What next in 2012?

What factors can you expect to influence your business in the year ahead? We’ve drawn the following summary from IDC’s Chief Analyst, Frank Gens*:

• Worldwide IT spending will grow 6.9%, surprisingly solid growth in a fragile, recovering economy. Mobile devices and apps and emerging markets will be the biggest growth drivers, while European debt issues will dominate downside risks.
• Mobile devices will out-ship PCs by more than 2 to 1 and generate more revenue than PCs for the first time. Eighty five billion mobile apps will be downloaded, and mobile data network spending will exceed fixed data network spending for the first time.
• Spending on public and private cloud services, and the building of those services, will reach $60 billion. The strategic focus in the cloud will shift from infrastructure to application platforms.
• Big Data will join mobile and cloud as the next "must have" competency as the volume of digital content grows to 2.7ZB (1ZB = 1 billion terabytes) in 2012, up 48% from 2011, rocketing toward 8ZB by 2015.
• As the number of intelligent communicating devices on the network will outnumber "traditional computing" devices by almost 2 to 1, the way people think about interacting with each other, and with devices on the network, will change. Look for the use of social networking to follow not just people but smart things.

It’s going to be a year of dramatic change in information technology, so stay tuned!

*IDC Predictions 2012: Competing for 2020