Business News

Deloitte’s 5th Annual Tech Trends report published

By Business & Finance
23 April 2014

Disruptive technologies provide an opportunity in 2014 to reshape organisations, change business models and transform industries, according to Deloitte’s 5th Annual Tech Trends Report.

The report, titled ‘Inspiring Disruption’, examines the changing landscape of technology and how multiple disruptive technologies are 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 five disruptor technology trends which will have an impact on CIOs:

  • CIO as venture capitalist
  • cognitive analytics
  • industrialised crowdsourcing
  • digital engagement
  • wearables

Enablers are technologies in which many organisations have already invested, but new developments and opportunities have inspired new business applications, thereby warranting a fresh look. The current report features five enabler technology trends which will have an impact on CIOs:

  • technical debt reversal
  • social activation
  • cloud orchestration
  • in-memory revolution
  •  real-time DevOps

Harry Goddard, partner, Technology Consulting at Deloitte Ireland, says: “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. The recent Deloitte CIO survey found that only 35% of Irish CIOs believe their IT function is considered a hub of innovation – therefore CIOs here will need to assess how these trends are changing business as usual and opening the door for them to truly transform their business operations.

“One of the most interesting – and perhaps most talked about – trends this year is the CIO developing a venture capitalist mindset in relation to IT portfolio management. An effective portfolio view enables the CIO to continually evaluate and manage the strategic performance of each asset, project and vendor and communicate the value contribution in terms that business leaders understand.”

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.