‘The internet of Everything’ (IoE) should be 2016’s overarching tech theme, says director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE), Prof Barry Dwolatzky.
IoE is $4.6 trillion opportunity for global public-sector organizations over the next decade, this is according to a new economic analysis by American technology company, Cisco.
Tech analyst and president of Creative Strategies, Tim Bajarin, writes in a Time article that “the Internet of Everything has become a catch-all phrase to describe adding connectivity and intelligence to just about every device in order to give them special functions.”
While trends such the Internet of Things, big data, cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) continue to make headlines, figuring out how to use the information that all the devices and associated technology would generate is the real challenge, says Dwolatzky in a press release.
Dwolatzky says he expects to see significant application of these technologies and for them to reach a level of maturity during 2016 as a result of the hype over the past two years.
With about 25 billion devices predicted to be in circulation by 2020, according to Dwolatzky, there will be an excess of data on almost every subject imaginable. Making sense of all this data, he says, will be the trick and the companies that are able to harness this information will gain a significant competitive advantage in the process.
“While South Africa does lag behind international markets adoption curves, I fully expect to realise some benefits in 2016. We should see results from AI and big data, in fact so much so, there should be real disruption that challenges traditional industries to either reinvent or shut their doors,” says Dwolatzky.
Despite the changes we can expect in the next five or ten years, Dwolatzky says what won’t change is the need for good quality software.
“While how we use it will change dramatically, the basic need for world-class software that is handcrafted will always be relevant,” he says.
