What can you expect from technology in 2017?
Welcome to 2017! In the wake of BREXIT and the election of a new President of the United States, this year looks set to be an exciting one for the technology sector.
What can you expect from the next 12 months? We’ve prepared a roundup of the five key tech trends to look out for in 2017.
1. The news will be filled with merger and acquisition headlines
In 2016, there was the acquisition of NetSuite by Oracle for a reported £7 billion, Apigee were acquired by Google for £470 million, and Microsoft bought LinkedIn for £19 billion (to name a few). 2017 is lined up to be even more fruitful. It is anticipated that Donald Trump is looking to reduce the tax on corporate overseas profits from 35% to 10%. This means that large technology companies based in the US (such as Microsoft and Apple) will have extra funds available to purchase smaller companies.
2. More industries will begin exploring the IoT.
At the end of 2016, the Internet of Things had not been heavily adopted outside of automotive, industrial and B2B projects. Industries such as the construction industry may start to see the benefit of IoT technology in 2017.
Willy Schlacks, president and co founder of EquipmentShare believes that “we’ll see more contractors and fleet managers leveraging the Internet of Things by connecting their heavy equipment assets with telematics to retrieve incredible amounts of data. With telematics technology, they can see a real-time snapshot of their equipment–everything from fuel levels and engine performance to idle time. And with the right telematics platform, all this data rolls up into actionable insights–for example, helping to uncover which assets are underutilized, which need maintenance and more.”
3. Cyber Security will become an even bigger issue
In the first half of 2016, there were 554 million cyber security breaches. Yahoo suffered a data breach that impacted one billion accounts and hackers were also allegedly responsible for influencing the US election. In 2017, it’s anticipated that hackers will begin to utilise artificial intelligence to carry out this type of attack. This will make them more efficient and quicker to strike. Symantec predict that we may also see a rise in transportation-based hacking. They anticipate that cars, in particular, will be the next target – becoming unusable until the victim pays a small fee. In addition to this, IOActive have allegedly identified a way to access the systems of planes using the on-board entertainment functionality, and presumably this will be quickly followed by the railways.
4. The number of technology start-ups going public will increase
2016 was a quiet year in the technology sector for IPO news, but 2017 is already looking to be much more exciting. Both AppDynamics and Snapchat have already filed to go public this year. Rumours around the likes of Spotify, and HotelTonight (San Francisco-based mobile travel app company) are already circling, so there are a number of contenders for IPO within the first half of the year. In addition to this, there is the possibility of IPO from the likes of Qualtrics, Cloudera and Dropbox as well. It’s set to be an interesting year!
5. The UK will continue to suffer from a digital skills shortage
Back in June 2016, the BBC reported that 12.6 million adults in the UK lacked basic digital skills. In addition, approximately 5.6 million had never used the internet. Their report also found that the UK needed 745,000 workers with digital skills by 2017. At the height of the problem, it is costing the UK in advance of £63 billion in lost revenue.
This is not an issue just facing the UK. Huffington Post reported that the US economy loses around $1 trillion a year in lost productivity. 150,000 digital jobs will be needed by 2020.
The Scottish Government have begun taking steps to help close the digital skills gap. They have introduced an initiative called the ‘Digital Participation Charter Fund’. It’s designed to support projects that train people in basic computer skills, and is certainly a step in the right direction.
For 2017, predictions indicate that the skills shortage will continue within the technology sector and others too, but it is hoped that these small steps will begin to have a lasting impact.
Do you have a prediction for 2017? Please let us know your thoughts!
With thanks to Huffington Post, BBC News, TIME, Business Insider and Inc.com
