployments are expected representation within augmented and/or often requires some degree of coding.
around 2020. reality environments or even immersive • Badly used or understood, visualization
• In the meantime, legacy 4th generation 'caves'. can provide incorrect outcomes and
LTE technologies are continuing to evolve, misdirection.
offering a fully IP-based, integrated system Applications
providing high speeds indoors and • Scientific computing
Advanced Robotics
outdoors, with premium quality and high • Engineering
Concept
security. • Finance
Definition
• LTE-A (LTE Advanced), for example, offers • Health
The field of robotics is gathering a lot
increased speeds, performance and • Pharmaceuticals
of momentum, thanks to advances in
capacity along with higher densities than • Big Data projects
artificial intelligence (AI) and computer
its predecessor. • Social network diagrams
vision (artificial vision computer systems
• Geographical diagrams
implemented in software and/or hardware
Issues
that are able to perceive, process and
• Various regions around the world Trajectory
understand visual data such as images and
are currently competing to lead 5G Impact
videos).
standardization activities. • Improves decision-making, particularly in
• 5G must accommodate a wide range enterprises
Today's advanced ‘intelligent’ robots are
of use cases from diverse verticals, • Extends the work done by the Data
autonomous and able to make informed
each with advanced requirements Scientist
decisions around their own actions. They're
around latency, resilience, coverage and
also increasingly connected, able to interact
bandwidth. Evolution
with their environment and other smart
• These use cases need to be considered • Initially, visualizations were limited to
machines as part of the Internet of Things.
in the early phases of the standardization specific types of business charts provided
Not necessarily humanoid, today's robots
process and, as such, non-Telco by productivity and Business Intelligence
are mostly machines or even vehicles, such
companies (automotive, IT services, (BI) solutions.
as autonomous cars.
consumer goods, health and others) need • Big Data increased the need for intuitive,
to be included too. visual ways of traversing content. As such,
Applications
• 5G is a combination of diverse many of today's BI products now include
• Industrial processes — such as for
technologies, the maturity of which will be advanced data visualization capabilities.
repetitive tasks or precise guidance
varied when 5G is first deployed. • Open source data visualization tools are
• Services and knowledge workers
progressing quickly, but often basic and
— including at work, in public or in
less user-friendly.
hazardous environments
A • Data visualization could evolve
significantly with advances in human-
• Surveillance — particularly in harsh or
dangerous environments
computer interfaces. Immersive systems
• Fire prevention — including detection and
Advanced Data Visualization that include advanced 3D graphics, for
extinguishing
Concept instance, are already being employed
• Industrial inspection — such as network
Definition in the astronomy and health science
repairs
As the volume of data grows, we need fields as well as for analysis of complex
• Cleaning, sorting and delivery — of mail,
ways to easily grasp its implication. Visual economic data, such as on the stock
for example
representations (data visualization market.
• Robotic doctors — allowing doctors to
technologies or dataviz) are one of the • In time, advanced data visualization tools
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diagnose, and even operate on patients Issues • Agricultural transport — such as for crop
from a remote location • The media's portrayal of ‘robots’ often monitoring and cattle control
• Care — including of elderly people presents a distorted view of the truth. • Military transportation and surveillance —
• Autonomous vehicles — such as self- • "Moravec's Paradox" is still true: robots especially in dangerous environments
driving cars are very good at complex tasks, but fail
• Spacecraft — including planetary (sometimes quite miserably) in day-to-day Trajectory
navigation tasks, such as climbing stairs or opening Impact
• Agriculture — including sheep-shearing doors. • Reduces the number of accidents caused
• Social, entertainment, sports or even • Staff may resist as robots' role moves by human error
teaching from facilitating human labor to • Optimizes the number of vehicles on the
supplanting it. road
Trajectory • Connected robots, like other connected • Accelerates point-to-point logistics
Impact devices, are raising concerns around • Minimizes risk in military and other
• Improve safety by replacing workers privacy. dangerous scenarios
in dangerous activities, such as fires or • In personal scenarios, such as situations • Extends transport to those unable to
nuclear power plant accidents relating to health and finances, people drive, including children, seniors and
• Increase efficiency with AI systems prefer a human touch. individuals with disabilities
recognizing, learning and optimizing • Badly designed smart machines that • Makes expensive services, such as aerial
otherwise imperceptible mathematical don't function as expected could photography, affordable
patterns to maximize efficiency and potential bring about serious unwanted • Offers alternative to current means of
minimize cost consequences. transportation
• Maximize productivity as robots do • Industry experts and scientists are • Opens up new opportunities for novel
not tire and can, therefore, maintain concerned about the consequences of services based on collaborative uses
a consistent level of performance reaching the Technological Singularity — • Expected to have transformational
indefinitely the point where machines would be more impact in automotive, insurance, energy,
• Reduce cost as the only outlays required intelligent than humans. health, defense and city planning
are the initial purchase price and • Projected to have greatest impact
subsequent maintenance once vehicles are fully automated as
Autonomous Vehicles
• Enhance flexibility by rapidly adapting to mutualization will be much easier
Concept
constantly changing work environments
Definition
• Improve customizability by taking the Evolution
Autonomous vehicles is an emerging
form factor most suited to the job • The long-term goal is for fleets of
field arising from the interaction of
autonomous vehicles to complement or
transportation vehicles and robotic
Evolution even replace traditional, human-manned
capabilities that include environmental
• Robotics has a long history, mainly vehicles.
sensors, context awareness and
related to factory automation. • Though still very active in their R&D
autonomous decision-making using
• Advances in AI, improved connectivity phase, these companies are already
artificial intelligence. These self-driving
and distributed computing models (cloud) testing autonomous vehicles.
vehicles rely on these technologies to
brought new life into the field. • The main R&D focus is around helping
enable them to drive themselves while
• Robots are becoming smarter, moving drivers reach their designated destination
recognizing and responding to their
beyond doing repetitive tasks in factory effortlessly, though they also want to
surrounding environment.
scenarios to making informed decisions ensure drivers feel satisfied and safe.
around their actions. • Governments are beginning to play a
Major players in this space include both
• Many large planes are now essentially more active role, crafting regulations and
automotive and technology companies,
robots, flying themselves with pilots only providing funding for R&D.
who are both competing and/or
really needed to reassure passengers. • Wide adoption is predicted to be around
collaborating.
• Japan has historically pushed robotics to 2020, but that may be a bit optimistic.
compensate for both a lack of workforce
Applications
and increasing dependence as its Issues
• Personal transport — including the
population ages. • Cost: Sensors used in autonomous
autonomous (and semi-autonomous) cars
• New entrants, including Google with its vehicles, such as the LIDARs that
created by Google and Tesla
expertise in AI, are betting on advanced illuminate the surroundings with a laser
• Industrial surveillance and transport —
robotics. and analyze the reflected light, are still
especially in harsh, wide or difficult to
• New use cases, military drones for expensive.
access environments such as mines,
instance, are becoming increasingly • Complex environments: The variability
pipelines or traffic jams
important and their profile is rising. of conditions (weather, environment and
• Urgent, specialized transport — including
• We may one day see a war fought by other actors) is extraordinarily complex.
aerial drones for search and rescue
robot armies. • Testing: Tests are very promising, but
• Unmanned parcel delivery drones — such
• The future will likely see robots gain social have mostly been carried out under
as those created by Amazon and Google
intelligence, artificial emotions and more controlled conditions.
• High-volume logistics — including
natural interaction. • Safety: Safety requirements are very high
autonomous lorry platoons with just one
since human lives are at risk.
driver controlling several vehicles
• Regulations: Regulations for autonomous
B biochips.
• A few years ago, Stanford University
• Enhancing consumer device security —
particularly for smartphones
made the final component needed • Providing strong security in defense or
Biocomputers to build biocomputers available by homeland security scenarios — including
Concept developing the first biological transistor, detecting suspects at borders and crowd
Definition called ‘transcriptor’, using DNA and RNA. control
Biocomputers are computers that use • In February 2016, parallel computation
biological materials such as DNA and was achieved in protein filaments with Trajectory
proteins to perform computational biological agents. Impact
calculations that involve the storage, • Biocomputers may offer some interesting • Enables strong authentication since
retrieving and processing of data. They applications in the future. biometrics are unique and difficult to
leverage the capabilities of living beings, reproduce
relying on nanobiotechnology to engineer Issues • Provides advantages over passwords
biomolecular systems that provide the • Today, biocomputers are still a very for access control and security systems
computational functionality. prospective field of research. since biometrics don’t require any
• Despite being able to execute a high memorization
Applications number of multiple parallel computations,
• Performing living processes — based the DNA-computer biocomputing Evolution
on complex biomolecular interactions approach has a slow processing speed • Some biometric systems, including
involving biomolecules coded by our with a response time that may be hours fingerprint scanners, have a long history
DNA or days, rather than milliseconds. behind them.
• Providing advanced bio-templates for • Biocomputing results are much harder • Advances in both sensors and
bacterial and viral analysis — sparking to analyze than results from a digital recognition software meaning false
other biomechanical technologies since computer. non-match rates (that disturb legal users)
it's currently the only self-replicating • There is growing public concern around and false match rates (that are a security
computing technology we know of biocomputers' relationship with genomics risk) are improving — though there's a
• Executing calculations that require and, as such, the potential for biological trade-off between cost, response time,
extreme parallelism — which can be catastrophes. convenience and reliability.
achieved by billions of molecules • Local use of biometric systems in trusted
interacting simultaneously with each Biometrics personal devices is now more acceptable.
other Concept • Also driven by the reducing cost of
• Solving problems that cannot be Definition biometric systems combined with their
deterministically solved in polynomial Biometrics refers to the detection and integration with authentication and
time measurement of specific measurable authorization standards in software,
• DNA shows promise as a mechanism for human characteristics. These can be biometrics are gaining popularity in end
long-term storage of information used, with a certain degree of certainty, to consumer devices.
differentiate individuals. Accuracy can be • Advances in artificial vision are improving
Trajectory further improved by combining several biometrics based on pictures or video —
Impact different biometric mechanisms into including facial recognition.
• May offer an alternative to silicon-based ‘multimodal biometric systems’. • Behavioral or passive biometrics exploits
systems — potentially faster, smaller dynamic characteristics — including
and more energy efficient for some Well-known examples include fingerprints, keystrokes, mouse moves and even
specialized problems retinal blood vessels, iris recognition and complex body movements such as gait —
• Potentially offering massive parallelism, voice recognition, though there are many enabling continuous authentication.
massive storage and high levels of other human characteristics that can be • Future trust and compliance models
artificial intelligence alongside low waste used to identify an individual and may be will likely leverage a combination of
and low energy usage useful in certain situations. These include biometric-based security and new smart
• May also provide a whole new field of heart rate and walking pace. And while phones capabilities in the never-ending
innovation in healthcare and life sciences DNA provides the ultimate biometric, DNA quest to ease access control.
— such as detecting cancerous activity analysis currently takes too long to make it
within a cell and releasing an anti-cancer a viable option at this moment in time. Issues
drug upon diagnosis • Biometrics requires specialized
equipment for capturing the biometric
characteristics.
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• Recent advancements showed that collaboration between MES/MOM, ERP federation services — will ensure
EEG-based BCI can accomplish tasks on a and PLM systems seamless authentication and access
similar level to invasive BCI. • Industry — helping gas companies, control for information and services.
• It could eventually become one of the for instance, optimize extraction by They will use characteristics belonging
most advanced method for interacting enabling tight integration between the to the information requester — such as
with computers and devices. gas turbine manufacturer’s PLM cloud age, organization or citizenship — while
service, the company’s own private asset ensuring that proprietary or personal
Issues management cloud service and a sub- information is not spread unnecessarily.
• Invasive methods require complex surface analysis cloud service
medical procedures and may have • Enhancing information services — Issues
undesired side-effects. Ensuring a allowing organizations to augment their • Compatibility across services is
permanent connection with specific areas own services with public third-party still an open issue, compromising
of the brain is difficult as the connection services, such as weather or traffic further advance of inter-cloud service
may decay, for example. • Business continuity — reducing the cost provisioning. Cloud market leaders are
• Non-invasive EEG is still at the early of disaster recovery while enhancing yet to widely adopt any standardization
stages of research. flexibility and the agility efforts, but multi-cloud may be the market
• Brain activity is permanent and, as such, force that pushes that adoption, breaking
it's not easy to isolate significant signals. Trajectory down current vendor lock-in.
Non-invasive techniques will require Impact • Multi-cloud environments increase the
additional effort. • Helps companies balance functionality, complexity of service level agreements
• The brain is incredibly complex (more flexibility and investment protection since providers rely on diverse services
than 100 billion of neurons) and analyzing • Reduces cost by eliminating the need from a more complex cloud ecosystem.
patterns based on electric signals is for hardware to absorb peak demands, Existing contracts will need to be
really challenging and compounded with reducing overall management cost and analyzed and extended so chains of
individual differences. energy consumption contractual relationships can be
• Longer term, there may be ethical risks • Accelerates computing resource delivery automatically established across multiple
such as the potential for mind-reading while improving resource availability and and heterogeneous cloud providers.
and mind-control. optimizing resource utilization • Multi-cloud environments will need virtual
• Helps small and medium cloud networks to be set up across multiple
companies handle peak-loads, acquiring cloud providers. Yet poor network
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Applications • Digital signage is moving into the cloud server administrator. Their peer-to-peer
• Advertising — including offering and the Internet of Things (IoT). It will operating model and focus in privacy
promotions and encouraging return visits soon be able to interact with beacons, means they tend to be focused in specific
• Entertainment — at theme parks, sensors and wearables. scenarios.
museums, cinemas and more • Artificial intelligence and Deep Learning
• Displaying information — such as news, are being explored to allow digital signage Applications
weather, directions, traffic, pricing, to help and interact with users better. • Privacy-oriented communities of interest
menus, programs and even emergency • Transparent screens that include LCD • Ephemeral or temporal communities
information displays are emerging. When the screen • Inter-organizational communities
• Improving visibility — including offering is turned off, the glass looks like a window;
the shopper all variants of an article in the turn on, the image appears. Trajectory
virtual store • Glasses-free 3D and holographic images Impact
• Enhancing the retail experience — are emerging, but with limited traction so • Eliminate the risk of being locked into an
allowing the user to try new garments far. integrated solution
virtually (when combined with • Screens that are bendable and can, to a • Provide better control on the data
augmented reality) certain degree, be adapted to different exposed through social networks,
• Providing information — in kiosks and shapes are a subject of intense research. enhancing data security and privacy
vending-machines These flexible screens rely largely on • Make creating business revenue difficult
existing OLED (organic light emitting since personal data is owned by the end-
Trajectory diode) or AMOLED (active matrix light user
Impact emitting diode) technologies.
• Offers a more flexible alternative to signs Evolution
and posters Issues • Domination of integrated social networks
• Increases the effectiveness of signage • The domain is still young. What effective such as Facebook led to worries about the
• Improves the user experience through digital content looks like and what the control of personal data and the monetary
the interactivity it provides key success factors are is not yet fully interest of social networking companies.
• Makes an entertainment experience understood. • Startups, such as Diaspora, proposed
more exciting • Equipment is more expensive than distributed models, standards and
• Can be updated easily and instantly, and conventional displays; although cost has protocols to guarantee data ownership
managed remotely and centrally to be balanced with benefits. to users, evolving established standards
• Allows content to be dynamically adapted • Delivering a multi-channel experience in the digital identity, instant messaging,
to the context and the audience increases implementation and integration telecommunications and web worlds.
• Enables richer, immersive user risk and complexity. • However, these initiatives struggled to
experiences through advanced multi- • Rich content and rich immersive and grow significantly to compete with the
touch, 3D rendering engines and responsive user experiences add established giants.
responsive designs additional complexity and cost. • Diaspora, for instance, still exists as a not-
• The growing variety of devices and for-profit, open source project.
Evolution their diverse form-factors and operating
• Early digital signage used video systems is also increasing complexity. Issues
projection or LED walls to deliver digital • DSNs are still heavily influenced by their
content but was costly and there were Distributed Social Networks background and lacking in maturity and
issues with visual quality. Concept standards.
• Digital signage moved from simple Definition • Knowledge sharing and the sense of
information displays to interactive and Distributed social networks (DSNs) refer to discovery, the most important elements of
immersive devices. social networking platforms developed by social networking, have been exchanged
• Large flat, high-definition screens (plasma, social network initiatives and operated in a for privacy.
LCD) have boosted use of digital signage. federated and distributed mode. Many such • The censorial workload users encounter
• Kiosks and digital signage are converging projects are federated under the ‘federated doesn't facilitate inclusion.
and quickly becoming an integral part social web’ banner. • Where large communities do exist,
of the omni-channel digital experience, migration from existing networks is likely
particularly within retail. Critical social networks functions (such as to be slow.
• Convergence with mobile applications personal information sharing, messaging, • There is additional competition coming
and augmented reality will provide an relationship management and content from emergent communication
even more interactive and personalized sharing) are enabled by emerging open technologies, such as messaging
user experience as rich and interactive standards and protocols. platforms.
content becomes increasingly important. • Legislation around consumer privacy
• Analytic capabilities are being Although DSNs may have similar use might make existing social networks
incorporated. These measure the clicks, cases to centralized social networks, they adjust their attitude, eliminating the need
navigation and interactions that help have a stronger emphasis on privacy and for DSN.
retailers maximize impact and improve control of personal data. Many try to ensure • Finding a healthy DSN business model is
the user journey. (personal) data is owned by the end-user not easy since personal data cannot easily
rather than under control of the system/ be harvested and used to make money.
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I
• In the US, exascale research is supported • Enabling the fully software-defined data
by a National Strategic Computing center with its improved agility and
Initiative (NSCI). reduced time-to-execution
• In Japan, the RIKEN Advanced Institute • Addressing the sometimes near-real-time Immersive Experience
for Computational Science is planning an demands of Big Data and contextual Concept
exascale system for 2020. smart mobility Definition
• China has also strong ambitions in An immersive experience is one that is
exascale Trajectory totally absorbing, that allows users to
Impact disconnect from the real world and lose
Issues • Provides a fully-meshed physical network themselves in a simulated dimension.
• Exascale is dependent upon a new upon which the software-defined data Immersive experience technologies
generation of supercomputers for tackling center can define its services encompass a wide range of devices that
its four main challenges: • Provides the high levels of granularity assist in making the experience more
-- Power consumption needs to be needed to adjust resources to perfectly absorbing and, by doing so, make the
reduced. match requirements technologies more invisible to the user.
-- Compute will need to be able to cope • Aims to address problems that inhibit These include:
with massive data pools, rising from full-scale virtualization of the entire data • 3D displays — display devices that create
petabytes to exabytes. center the perception of depth
-- Application performance, with a tens • Reduces the number of physical changes • Haptic devices — which add the sensation
of millions-way parallelism, needs to required and decouples them from of touch
be accelerated. service provisioning • Holographic user interfaces — laser-based
-- Systems will experience various kinds • Allows deployments and configuration volumetric displays where users interact
of faults several times a day because changes to be executed in near real time with holographic images
of their massive number of critical • Means IT resources can be rapidly • Virtual reality (VR) — digital simulations of
hardware and software components. aligned to changing business demands real world environments
Self-healing system (resiliency) are • Optimizes performance and power
required. consumption Applications
• A new generation of massively parallel • Expected to increase overall resource • Entertainment — including movies, TV
software is also needed to extract more utilization to over 80 percent on average and gaming
parallelism, handle increasingly hybrid • Reduces cost through better resource • Health — used by surgeons and
configurations and support greater utilization and automation radiologist and to ease remote operations
heterogeneity.
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• the heart of future digital strategies, as Sensors and actuators vary in size and • Companies must decide what data to
organizations' digital nervous systems price, with some available on a microscopic store and how to store it, ensuring they
scale. As such, they can be embedded into have sufficient storage for both personal
Evolution many different objects and deployed in data (consumer-driven) and Big Data
• At an early stage of their development, many different environments — including (enterprise-driven).
insight platforms are considered a critical adverse environments in remote locations. • IoE will significantly increase demand
technology for the future. Sensors may include capabilities such on datacenter resources and may
• For prescriptive analytics in particular as GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi or internet access. even mean data processing, network
they will increasingly leverage the Some are even capable of detecting the connectivity and network bandwidth
learning capabilities of cognitive approximate location of other nodes. need to be re-architected.
computing. Examples include heart monitoring
• These platforms are expected to be implants, biochip transponders on farm IPv6
embedded within large-scale solutions, animals, electric clams in coastal waters, Concept
such as IoT and Industry 4.0, while also automobiles with built-in sensors or field Definition
available as customizable platforms. operation devices that assist fire-fighters in IP (Internet Protocol) is the main
• Both independent software vendors and search and rescue. communication protocol underlying
Open Source communities will provide networks such as the Internet. IPv6 (version
components, while integrated solutions Applications 6) was designed in the 1990s as the
will come from integrators and SaaS • Automating operations successor to IPv4.
providers. • Monitoring asset health, wear and location,
traffic or the environment IPv6 includes adjacent features, such as
Issues • Enhancing healthcare address assignment, network renumbering
• A broad set of capabilities are needed for • Providing surveillance and security, and auto configuration. It addresses some
building these platforms: including early warning systems of the shortcomings of IPv4 by providing
-- Advanced ability to collect, aggregate • Acquiring information about movements support for multicast, manages of mobile
and clean data from billions of sensors and/or terrain parameters data traffic more efficiently. Additionally,
in real time • Managing energy or water usage IPv6 embeds several configuration and
-- Extreme computing power to analyze discovery mechanisms that were added to
and create meaning from Exabytes Trajectory IPv4 after its standardization.
of information on the fly or for rapid Impact
simulation • Provides large amounts of data for analysis, Applications
-- Advanced algorithms for automated enabling businesses to make better- • Real-time networking — as required by
or human decision-making informed decisions. autonomous vehicles, remote tele-surgery,
-- Real-time orchestration of prescriptive • Ensures data availability by automatically industry automation, video-streaming and
insight to action, strong embedded rerouting data in the event of a node failure voice over IP, overcoming the artificial
security to optimize availability. bottleneck imposed by IPv4on many of
• Large enterprise platforms will often • Enables numerous value-adding services these use cases
need to be customized for corporate and across healthcare, retail, city management • Mobility — providing unlimited scaling at
government specific processes. and more. routing level, with 5G mandating IPv6 as
critical
Internet of Everything Evolution • Internet of Everything — providing nearly
Concept • The concept of the IoT first became unlimited addressing
Definition popular in the late 1990s as a follow-up of • A platform for innovation — since it
The Internet of Everything (IoE) is a ubiquitous computing. performs better, is simpler and easier to
ubiquitous communication network • The development and cost reduction deploy than IPv4
that effectively captures, manages and of wireless and mobile networks and
leverages data from billions of real-life low-power micro-controllers, which Trajectory
objects and physical activities. It extends progressively made it possible to connect Impact
the Internet of Things (IoT) by also anything to the internet, brought the IoT • Allows more connected objects to
including people, processes, locations and to life. connect to one another outside the span
more. • While it was initially most closely associated of a local area network
with machine-to-machine in manufacturing, • Is vital for the sustainability of the internet,
Networks of spatially distributed energy and utility industries, its now covers mobile internet and IoT-related business:
sensors and actuators (nodes), each a much broader, nearly universal scope. -- A 128-bit address space means the
with a transceiver and a controller for • Projections predict 100 trillion connected number of possible IP addresses
communicating within a networked devices in the world by 2030. As such, increases from a few billion with IPv4
environment, detect and monitor events broader adoption of IPv6 is required to to 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses
(sensors) or trigger actions (actuators). overcome the IPv4 addresses scarcity. (36 trailing zeros).
Each has a unique identifier and the ability -- Addressing is basically free, which
to transfer data over a network without Issues is particularly important for IoT
human-to-human or human-to-computer • Security, privacy and trust must be deployments where the number of
interaction. considered in developing IoT/IoE objects to address may be very large.
solutions.
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• Includes hierarchical addressing, IPsec wide array of sources, including global buildings. Integration with indoor
authentication and security, and improved positioning satellites, beacons, Wi-Fi positioning is required to ensure
ability to carry multimedia data. hotspots, remote sensors and visible light continuous positioning.
• Simplifies administration and eliminates communication (VLC) sources such as Li-Fi. • Accurate indoor positioning requires
the need for workarounds such as Visualization technologies allow companies specific equipment.
Network Address Translation (NAT). to extract insights from this spatial data. • Spatial analytics consume a vast amount
of computing resources.
Evolution The most basic use cases push content • When it comes to targeted marketing,
• IPv4 was deployed in 1981 and IPv6 in or activate or deactivate functionality insights such as past behaviors,
1999. based on geofences or address lists. More preferences, needs and situations are
• The IPv4 address space became advanced spacial (3D) analytics uses a needed to deliver relevant messages to
completely allocated in February 2011. user’s or an object’s exact geographical individual customers, however, the more
• Tunneling mechanisms and gateways position to deliver contextualized accurate the technology, the lower its
were standardized by the Internet information and services reach.
Engineering Task Force (IETF) to bypass • In addition, smart contextual messages
IPv4 limitations and deal with the IP Applications can be difficult to deliver at scale.
address shortage. • Identifying and understanding assets and • Proximity-based marketing and in-store
• Migration to IPv6 has started in many customers — anything from simple store location tracking are already raising
different areas, mainly on central locators to real-time displays of delivery privacy concerns.
infrastructures, though the uptake of pure driver locations or dense pipe networks
IPv6 is taking longer than expected. • Securing sensitive data — through LPWAN
• The fraction of IP traffic using IPv6 is still geofences Concept
significantly lower than IPv4: around 26 • Enabling local experiences — such as Definition
percent of US applications are IPv6 native triggering an offer when a customer Also referred to as ultra-narrowband,
and 10 percent of Facebook's global traffic enters a store Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN)
uses IPv6, for instance. • Studying sound propagation, lighting wireless communication technology has a
• Some of the networking community are (shades) or rain flow low power requirement and a long range,
advocating a global switch. but a low data rate.
• The number of applications is growing, Trajectory
increasing the need for the IPv6 protocol. Impact LPWAN was designed to enable objects
• Improves customer intimacy as that don't have a powerful source of energy
Issues customers come to expect contextual to be connected, primarily to the Internet
• The transition, which was announced products and services based on their of Things (IoT). After all, most objects
in 1995 and supposed to last until year current location connected to the IoT only need to transfer
2000, has been much slower than • Drives innovation beyond the industries small amounts of data, such as commands
expected. that have traditionally used GIS and statuses, and that operation only
• Although support for IPv6 in major • Increases brand preference by delivering requires a small amount of power.
operating systems facilitates this personalized customer experiences
transition, many legacy devices cannot be • Increases revenue by enabling more Applications
updated to support IPv6 and will not be effective marketing that influences • Metering — gas and water in particular
replaced overnight. purchasing decisions • Monitoring — including waste, parking,
• Technologies such as Carrier-Grade land, livestock, forests and pipelines
NAT and recent regulatory moves are Evolution • Tracking — items such as containers,
helping IPv4 survive, thus harming the • Big Data technologies have made the bicycles, pets, indoor assets
deployment of IPv6. storage and processing of large spatial • Fault signaling — such as with smart
data sets economically feasible and home appliances and alarms
scalable. • Control — street lighting and plant
• Cloud has made augmenting solutions machinery for instance
L with location-based context simpler.
• New tools are making spatial analytics Trajectory
more widely available. Impact
Location-Based Services NG • The popularization of smartphones, as • Allows millions of objects to be
Concept well as glasses and other wearables, will connected at low cost
Definition strengthen this market. • Are a simpler and more effective
Geographical information systems solution for IoT than traditional cellular
(GIS) capture, store, analyze and display Issues networks, which were designed for high
information referenced according to its • Location technologies in general, and performance data transfer
geographical location. The next generation beacons in particular, are immature.
takes the third dimension into account. This • Traditional location technologies only Evolution
3D (spatial) representation provides a much provide a sufficient level of accuracy • Early LPWAN adopters first appeared in
more realistic representation of the world. on the third dimension when they are 2014.
combined. • Country and global-sized networks are
Spatial data can be gathered from a • GPS is generally unusable within already being deployed.
• Waste monitoring and telemetry systems, • Could outperform traditional computers and finger
whose refresh period is between one at a fraction of the energy cost as • Haptics — digital feedback mimicking
and four measures per day, are already compact neuromemristive systems physical sensations
working with LPWAN solutions from LoRa • Adaptive interfaces/emotion tracking
or Sigfox. Evolution — changing layouts and elements in
• Remote surveillance operators have • First coined in 1971 as a name for a response to the changing context or
started using LPWAN to monitor alarm theoretical passive electrical component needs of the user
systems as a more reliable alternative to to supplement the resistor, capacitor and • Relational awareness — devices that, as
GSM. inductor. an agent for the user, are aware of where
• Although expanding quickly, geographical • The first physical example was created the user is in relation to other people
coverage is still limited. in 2008, paving the way for concrete • Affordances — providing a digital
• LPWAN is expected to become applications. representation of a physical object that
mainstream around 2017. • Experimental organic neural networks allows the user to take advantage of all
based on polymeric memristors are being the things they already knows about how
Issues created. to use that object
• There are currently multiple LPWAN • 3D displays — display devices that create
standards and this is impacting Issues the perception of depth
interoperability. • Memristors are still experimental. • Holographic user interfaces — laser-based
• For the IoT to really take off, LPWAN volumetric displays where users interact
modem cost needs to drop below $1, with holographic images
provisioning below $2 and data cost to
zero. N • Physical controls — where physical inputs
are translated into digital outputs
M Concept
Definition
• Voice control — using language to access
a large set of commands
Natural user interfaces (UI) are systems • Conversational agents — allowing users
Memristors designed to make human-computer to interact without prior knowledge of a
Concept interaction feel as natural as possible. system’s commands
Definition This wide range of technologies allows • Audio channels — opening up novel
Memristors are non-linear, passive electric the user to leverage everyday behaviors, channels for data transmission
components that have a resistance that intuitive actions and their natural abilities • Collaboration — allowing multiple users to
varies according to the history of the to control interactive applications. These controlling the interface simultaneously
flow of electric charge through them. The might include touch, vision, voice, motion • Utilizing three dimensions — providing
component's resistance reflects this history, and higher cognitive functions such as a more direct connection to content by
hence its name combining "memory" and expression, perception and recall. taking advantage of depth in movement
"resistor". • Monitoring physical movements —
Some natural user interfaces rely on helping systems (and users) understand
Memristor-based memory is non-volatile, intermediary devices while other more more about themselves in order to learn
with a density higher than 100 terabytes advanced systems are either unobtrusive — and adapt
per cubic centimeter, high speeds and low or even invisible — to the user. The ultimate • Audio security — providing identification
power requirements. goal is to make the human-computer and authentication through voice
interface seem to disappear. Examples signatures
Applications include: • Visual security — providing identification
• Providing advanced memory technology • Augmented reality — adding an additional and authentication through visual images
such as non-volatile random access intelligence layer on top of natural life • Biometric security — providing
memory • Virtual reality — providing an immersive identification and authentication through
• Delivering fast, compact and low-power digital representation of a real or other biometrics
neuromimetic elements since memristors imaginary environment
function using a continuous range while • Mixed reality — merging of real and virtual Trajectory
transistor-based logic only knows zeros worlds to produce environments where Impact
and ones physical and digital objects co-exist and • Reduces complexity for users with user
• Implementing neuroplasticity by forming interact in real time interface design incorporating more and
neuromemristive systems, a variant of • Neuro interfaces — enabling a direct more of the components needed to make
neuromorphic computers communication pathway between the user interfaces as natural as possible
brain and an external device based on • Decreases the level of user training
Trajectory neural activity generated by the brain needed, with training mainly focused
Impact • Virtual retinal displays — images on domain knowledge rather than
• Allow neural networks to move from broadcast directly onto the retina, interacting with the interface
computer simulations and onto their own effectively augmenting the real world • Allows computers and human beings
physical implementations • Body monitoring — reading body to interact in diverse and robust ways,
• Have a longer term potential in language with gestures beyond the hand tailored to the abilities and needs of an
neuromorphic systems individual user
176 #AscentLookOut
Tech trends
• Enables complex interactions with digital check-out coupled with short lifecycles, may lead
objects in our physical world to infrastructure assets being refreshed
Trajectory without NFC as the primary mobile
Evolution Impact strategy.
• The first attempts at natural user • Standardizes and facilitates the
interfaces aim to provide an alternative integration of contactless communication
to a command-line interfaces (CLI) and
graphical user interfaces (GUI).
in end-user electronic devices:
-- Extending the functionality of those O
• Attention later turned to developing products
user-interface strategies using natural -- Making them interoperable with Open Source Hardware
interactions with the real world. existing contactless infrastructure Concept
• Touch and voice recognition are now • Dematerializing tickets, coupons, badges Definition
increasingly appearing next to the more and cards The open source hardware model extends
traditional mouse and keyboard. • Making payment more convenient, with the ideas and methodologies popularized
• Interfaces have also begun to incorporate NFC wristbands gaining popularity in in open source software development to
gestures, handwriting and vision. micro-payments and tap-to-pay travel hardware development. Documentation —
• May allow technology companies to including schematics, diagrams, list of parts
Issues disrupt the payment/transaction value and related specifications — are published
We don't yet have the complex chain with open source licenses so other teams
technologies needed to make truly natural • Could enhance privacy in the future can modify and improve them, based on
and seamless interfaces. smartphone applications specific needs.
Evolution • Printable computer circuits users are keen to allow some services to
• Initially primarily initiated by the open • Transparent circuits leverage, but only provided some privacy is
source community. • Wearable computing respected.
• Traction in the enterprise world — from • Smart bandages
both industrial users and hardware • RFID tags As such, PETs reach beyond the
vendors — is increasing. • Plastic solar cells technologies traditionally dedicated to
• Interest is expanding across diverse preserving data confidentiality (such as
industries — including processors, servers, Trajectory access control and encryption); they also
3D printing and prototyping, ambient Impact encompass technologies and techniques
information devices, mobile phones, • Provides the flexibility that allows for ensuring data usage is limited to the
notebooks and robotics. computing abilities to be added to purposes intended or protected, including
• There is a great deal of interest in dynamic environments including clothes, homomorphic encryption, data masking,
emerging countries. tight enclosures and organic tissues anonymization and pseudonymization.
• Open source hardware is expected to • Integrates easily with other additive
continue to evolve in three directions: manufacturing methods, such as 3-D Applications
-- Supporting hardware innovation and printing • Commerce, finance, Telco, public services
standards development • Enables the low-cost volume fabrication and healthcare — any domains where
-- Guaranteeing long-term maintenance that is essential for widely distributed customers leave sensitive personal data
capabilities solutions such as RFID tags • Social media and networks along with
-- Creating low-cost devices and collaborative services — also domains
infrastructures, including network Evolution where customers share selected data to a
infrastructures • Basic R&D around organic electronics selected audience
began during the last quarter of the 20th • Personal employee data
Issues century.
• Business models are adapted to core • OLED screens and printed RFID Trajectory
technologies, where users and vendors tags are widely deployed today and Impact
have a mutual interest in sharing popular in consumer devices, including • Gives individuals the confidence to share
innovation, fostering standards and smartphones and e-readers. or trade access to their personal data for
minimizing cost. • Other organic electronic technologies digital services
• Certification, which beyond small project look very promising for cheap and • Enables new data monetization business
communities, is required for many uses durable solar energy panels. models while ensuring compliance to
— security or radio electric interference various data protection legislations
certification, for instance Issues • Mitigates the financial and legal risk linked
• Fabrication occurs in small batches • Poor electronic efficiency, when to regulation violation
in small projects making for low cost- compared with traditional electronics, • Supports Corporate Social Responsibility
efficiency. may impact some use cases.
• Intellectual property issues could block • In some domains, including health-related Evolution
some developments. devices, safety issues may limit adoption. • Early work started in the mid-1970s, with
• For the technology to really take off it the birth of the concepts of anonymity
needs to be properly integrated with and unlinkability.
178 #AscentLookOut
Tech trends
Q
were invented around the millennium. a wide variety of aspect of an IT system
• The first commercial systems based on including networking, compute, storage,
quantum technology (D-Wave) reached management, security and more.
Quantum Computing the market around 2010.
Concept • Though the current practical Applications
Definition implementation of quantum computers • Software-defined networking (SDN) —
Quantum computers are computation is limited to a few dozens or hundreds of where a programmable remote controller,
systems that use quantum-mechanical qubits, rapid development is underway. which is decoupled from the physical
phenomena (such as superposition • Big internet companies (such as Google) network devices, forwards the data
entanglement) to execute operations on recently began testing quantum-based through the network.
data. Built over the basic element of the technology. • Software-defined compute (SDC or
qubit (which is in a quantum superposition • The U.S. National Security Agency, China virtualization) — decouples CPU and
of states, hence having multiple values and other governments are ramping up memory resources from physical
simultaneously), quantum computing's their quantum safe projects. hardware to create isolated software
main advantage is its ability to execute • Quantum computing (and other containers (virtual machines) that can be
some types of quantum algorithms quantum technologies) is expected run simultaneously in the same physical
exponentially faster than the best possible to become a flagship project for the server.
classical computing alternative. European Union. • Software-defined storage (SDS or
• Atos is among the very few companies storage virtualization) — decouples
These algorithms are currently undergoing in the world to work on quantum storage functions (including backup and
rapid development and could potentially computing, targeting both Big Data and recovery) from storage hardware with
one day break significant aspects of security applications. software automating and optimizing the
current technologies limitations in provisioning of the storage resources.
combinatory analysis. Applications range Issues • Software-defined datacenter (SDDC) —
from decryption to operational research, • Quantum computing poses a threat has all resources (including CPU, memory,
optimization, simulation (with quantic to conventional information security storage and security) virtualized and
models) and Big Data analysis (neural systems, requiring the development of delivered as a service.
networks). quantum safe cryptography before the • Network Function Virtualization (NFV) —
widespread use of quantum computers. combines SDC, SDS and SNS as a solution
Applications • Kaspersky’s Labs has dubbed the found within the Telco industry.
• Breaking cryptographic standards – unpreparedness for quantum attacks as
emerging quantum safe cryptography the ‘Cryptopocalypse’. Trajectory
aims to overcome this threat, deriving • Trained resources are scarce in this very Impact
new cryptographic methods able to resist complex field and often unconcerned • Raises the level of automation possible in
attacks by quantum computers about quantum computing's impact on infrastructure management.
• Trading – in the financial sector business or society. • Optimizes resource usage by making
• Recognizing patterns – in defense, • Quantum programming languages are resources easier to manage
homeland security, Telco, utilities and still very basic and require a different way • Enhances performance by enabling
insurance of thinking. dynamic, on-demand (re)allocation of
• Speeding up lead compound discovery – • Quantum logic is hampering resources
in the pharmaceuticals industry development on an engineering level. • Allows spurious changes of the resources’
• Accelerating simulations – in the chemical • The technology currently requires low state to be reacted to automatically,
industry and quantum physics temperatures, physical isolation and other improving availability
technical complexities that are currently • Reduces complexity and errors since
Trajectory more expensive than the computing itself. there is no need to understand details
Impact • There is uncertainty over the future around the underlying hardware
• Allows hugely enormous, complex performance of the wide variety of • Improves visibility of the status of
problems to be solved in a reasonable competing quantum computing resources, enabling the development
amount of time architectures. of more sophisticated control functions,
services and applications
• Allows traditional distributed control to Information and Event Management (SIEM) monitored and reacted to.
become logical and centralized technologies enhanced with machine • Seamless communication between
• Cuts cost by improving resource learning and prescriptive analytics. security devices is needed to ensure
utilization, opening up commodity Self-adaptive security also relies on new contextual information is shared across
hardware options and reducing system generations of context-aware security internal silos to enable the automated
maintenance time and effort technologies (including Identity and Access configuration changes that strengthen
• Reduces time-to-market for new products Management, network security, device and security and block attacks before they
and services smart machine security) that dynamically happen.
adapt to threats. • Self-adaptive security often relies on
Evolution human intelligence for confirming
• Standardization efforts are already Applications adaptive actions on the fly after
widespread and expected to continue to • Protecting information systems automated risk detection. This is vital for
evolve. belonging to boundaryless corporations avoiding any overreaction to false positive
• The SDN evolution, for example, and open business ecosystems signals, which may impact the business
is mainly being driven by the ONF • Offering better protection against the in unexpected ways (see Amplified
(Open Networking Foundation) while latest generations of threats, including Intelligence in the CxO agenda).
being embraced by the IETF (Internet Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) • The increased focus on rapid detection
Engineering Task Force) and the • Adapting security strategies to the and response should not lead to
ETSI (European Telecommunications specific business challenges of individual decreased protection levels. Protection
Standards Institute). organizations within diverse industry levels should, instead, be more targeted
• Related efforts are ongoing within contexts and more reactive. As such, end-to-end
industry and the open source community security, 'Zero trust' security architectures
(OpenDaylight and OpenNFV for SDN, for Trajectory and very high security zones for critical
instance) Impact applications (such as 'Application
• Companies are tending generally • Mitigates attacks (including hacktivism, Resource Islands') are often set up to
deploying open implementations and cybercrime from mafias, fraud, industrial complement self-adaptive security.
specifications that may then become espionage and cyberwar attacks) before
candidates for de facto standards. they significantly threaten the availability, Semantic Technologies
data integrity and confidentiality of Concept
Issues systems Definition
• The transition from legacy systems to • Facilitates forensics by enabling effective Semantic technologies encompasses
SDx can be complex. and accurate aggregation of evidence a diverse set of technologies aimed at
• The centralized logic has the potential to helping machines to make sense of large or
become a single point of failure. However, Evolution complex data sets without being supplied
solutions that distribute this logically • Experts estimate that detection and any knowledge about that data. In essence,
centralized control do exist. response share will move from less than they bring structure and meaning to
• A change in a management policy might 30% of IT security budgets today to 75% information, often by providing machine-
result in temporary loops or errors that by 2020. readable metadata that is associated with
then lead to failures. Ongoing research • Open platforms are being developing humanly readable content specifying its
aims to tackle this issue. that will facilitate 2-way communication meaning.
among multi-vendor security products.
Self-Adaptive Security • Self-adaptive security depends on the Applications
Concept convergence between security and • Natural-language processing (NLP) —
Definition Big Data technologies, with the notable processing unstructured text content
With the growth of cloud, APIs and the addition of machine learning to traditional • Data mining technologies — uncovering
Internet of Things (IoT), cybercrime SIEM technologies (see 'Insight Systems'). patterns (trends and correlations) within
is constantly increasing in volume, • Solutions are rapidly increasing the large sets of data
sophistication and impact. As a result, the number of data sources (including the • Artificial intelligence systems — using
paradigm of security must change. After Dark Net) they are leveraging — well reasoning models to answer complex
the perimeter security of the 90’s (which beyond classical security sensors and questions
emphasized network defenses) and the devices — to analyze suspicious behaviors • Classification technologies — employing
in-depth security of the 2000s (which and foresee or detect attacks. heuristics and rules to categorize data
emphasized multiple protection layers), • Self-adaptive security is becoming • Semantic Web — allowing programs to
cyber defense strategies now evolved increasingly verticalized, taking into fetch specific information and answer
toward new self-adaptive security principles. account industry-specific risks in finance, non-obvious queries
This pre-emptive approach to security manufacturing, utilities and other • Linked Data — a subset of the Semantic
moves the emphasis from protection to domains. Web and way of publishing data so they
real-time detection and response that are interlinked and more useful, enabling
adapts defenses immediately. Issues automatic reading by computers
• Self-adaptive security requires strong • Semantic data integration — enhancing
Technologies and processes incorporate and business-driven Governance, analysis and decision making by
Security Operation Centers (SOC), Risk and Compliance analysis to help combining heterogeneous data sources
which rely on new generation Security systems understand what really must be
180 #AscentLookOut
Tech trends
• Semantic search technologies — allowing • Discarding spurious information in autonomously thanks to cognitive
people to locate information by concept ontologies is difficult. computing, advanced algorithms and
• Data providers usually generate revenue artificial intelligence.
Trajectory from advertisements that have to be seen • Over time, more machines will enter our
Impact by human beings so may have no interest lives and they will become better, faster
• Enable semantics-based technology in providing semantically-enriched and cheaper, according to Moore’s law.
automation by providing that meaning information. • Advances in artificial intelligence, speech
explicitly, so machines don't need to • A means for automatically establishing recognition and machine learning mean
derive it from within the data correspondences between vocabularies knowledge work can now be automated.
• Help humans and machines understand is needed for when different data sources • Machines will make increasingly
and communicate with each other at use different concept definitions. significant business decisions over which
the same level as people do among • The Semantic Web is still unrealized humans have decreasing control.
themselves due to the size and complexity of the • As such, smart machines have the
• Allow technology to automatically use ambition. potential to significantly impact the
services on behalf of a user business dynamics of at least one-third of
• Bring enterprise data integration to the Smart Machines the industries in the developed world in
next level by integrating heterogeneous Concept the future.
sources and augmenting corporate data Definition
with publicly available databases Smart machines refer to systems Issues
• Give computers a better way to represent, embedded with cognitive computing • CIOs must make the business aware
exchange and manipulate knowledge capabilities that are able to make decisions of the risks and opportunities as smart
• Increase agility by dealing with and solve problems without human machines work more autonomously in
knowledge instead of just data intervention. They perform activities and support of business goals.
• Allow computers to learn by themselves tasks traditionally conducted by humans, • There are real concerns that smart
(machine learning) boosting efficiency and productivity. machines will replace both white and
• Make data collected for a given purpose blue collar jobs in industries ranging
usable in other contexts Applications from manufacturing and warehousing to
• Autonomous robots or vehicles — shipping.
Evolution reshaping transportation, logistics, • The impact on society will need to be
• The RDF (which stores the semantic distribution and supply chain understood and appropriate action
metadata) and OWL (which defines management may need to be taken in areas such as
the ontologies which, in turn, specify • Expert systems — emulating the decision- taxation.
information meaning and relationships) making capabilities of a human to solve
were introduced and later standardized. problems that typically require expert Swarm Computing
• The SPARQL semantic query language input in sectors such as automotive, Concept
was introduced and later standardized. consumer electronics, healthcare and Definition
• Tim Berners-Lee published his thoughts industrial Also known as swarm intelligence or hive
on Linked Data on the W3C website • Intelligent virtual assistants — such as computing, swarm computing refers to
• The Semantic Web at a global scale is avatars, which provide information and massively distributed, self-organizing
still a dream, but related ideas, concepts, service assistance to customers systems of agents that work collaboratively
standards and technologies are being • Sensors — collecting data about our towards a defined outcome. Each agent
used on smaller scale to provide physical environment without direct within the system has a simple set of rules
semantically-enriched services. human intervention to follow and only interacts with its local
• Companies are providing commercial environment. The aggregate behavior
support for semantic solutions and using Trajectory of the agents leads to the emergence of
them in production. Impact ‘intelligent’ global behavior.
• Existing and legacy SQL-based data • Increase efficiency and productivity
integration solutions are being turned into • Raise earnings and profit margin potential With the number of nodes comprising the
a semantic data cloud. • Offer a viable alternative to unskilled labor Internet of Everything (IoE) predicted to
• Standardization efforts for while augmenting demand for skilled rise and many individual nodes likely have
transformations (RDB2RDF) are enabling labor limited compute capabilities, each would
more valuable information to be retrieved • Complement tasks that cannot be be complimented by connection to other
out of the existing data maze by substituted by computerization objects in a community — thus creating an
combining it with other data sources. IoE swarm.
• Companies are increasingly providing Evolution
semantic search engines heavily based • Prototype autonomous vehicles, Applications
on NLP. advanced robots, virtual personal • Optimizing logistic chains and
assistants and smart advisers already transportation
Issues exist. • Controlling driverless vehicles, optimizing
• Ontologies are not easy to design and • The explosive growth of sensor-based journey times and road usage
their relevance can always be debated. data will provide them with more context • Coordinating the operation of complex
• Gaining consensus around ontologies is about the physical world. infrastructures such as smart cities and
difficult, even in very specific fields. • They will evolve to work more distributed power grids
• Predicting the behavior of complex under the primary control of different strengthening of objects on the Internet
systems, such as transport or logistic individuals or organizations. of Things (IoT) that are involved in critical
networks • Communication protocols need to be processes.
• Providing surveillance in military standardized to enable flexible and • The next evolution is focusing on
scenarios dynamic interaction. securing smart, autonomous machines.
• Delivering sensor network security • There is a possibility that non- After all, as we become increasingly
• Managing crowds deterministic behaviors, including reliant on robot surgeons, smart cars
• Enabling opportunistic collaboration unexpected or out of control ‘emergent’ and autonomous drones, absolute trust
• Managing the economics of participation behaviors, may emerge. becomes vital.
by helping to engage resources, -- Swarm viruses, where swarm behaviors
encourage contribution and optimize are influenced adversely by rogue Issues
services components, may also emerge. These • Most trusted devices require a
would have huge implications in use combination of hardware and software
Trajectory cases such as driverless vehicles. security since software security alone
Impact increases the risk of hijacking.
• Creates a dynamic eco-systems of cyber- • Establishing trust in today's increasingly
physical devices, each adding to the
collective capability and insight T connected world requires the successful
integration of secure elements (Secure
• Allows operations and interactions to IoT) and management of huge numbers
adapt according to context Trusted Devices of identities (Next Generation Identity &
• Improves efficiency and reliability of Concept Access Management and Big Data).
service provision through: Definition • It may also require embedded contextual
-- Enabling ad-hoc collaborations, which Trusted devices are terminals and software- intelligence so that hacking attempts can
help built service networks powered objects and machines that are be detected and appropriate counter
-- Optimizing delivery schemes and made secure and trustworthy in order measures (such as the auto-destruction
communication patterns, which allow to protect data and process availability, of sensitive information) can be taken
information and services to be shared integrity and confidentiality. They include automatically
and exchanged human interaction devices such as
-- Creating reliability and dependability smartphones, payments terminals as well
from volatile resources, which help
manage uncertainty
as autonomous devices such as smart
homes and smart machines. U
• Allows work to be distributed across
simpler devices (or robots) Trusted devices rely on high security Ubiquitous PIM
• Complements other forms of artificial design, hardened software and hardware, Concept
intelligence and intensive certification processes Definition
• Provides a significant step toward provided by trusted third parties (notably Currently most people use more than four
massively distributed computing models leveraging 'common criteria' norms). different information silos to store, manage
and transfer their personal information
Evolution Applications — including Google, Outlook, Facebook,
• The notion of swarm computing first • Securing human communications and Twitter, WhatsApp, local drives, USB disks,
emerged in the 1990s. interactions with digital systems OneDrive, Dropbox and more.
• Research into algorithms and simulations • Ensuring the protection of critical
began shortly afterwards. infrastructures and automated process Ubiquitous Personal Information
• Swarm computing was first use for — including smart grid, connected Management (PIM) is a new approach
logistics and simulations. healthcare, smart cities and transports to storing personal information where all
• In time, the miniaturization of mobile information is stored in a unified storage
hardware made swarms of micro-robots Trajectory system but still accessible and consumable
feasible Impact by multiple applications. The types of
• Currently, swarm computing is closely • Provides trusted terminals and smart information most suited to ubiquitous PIM
linked with robotics, the Internet of Things machines secured by design and with a approaches include messages (email, social
(IoT) and distributed cloud models. trustworthiness level depending on risk network posts, public website responses),
• In the long-term, nano-robots swarms and process criticality that people can contacts, documents (texts, pictures, video)
may, for example, prove useful in rely on and calendars.
medicine. • Mitigates risk of hacking and fraud at
a time when cybercrime is becoming Applications
Issues commonplace • Enterprise Social Networks — allowing
• Agent-based programming is complex all applications to use the same storage
and skilled practitioners are not easy to Evolution layer and exchange/share all information
come by at this present time. • Defense grade technologies have already needed
• Integrating swarms with other centralized been introduced into civil terminals, • Collaboration — providing diverse
control mechanisms is also complex. notably secure smartphones for collaboration tools access to the same
• Security is a huge concern, especially governments and CxOs. information, with each tool tailored to
if individual robots within a swarm are • The major trend today is the
182 #AscentLookOut
Tech trends
the user's level of expertise and personal of our increasingly complex digital lives in
preferences
• Business communications — unifying V the future
• May, in that case, transform customer
communications so users only need to engagement models with organizations
focus on the dialog and not worry about Virtual Assistants needing to interact with customers
the technology Concept through their assistant rather than
Definition directly; this would mean interactions
Trajectory Virtual assistants are software agents that need to be clear and concise — and
Impact perform services or tasks on our behalf. would be significantly less susceptible to
• Reduces complexity and eliminates They understand queries and can answer emotive advertising
vertical information silos them in a natural language. They exploit
• Increases usability by making information artificial intelligence, natural-language Evolution
more relevant and consistent across a processing, machine learning, voice • In the 2000s, search engines evolved to
multitude of applications processing and reasoning, and knowledge include more context, refining results to
• Cuts energy consumption as information representation to make human-machine make them more relevant.
no longer needs to be copied around and interactions simpler, more natural and more • Natural Language Processing (NLP)
kept in sync appealing. systems evolved to allow users to interact
• Unlocks individuals from reliance on with a computer in conversational
multiple dedicated social networks, The tasks and services they perform rely language.
collaboration and communication tools on written or spoken user input, context • More computing power became
• Allows individuals to select the networks awareness and access to a variety of available, meaning natural language could
and tools that suit them best online sources, such as weather or traffic be processed cost-effectively.
• Opens the door to a broad range of novel conditions, news, stock prices, schedules • The rise of virtual assistants such as
products and services and retail prices. Siri signaled search evolving toward a
• Is aligned with the Internet of Things (IoT) more personalized, interactive service
Applications and a gradual shift to an ecosystem of
Evolution • Administrative assistance — such as services mediated by a powerful software
• Local file systems with applications began in-the-moment advice, querying and assistant.
sharing more and more information. reminding, supporting both personal and • The virtual assistant will next be brought
• Mixed local and cloud-based storage business events into the cloud, making it present on
solutions emerged, with some sharing • Ongoing expert assistance — including multiple devices: on users' bodies and in
information, but more of them longer-term projects or expert work their offices, homes and vehicles.
exchanging it. where their learning capabilities mean • Future assistants will be able to detect
• Mixed local, cloud and ubiquitous the more context they're exposed to, the exactly where users are.
PIM storage solutions then started to better their assistance becomes • Advances in sensors (for example,
appear, initially combining contacts, • Customer service assistance — including microphones, cameras, accelerometers
communication, collaboration and in retailing, banking, insurance and and GPS in smart phones) will provide
documents through adapters telecommunications where they additional context for that assistant to
• Soon, applications will leverage global supplement or supplant human leverage.
ubiquitous storage, with information customer-service representatives • Virtual assistants are also learning how
exchange between ubiquitous PIMs • Data mining of large structured and to detect emotions via voice analysis or
standardized unstructured data sets — discovering facial expressions, whether the user was
• In the future, people will no longer need patterns and anomalies, proactively moving, stationary or in a vehicle.
to worry about their information and a identifying problems, spotting • Real-time learning capabilities will ensure
whole new domain of IT applications will opportunities and supporting decision- assistants remain current, as long as they
start to flourish. making have access to relevant data sets, or allow
• Predictive expert assistance — them to branch out into new fields.
Issues anticipating events and taking action
• An enormous amount of work that needs before events occur Issues
to be done to realize ubiquitous PIM, • Virtual personal shopping assistants • The increasing fragmentation and
but only a few groups and individuals — learning, predicting and serving complexity of our personal data reduces
are working on new ways to store consumers' tastes, needs and desires to the level of assistance a virtual assistant
information. help optimize their purchases can currently provide.
• In fact, there are huge gaps in the • Ubiquitous Personal Information
theoretical know-how needed. Trajectory Management (PIM) will help them
• This current situation will remain Impact interpret all our digital information, but
unchanged until the fragmentation of the • Decrease cost and increase efficiency they currently need adapters to connect
current data exchange systems become and customer satisfaction in customer to diverse data silos such as Outlook,
more evident. service desks while unifying corporate Gmail, Microsoft Live, Facebook, Twitter,
image across different channels LinkedIn and even local file systems.
• Enhance application usability and • The user needs to feel in control (for
improves information access tasks instance of where their data is used and
• Are expected to manage more and more by whom) and to be able to trust the
• assistant to act in their best interest. -- Direct interaction with smart objects • Spending on wearable technology is
• Virtual assistants that are helping users — initiating cloud-based services projected to reach nearly $20 billion in
purchasing things online will have the -- Information — simplifying access to 2018.
power to boost certain firms and deprive resources and sharing knowledge • Wearables may become a fully-integrated
others. • Industry specific part of our personal and professional
• The on-going obsolescence of the -- Healthcare — training doctors, lives in the long term, providing a more
human worker by computers and assisting surgery, monitoring patients' discrete alternative to mobile while also
artificial intelligence applications may and doctors' health, recording enhances mobile with additional insight.
lead to society raising concerns about treatment, supporting and monitoring • Some see wearables as the next step
virtual assistants as they become more medication regimes toward ambient computing.
advanced. -- Retail — sharing product information,
merchandising, warehousing and Issues
stock management • Interaction is tuned to the device's size,
W
-- Military and homeland security purpose and ergonomics.
— monitoring activities, recording • Devices would benefit from being able
operations, navigation and identity to automatically account for wider
Wearable Computing recognition environmental surroundings.
Concept -- Transport — navigation, tracking, • But advances in wearables depends
Definition measuring drivers' health on other technological advances —
Miniature electronic devices with integrated -- Sport — monitoring vital signs, including in sensors, displays, batteries,
sensing, computing and communication comparing results, adjusting to communications and augmented reality.
capabilities that are worn on the body. They environment and recording activities • The effects of materials on the human
leverage the wearer’s context — detected organism (allergic reactions, for instance)
by embedded sensors — to deliver either Trajectory and radiation must be manageable.
general or specific services that enable Impact • Power management and heat dissipation
the wearer to act in real time based on the • In combination with cognitive computing, is challenging in such small devices.
information they provide. has the potential to enhance human • Energy — along with a failover strategy
abilities — may need to be available during a
Although most popular wearables today • Allows customer service representatives complete usage cycle in some use cases.
are smart watches, wearables can be found to understand individual's desires and • In critical situations, such as medical
in different places of our body: tastes tasks, wearables and their users must
• Attached to our wrist — such as smart • Enables the Body Area Network concept abide by legal constraints.
watches, bracelets and wrist bands — enhancing the overall picture of the • Wearables need to be transparent on
• Around the head — including headbands wearer’s context while the wider IoT information transmission, storage and
and helmets amplifies the device’s knowledge of the processing, particularly where data is
• In front of the eyes — such as glasses, wearer shared with a wider ecosystem.
contact lenses, bio-augmentation • Improves performance and cuts cost in
• Around the ears — as earphones field service and assisted maintenance Web-scale Computing
• Implanted or embedded chips — • Opens up new business opportunities: Concept
including hearing aids -- Delivering health insights for Definition
• On or in the hands — such as gloves or marketers to tap into Also known as web-scale computing,
digital pens -- Offering incentives in exchange for hyperscale is a large, distributed, grid
• Smart clothing and textiles — including wearable usage and data computing environment that can scale-
bandages, t-shirts, jackets, socks, bras, -- Connecting mobile payments and out efficiently as data volumes and
belts and shoes customer loyalty workload demands increase — sometimes
• Embedded in jewelry — including rings -- Addressing novel customer problems exponentially. Compute, memory,
and earrings that were previously out of reach of networking, and storage resources are
• On the skin — as tattoos the brand added quickly and cost-effectively.
184 #AscentLookOut
Tech trends
Trajectory
Impact
• Allows electrical devices to be powered
where interconnecting wires are
inconvenient, hazardous or simply not
possible
• Solves energy storage issues for the
electric car, while increasing its range and
reliability
• Opens the door to a uninterrupted,
pervasive computing environment where
energy availability is critical
Evolution
• Induction charging is not a new
technology, but its usage is restricted to
very few devices.
• The technology has been evolving to
provide higher levels of charge, at greater
distances.
• Standardization seems to be improving,
with the most important standards
converging in the AirFuel Alliance.
• The explosion of wearables and
sensor networks, and their limited
energy capacities, has made wireless
power transmission a more interesting
proposition.
• Increasing capacities are taking it to
wider domains, including transportation
(for electric vehicles) and healthcare (for
medical devices).
• Tests are underway with special road
lanes wirelessly transferring power to
electric cars while they drive.
Issues
• Energy efficiency needs to be optimized
further by eliminating potential energy
losses.
• Energy management would benefit from
being simplified.
• There are currently several standards,
limiting interoperability.
• Security concerns are limiting its use in
certain environments.
• Social fears are limiting its uptake, though
concerns about its impact on health have
no scientific base.
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Tech trends