ascent look out telecom media & technology 2014

Trends 2014+look outTelecoms, media & technology

At Atos we strive to create the firm of the future. We believe that bringing together people, technology and business is the way forward.Every day we power sustainable progress for our clients and partners, the wider community and ourselves. It is our unique approach as Business Technologists that makes this possible.

Contents

Editorial`` Welcome to Ascent Look Out .........................................................................................................................................................5

`` Foreword ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................7

Introduction`` View from the Atos Telecoms, Media & Technology Global Market Leader .......................... 11

`` Helping you to stay one step ahead .....................................................................................................................................12

`` Why do innovation enthusiasts endorse Ascent Look Out? ....................................................................13

Focus On`` Business Mobility ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 18

Innovation Radars`` 2014+ SEP Innovation Radar: Socio-Cultural ..............................................................................................................28

`` 2014+ SEP Innovation Radar: Economic ........................................................................................................................ 30

`` 2014+ SEP Innovation Radar: Political.................................................................................................................................34

`` 2014+ CxO Agenda Radar ................................................................................................................................................................36

`` 2014+ Enabling Information Technologies Radar ...............................................................................................40

Telecoms, Media & Technology Market View`` Telecoms Business Imperatives ................................................................................................................................................48

`` Telecoms Business Trends ................................................................................................................................................................51

`` Telecoms Business Impact of Emerging Technologies and Solutions .......................................56

`` Media Business Imperatives ...........................................................................................................................................................61

`` Media Business Trends ........................................................................................................................................................................63

`` Media Business Impact of Emerging Technologies and Solutions ................................................ 66

Innovation Radars in Detail`` 2014+ SEP Innovation Radar in Detail: Socio-Cultural ..................................................................................... 72

`` 2014+ SEP Innovation Radar in Detail: Economic ...............................................................................................80

`` 2014+ SEP Innovation Radar in Detail: Political ......................................................................................................90

`` 2014+ CxO Agenda in Detail ...................................................................................................................................................... 100

`` 2014+ Enabling Information Technologies Radar in Detail .................................................................... 1114

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................................................................138

3Ascent Look Out - Telecoms, Media & Technology

4 Ascent Look Out - Telecoms, Media & Technology

Welcome to Ascent Look Out. I am very proud to share this fifth edition with you and hope you find our broad analysis of emerging trends and technologies an interesting and stimulating read.

We created Ascent Look Out with one clear goal in mind: to arouse the novel ideas that will drive innovation for you, our clients and our partners, in 2014 and beyond. After all, there has never been a better time to see how emerging global business and technological trends can power progress.

As Business Technologists we want to ignite your imagination, sparked by the vision we deliver through our commitment to innovation. Innovation is part of our DNA — you will find it everywhere. We are very clear about what it truly means and how we can help our clients ensure it becomes part of their own company DNA too.

Our Ascent initiatives, which include Ascent Look Out, are designed to share innovation and thought leadership with our partners and clients. Ascent Look Out provides a bird’s eye view of the trends that will shape our world in 2014 and beyond, delivered by our market and technology experts across the globe.

Its breadth of vision spans over 800 trends across 20 market sectors. We can guarantee that within Ascent Look Out you will discover something new that will open the door to new opportunities.

We hope you enjoy reading Ascent Look Out; we have enjoyed putting it together. As a thought provoking read, we are sure it will bring you a great deal of value.

Thierry BretonAtos, Chairman and CEO

Welcome to Ascent Look Out

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Welcome to the fifth edition of Ascent Look Out, our key yearly publication covering significant trends in business and technology innovation.

The economic crisis that started in 2007 continued to develop its effects in many countries during 2013, reduction of public deficits and debts is still at the top of political agendas, while forgotten tensions among geopolitical blocks are reemerging.

But it’s not all doom and gloom: new technology is enabling better informed decision-making while increasing efficiency, supported by the digital natives who have come of age and are using technology to exploit the vast, and growing, volumes of data.

In our earlier editions of Ascent Look Out we examined Green IT, Open Innovation, Cloud Computing and the birth of Social Organization in depth.

In this 2014 edition of Ascent Look Out, our ‘Focus On’ section is devoted to Business Mobility where we are already seeing early adopters gain competitive advantage from the many potential opportunities it offers. From a business and technology stand-point, the human being is about to become truly ubiquitous, a truly god-like power that corporate organizations must now learn how to channel and leverage. This decisive change has the potential—as you are about to read—to significantly redefine our experiences as customers, as citizens and as employees.

Other highlights include: our overview of the latest Sociocultural, Economic and Political trends and opportunities, along with those already on the CxO agenda; in-depth expert analysis for each; and a detailed reference guide tours market sectors detailing what we can expect to see from them in the months—and years—ahead.

I sincerely hope you enjoy this issue and we look forward to hearing your views. Enjoy your read.

Gilles GrapinetAtos, Senior Executive Vice President, Global Functions

Foreword


Introduction


Introduction

View from the Atos Telecoms, Media & Technology Global Market LeaderThere’s never been a better time to see how technology’s possibilities can power progress for your business, your clients, and the wider society. At Atos, as Business Technologists, we offer you this vision through this publication.

In previous issues of Ascent Look Out we have reviewed at how organizations, with vastly reduced budgets, needed to transform to ensure a sustainable future business whilst at the same time, improving current levels of services.

But as always, we continue to look ahead and see what kind of changes we will see in today’s still volatile, ever more complex, world.

Consumers today are well-informed and better connected than ever before. They will have become used to tablets and smartphones. After an initial phase of experimenting, consumers are expanding their usages in multimedia, payment, search, Smart Mobility applications.

The voice market is shrinking, with the broadband data market exploding. Telecoms companies will suffer as their cash cow disappears. To combat this, they need to strengthen their intermediary role in the digital value chain and ensure they are active participants in new business models.

Media companies must also strengthen their role in the digital value chain. They are no longer the only gateway to digital content with consumers looking for branded content through search engines and their social networks.

The challenges of monetizing communication and content services vary across emerging, evolving, and saturated markets. Emerging markets are characterized by high demand and promising growth potential, but small customer wallets. On the opposite side, saturated markets in developed geographies feature extreme competition, high customer expectations, and consumer-friendly regulation.

Telecoms and media companies need to explore innovative revenue streams whilst continuing to develop existing schemes. But it’s a fast moving environment, and new competitors will shake up the market and force traditional companies to react. Being able to quickly understand customer desires, adapt current business models and swiftly roll-out new services will be critical to ensure survival. Business Intelligence, driven by the vast amounts of information that Big Data can provide, is of great value here.

Finally, with the growth of Cloud services, mobile computing, and social media, traditional security models will not suffice: a focus on information security is imperative.

Ascent Look Out combines the knowledge and insight from subject matter experts across all corners of Atos. Our Business Technologists across the world are ready to share our vision to help you to take advantage of the evolution of technologies and new opportunities we are seeing in the telecoms and media markets.

Bruno FabreExecutive Vice President Telco, Media & UtilitiesAtos


Introduction

Helping you to stay one step ahead

Ascent: thought leadership program from AtosOur Ascent initiatives ensure we deliver the best and most advanced solutions to our clients, helping them stay ahead of the game. Designed for sharing thought leadership with our partners and clients, these initiatives highlight the importance we place on research, development and innovation:

`` Ascent Look Out provides a bird’s eye view of the trends that will shape our world in 2013 and beyond. Market focused, but delivered by both our market and technology experts across the globe, its breadth of vision—over 800 trends across 20 market sectors—allows you to identify trends that are likely to impact your business in the coming years. Each time you turn to Ascent Look Out you will discover something new that will open the door to great opportunities for you.

`` Ascent Journey 2016 provides an in-depth analysis of the key technological trends that will have a major impact on almost every organization across the globe. It shares the predictions and vision of our Scientific Community, detailing how these technologies will shape our and your business through to 2016.

`` Ascent White Papers provide expert insights, practical tips and a thorough understanding of how organizations can use technology to drive business growth and achieve successful transformation. Delivered by our Scientific Community,

they also identify the technologies which we believe will be key tomorrow, answering questions on how to leverage them for current and future business needs.

`` Ascent Magazines provide inspirational, forward-looking views on selected business technology themes. The latest edition, entitled “A vision of sports and technology”, explores one specific area in which Atos is proud to have a unique track record: sport. It is now more than two decades since we began working with the Olympic and Paralympic Games. In the years since our first Games, information technology has moved from being a support function to an integral part of the successful delivery of any event.

Ascent in ActionA series of Ascent events have been organized across several countries to allow our top clients to meet thought leaders and Atos experts. Through discovering more about today’s key technology and business trends—finding out what they are, what the fuss is all about, what the benefits are, what is really going to happen and what they need to look out for—they will be able to approach the future with confidence.

Built on Ascent Journey 2016 and Ascent Look Out, the more operational and intimate Atos Innovation Workshops help key players within your organization drive innovation in your business. Attending an Atos Innovation Workshop will allow you to:

`` Scan the technology and business landscape, stimulating and provoking thinking on how you could best leverage emerging technologies and trends. Adding this new dimension to your insight will help you develop innovation opportunities from unexpected angles.

`` Gain insight into the future of your industry and the potential impact on your organization. See, share and discover the trends in not only your own market, but also adjoining markets, and learn about the possible scenarios for your future. Only through understanding the possibilities can you prepare for every eventuality.

Our experts are always ready to work with you to help drive new opportunities, overcome upcoming challenges or simply to help raise awareness. Whether you are looking to reduce costs and improve efficiency, make full use of social media or understand the opportunities and pitfalls of Business Mobility, do not hesitate to get in touch.


Why do innovation enthusiasts endorse Ascent Look Out?“Organizations face a bewildering number of trends and technologies. It is almost impossible to keep an overview and to set priorities among them. If there is one publication that helps you do just that, it is Atos’ Ascent Look Out.

Atos’ approach and expert knowledge helps you to navigate the dynamics of the business environment in an insightful way, without denying the complexity of today’s economy. I have worked with Ascent Look Out before and I always found the results illuminating.”

Ard-Pieter de ManProfessor of Knowledge Networks and Innovation, VU University Amsterdam; Dean at Sioo, Centre for Organization Studies and Change ManagementThe Netherlands

“If innovation and sustainability are among your top business priorities, Ascent Look Out is the right tool for you. Every chapter provides you with a complete description of the trends that will shape the future, covering all relevant dimensions. Deusto Business School is proud to use the Atos Ascent Look Out information during our executive masters, especially within our Master in Business Innovation (MBI) where our executive students are learning and experimenting with how to use insights and long-term foresight to assess potential futures. This is crucial for preparing us and our organizations for the challenges and opportunities ahead.”

Dr Manuel EscuderoManaging Director of Deusto Business SchoolSpain

“We live in an ever-changing world: the economy, politics, society, young people, customers, brands—and more—are all shifting. At the same time new technologies and trends are popping up, seemingly from nowhere, and all at a speed never encountered before.

Ascent Look Out from Atos is an astute thought leadership tool. Not only will it help you understand this process of change, it will draw your attention to the significant social, political and economic trends out on all our horizons. By acting as a compass, it will help you navigate the many possible scenarios, showing you how to use the new technologies already used across some industries today.”

Eduardo SiciliaDirector Executive MBAEOI Business SchoolSpain


“The ever increasing pace of change in the current global context requires us to embrace increasing levels of complexity, increasing levels of uncertainty, and increasing difficulties of predicting the future by extrapolating from the past. In such times insight based on foresight is ever more important. We need individuals and organizations that help us make sense of the things to come, and provide us with pointers that will help us navigate our future. Atos’ series ‘Ascent Look Out’ is full of such important pointers.”

Dr Bettina von StammDirector & Catalyst Innovation Leadership Forumwww.innovationleadershipforum.orgwww.innovationwave.comhttp://thefutureofinnovation.org

“There is quite a bit of material published nowadays about trends and where particular industries are supposedly heading. Ascent Look Out briefing pack is among the best. There is a rigor behind thinking, which I think is missing in many other publications, and the way that the material is laid out is also engaging.”

Richard WatsonCEO and Founder of the What’s Next Trends Reportwww.nowandnext.comUnited Kingdom

“The Ascent Look Out trends report summarizes technology and market developments well and is helpful for illustrating the drivers of innovation and emerging technologies in the global markets to students. In particular, the innovation and technology radars effectively visualize possible future trends and offer some food for thoughts for students and researchers.”

Marko Seppänen, Associate ProfessorDirector of Center for Innovation and Technology Research Tampere University of TechnologyFinland

“Today, a growth of new technologies together with an increase in internet services is exposing companies and banks to more challenging issues than ever before:`` How do you match customer expectations in terms of time-to-market, access, simplicity, availability, speed, accuracy and of course security?

`` How do you take part and maintain a good position in the new global ecosystem as it transforms?

`` What sustainable and profitable approach should you take?

Ascent Look Out is one of simplest and most efficient digests. Taking all pieces of the puzzle into account, it has helped us find our way by giving a clear understanding of the emerging trends.”

Olivier VandenbilckeHead of Benchmark and InnovationBNP ParibasFrance


“In the new era of innovation, which I call “Open Innovation 2.0”, we see ad-hoc interactions and frictionless processes, creating innovation that cannot be planned—only the probability of breakthroughs increased. This era we are driving rapidly towards is characterized by, for example, stronger user-driver innovation in quadruple helix innovation where public sector, industry, research and the users together shape the direction and outcome.

As we move towards Open Data, platforms and processes as the oil for new innovation and the experimentation and rapid prototyping in real world settings are essential to achieving fast results (be they success or failure), and thus creating scalable and multipliable results sooner. Simultaneous technology and societal innovation will stretch the boundaries and create the new winners.

Exploring insights, combining them and daring to create new, I am delighted to see this very perspective within the Ascent Look Out series of publications.”

Bror SalmelinAdvisor, Innovation Systems, DG Communications Networks, Media and Technology European CommissionBelgium

“Having been deeply involved in innovation management for several years now, both in operative business as well as in education, I can tell that Ascent Look Out is a great example of how to deal with the very important front-loading of your innovation pipeline. It covers all important angles: from social, economic and political macro trends to a detailed description and assessment of technological trends. The adaptation to vertical industries is very helpful; it considers the relevance of the trends to specific sectors. This input is a very valuable starting point for your innovation roadmap: take it, digest it and draw the right conclusions for your own business.”

Harald MüllerDirector Strategic ProjectsSiemens AG, Smart Grid DivisionGermany

“A valuable solution to successfully address the challenges of an ever-changing scene. Ascent Look Out is the result of a new way of working, combining the knowledge and insight from Atos’ communities to yield a truly collaborative global initiative. The result is an engaging deliverable with brilliant contents and clear pictorial views. It presents trends that will drive innovation and emerging technologies that will transform life, business and the global markets.”

Roberto MariscalHead of Innovation Projects Promotion at Iberdrolawww.iberdrola.esSpain


Focus On


Focus On

Business Mobility

Business Mobility is a game changer, but requires evolution in organization and IT systems

What is it?Mobility is not simply another chapter in the smaller, faster, cheaper device story—and it is definitely not about tiny websites or screen-scraped PC applications. Instead, mobility is the catalyst for a much broader shift in systems of engagement.

Business Mobility is about empowerment—it is about empowering consumers, employees, partners, patients, students and citizens in the context of where they are and what they are doing. To achieve this we must analyze the context of these hundreds of thousands of individuals in real time and marry this information with cross-channel digital intelligence. Only then can we proactively deliver the right service, at the right time, at the right place, to the right person on the right channel.

Why the fuss?Employees and consumers now have a direct connection to your services in their pocket. At the end of 2012, the world was counting 6.2 billion active mobile subscriptions and 1.1 billion smartphones had been sold, rising to 10 billion by 2016 (source IDC)—that’s approximately 1.4 devices per capita.

With such widespread adoption of mobile devices, organizations cannot afford to ignore mobile as a platform and the opportunities that Business Mobility brings.

So, what opportunities does Business Mobility bring?Organizations have four main goals when it comes to Business Mobility:

`` Enabling employees to be productive and make key decisions anywhere and on any device

`` Interacting with customers in their moments of decision

`` Connecting all their assets and dynamically reporting on status and usage

`` Enhancing collaboration with partners in the context of their daily workflow

They typically split their mobility approach in two streams—one for corporate users (Enterprise Mobility) and another for consumers (Mobility for Consumers or Engagement Mobility)—as the ambitions, challenges and platform are different in each.

With Enterprise Mobility, the primary goal is to increase the productivity of employees through providing them with the right mobile services at the time they need them. Examples include expenses management, contextual CRM and field force management. Of course, collaboration with partners is important too, as is asset management—though the importance of connecting assets varies across industries, with sectors such as

manufacturing and transportation better able to manage and maintain their assets.

With Mobility for Consumers, organizations see Business Mobility as a game changer that has the potential to transform business models and product strategies. Delivering the right services, to the right person in the right way when this person wants really to engage will transform interactions with consumers, citizens, students and patients, providing an opportunity for reinventing core processes and generating new revenue. Examples include:

`` Automotive/oil and gas—Moving from a product to a consumer-centric approach, building loyalty with the consumer and reselling customized services directly to the driver in the car through the head unit or his smartphone/tablet

`` Utilities—Enabling more dynamic pricing by feeding into tariffs and responding to economic demand through accessing contextual consumption data every fifteen minutes via the automated smart metering infrastructure

`` Healthcare—Interacting with patients outside of the hospital to provide integrated preventive care at home, based on the patient’s immediate context

`` Banking and insurance—Services based on location could include provision of information (such as local currency rates for customers abroad) or enticing a customer to come in and review their insurance options when they are in the vicinity

`` Cities—Boosting mobile as the new primary channel for communication between


BusinessMOBILITY

KEY VISION

Physical context plus digital intelligence, not just online access

Proactive service, not just self-service

Business processes designed for engagement, not just for services originally designed for PCs

JOIN MARKETING AND GO TO MARKET

KEY ORGANISATIONAL & PROCESS ELEMENTS

NEXT GEN IT BLOCKS

6 BILLIONMOBILESUBSCRIPTIONS

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citizen and local government, driving citizen benefits around some of these services: live traffic management, mobile parking services, public transport information and more

`` Retail—Using mobility as a bridge between the retailer’s store and the e-commerce web site to provide a seamless and new innovative shopping experience to the consumer

`` Telecoms—We will see a variety of new context-enriched business mobility services emerge in the market that can be delivered by over-the-top (OTT) providers or by telecoms operators themselves

`` Workforce—Boosting efficiency by connecting infrastructure and workforce for a true mobile experience; collaborating,

sharing and disseminating data and information to any device, enabling predictive maintenance

`` Office/home—Creating (mobile) automation services to enable ambient intelligence and energy-efficiency in homes and offices

Figure 1. The Business Mobility Ecosystem.


What are the barriers to adoption?These goals are commonly shared by organization. However, very few succeed in transforming these into reality. The reasons? Mobility invariably requires evolution across other areas of the business—strategy, organizational structures, business processes, partner eco-systems and IT systems.

From a technical perspective, successful mobile services also draw on social, cloud and Big Data innovation, delivering apps and smart products directly within a customer’s own context. But today, most client IT systems are not ready to handle the multitude of IT challenges that Business Mobility presents: the multichannel paradigm; the network, technical and infrastructure agility required; and also all the middleware, applications and security models that need to be constructed for contextual mobile services. Furthermore, ideological conflicts amongst design and development teams must be avoided.

Drawing on other technology innovationsBig DataBig Data has become the commonly used term for the explosion in volume and variety of electronic information that organizations are exposed to, as their business processes evolve to address the needs of our increasingly connected world. There are a number of new technological evolutions that are driving the emergence of Big Data, including new types of database, new ways of processing data, new visualization technologies, new analytical techniques—and not to mention the vast amounts of data that Business Mobility itself will generate.

Organizations that are able to harness and make sense of these vast quantities of real time contextual data from disparate sources (sensors, social networks and corporate data, for example) and about millions of individuals will gain valuable insights. This will provide them with opportunities for pushing the right targeted mobile services, at the right moment, to the right person, in response to changing environments.

Furthermore, Big Data will enable organizations to work with partners—traditional and new—to monetize this contextual information by extracting the consumer’s path, optimizing existing services and reselling this information.

Data is key to mobility, and Big Data will enable organizations to handle it appropriately.

Cloud ComputingTime-to-market is a key factor in the race for mobile solutions. But with mobile devices evolving at an almost alarming rate, organizations risk delays by having to focus on complex and ever-changing cross-platform considerations. Organizations want to be able to simply focus on the underlying business logic.

As such, a hosted platform delivered in the Cloud provides the idea solution. By combining a hybrid or a private cloud with a Mobile expertise center, organizations can quickly take advantage of the pre-configured, ready-to-go environment. With expert knowledge and best practice already applied, they can focus on bespoke business logic from day one. Organizations will be able to take advantage of a full stack of enterprise mobility solutions from controlling the applications and mobile device deployment to easing the creation of mobile applications.

Coupled with flexible and transparent pricing, cloud’s pay-per-use model—with no upfront development costs—lowers the entry barrier into mobility solutions, and provides a move from CAPEX to OPEX and a faster return on investment.

Security and privacyAs mobility and Cloud Computing break down the concept of defined physical location, a new approach to dealing with IT security is required. The increased portability of data brings the increased risk of unintended exposure, misuse and loss or alienation. Because of the potentially transient nature of the devices, applications and users that access any given data, security mechanisms have to be aligned to the data itself. Advances in identity management (particularly biometrics) and cryptography will enable the security of data in each component of the system. Security in such dynamic environments must be built on the assumption that anyone or any device may get access to the data, but that only authorized users should be able to use it.

The explosion of user related data (both personally created and contextually generated) and how it is used is increasing security and privacy challenges—especially the tension between data exploitation, usage rights and privacy. There is a fine balance to maintain. Individuals, especially on the consumer side, will need to understand that a certain amount of personal data will need to be provided in exchange for these new valuable personalized services. On the other side of the coin, service providers need to ensure that the personal data delivered into their care is treated with great care.


A closer look at Enterprise Mobility Mobility is at the core of many discussions within the enterprise and there are some really clear expectations:

`` CEOs want to smoothly extend the company strategy to customers outside of the point of sale and increase the productivity of employees by providing direct access to the information system from anywhere. To stay competitive and efficient, they want to ensure they have all the tools needed to swiftly launch new mobile services.

`` Business departments want to be able to create new innovative and connected mobile services quickly by focusing only on business ideas and not technical considerations.

`` The IT department wants to provide a secured and controlled platform, enabling business departments to swiftly implement and deploy new mobile services that are interconnected with the information systems.

`` Finally, the purchasing department wants to be able to purchase a top-class solution from a single provider, paying only for what is being used within a flexible model.

There is a platform emerging that will remove today’s barriers and reach today’s expectations: the Mobile Enterprise Application Platform. These platforms support all enterprise mobility requirements, providing a comprehensive, long-term approach to deploying mobility by controlling the deployment of mobile devices, enabling simple, yet secure, integration of information systems, and easing the creation and diffusion of mobile applications.

CONTROL

Manage and control the deployment of mobile devices within your organization.

CONNECT

Connectors

Provision

ProductionDecommission

Provide your mobile devices park with a direct connection to your entire existing information system (software apps, databases, web services, J2EE connectors, …)

CREATE

Create and test mobile services by only focusing on the underlying business logic without taking care about any cross-platform considerations.

CONSUME

Control, automate and monitor the deployment of mobile applications within the enterprise.

SDK PrivateAppStore

Figure 2. The Mobile Enterprise Application Platform.


Mobility for consumers: the retail industry as an exampleThreatened by booming e-commerce, physical stores have to change dramatically. They have one main objective: to enhance the shopping experience of the consumer based on four main axes:

`` Improving the consumer/seller interaction

`` Leveraging the e-commerce offering inside the store

`` Empowering consumers

`` Optimizing the checkout

Business Mobility is a true opportunity for retailers. Harmonizing the mobile, the physical store and the website brings a simple solution across these four axes. By bringing e-commerce services in-store and strengthening store advantages, retailers can enrich consumer experience before, during and after store visits.

Oops... just a few minutes for my train departure and I need a new pair of earphones! I can make it!

Perfect, it’s the one I want. Sending it to my basket and ready to check-out.

Ok, let me check-in to connect with the shop Wifi. I’m sure it will take only a few minutes if I’m able to use my app.

Tap in my loyalty password to pay... as easy as iTunes!

Looking for earphones... just at the opposite side from where I’m... as usual... let’s go!

Payment done! A ticket is also generated for me. And I just need to show it at the POS.

So easy! Just tapping the label I can get extended information!

Everything went smoothly and fast. Maybe less than a minute. I think I’ve still got some time for a coffee now.

Figure 3. Enhancing the Consumer’s Shopping Experience.


Furthermore, Business Mobility enables a new hybrid digital distribution, designed for connected (always-on) consumers. This brand new end-to-end shopping experience—the Digital Store—natively includes the physical

store without interrupting the digital experience of the consumer. Redesigned, the traditional store is now a vital asset for the retailer, bringing the elements that e-commerce services struggle to provide:

a touch experience, immediacy of product availability, advice and services. The Digital Store is an amplifier of the consumer digital experience.

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Figure 4. The Digital Store Ecosystem.


A day in the life ofImagine the following scenario based on how Business Mobility can enhance the consumer experience:

Zoe is travelling with Marie on a well-deserved vacation. Her friend has an amazing tiny travel speaker that provides a very high music quality when plugged directly into her Samsung smartphone! It was a gift so her friend doesn’t really know where to buy it or its price. Zoe immediately launches her favorite retailer application, which presents a product description thanks to automatic image recognition. It is consistent with Zoe’s budget and available in pink—her favorite color. Zoe immediately saves it in her wish list and ‘likes’” it to her Facebook profile. Two friends on her network have also liked this product and are very satisfied with it!

The week after, back from vacation, Zoe is in the airport, travelling with Marc to a business meeting abroad. She has to meet him at the boarding gate in 20 minutes. The retailer application notifies her that the pink tiny travel speaker is available in a store in the airport. A ‘For you Zoe only’ one-hour promotional coupon shows up, giving her a 20 percent discount.

However, Zoe is in a rush; boarding is in 20 minutes. The application told her that the product checkout time is currently estimated to be 10 minutes at most. She rushes over the shop (thanks to the map provided by the application), finds the tiny travel speaker, adds it to her shopping basket, checks it out and redeems the promotional voucher. At the last moment, Zoe doubts whether the speaker is compatible with her ‘old’ iPhone 3GS. She scans the product and scans the description; it says that the iPhone is compatible, but not specifically the 3GS. The mobile app indicates that two sellers are available. She pushes the HELP button and the apps told her that Sophie is on her way to help.

Sophie appears quickly and is super-happy, empathic and helpful, so Zoé ‘likes’ Sophie in the application. Sophie has already synced Zoe’s basket on her seller mobile device and Zoe had already joined the loyalty program and registered her loyalty card in mobile app. This allowed Sophie to access Zoe’s customer profile and purchase history when she synced Zoe’s shopping basket, allowing her to personalize her speech. Using NFC tap between the two mobile devices, Sophie shares additional product information with Zoe.

Zoe swipes her mobile to pay (without going to the cash mark) and heads off.

Walking to the boarding gate, Zoe gets a notification that she has now reached the next level of loyalty points and can get 20 percent discount off the next David Guetta show, which is in her wish list but a bit too expensive. Immediately, with just a four-digit code, she buys the tickets on her phone and opts to get the tickets sent directly sent to her phone.

7.5 minutes later, Zoe arrives at the plane in time for her flight.


Ascent Look Out - Telecoms, Media & Technology 25

Innovation Radars


Innovation Radars

2014+ SEP Innovation Radar:Socio-Cultural The impact levels of new and emerging macro trends are defined as emerging (likely to drive business needs in the future — keep watching), through maturing, to burning (you cannot afford to ignore — already driving new business needs).

Emerging issues Maturing issues Burning issues

Urbanization

Inherent Reliance on Technology

Changing Attitudes Towards Work(place)

Digitally Connected Society

Changing Family Unit

Eco-Awareness

Information Owned by Many

Multi-Ethnic Society

IndividualizationAging Population

Community Building

Intensive Lifestyles

© Atos 2013. All rights reserved.

The terms outlined here are summarized on the following pages and are discussed in greater detail on chapter Innovation Radars in Detail


Aging populationThe aging population constitutes a shift in the distribution of a country’s population towards a higher average age. Population aging arises from two (possibly related) demographic effects: increasing longevity and declining fertility.

Changing attitude towards work(place)A phrase that brings the idea of work-life balance into focus is ‘Work to live, don’t live to work’. It is also related to the physical location where work would need to be performed (home, office, someplace else) and the way people are (or want to be) managed.

Changing family unitOver the past couple of decades, particularly in the West, the traditional family unit has radically changed and new models have arisen. There has been a decrease in the number of children living in families that are headed by a couple and an increase in those living in families with a lone parent.

Community buildingCommunity building is directed towards the creation or enhancement of community between individuals within a regional area (such as a neighborhood) or with a common interest (that may or may not be limited to geographical boundaries).

Digitally-connected societyA digitally connected society is an electronic grouping of individuals, enabled by the Web, characterized by common interests. It may have a distinctive culture and institutions.

Eco-awarenessThe green movement (or eco-movement) is a political and societal movement that advocates goals, including environmentalism, sustainability, non-violence and social justice concerns.

IndividualizationIndividualization is a term used to describe a process towards a moral, political or social outlook that stresses human independence and the importance of individual self-reliance and liberty.

Information owned by manyWith the first generation of the Internet, information was provided and owned by the few for the consumption of the many. The second generation Internet sees the many now willing and able to contribute to the wealth of knowledge and information appearing within many diverse sources. It is not easy to either seek out all the information or influence the impression that it is making.

Inherent reliance on technologyReliance on technology means that our personal world, and our society, cannot function without the use of technological devices. This includes cell phones, debit and credit cards, computers, the Internet and cars.

Intensive lifestylesThe idea of intensive lifestyles relates to work and the work-life balance of a person and his or her control over the conditions in the workplace. It mutually benefits the individual, business and society when a person’s personal life is balanced with his or her own job.

Multi-ethnic societyMulti-ethnic societies, in contrast to mono-ethnic societies, integrate different ethnic groups--irrespective of differences in culture, race and history, under a common social identity larger than one ‘nation’ in the conventional sense.

UrbanizationUrbanization is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. Urbanization is also defined by the United Nations as movement of people from rural to urban areas with population growth equating to urban migration.


The impact levels of new and emerging macro trends are defined as emerging (likely to drive business needs in the future—keep watching), through maturing, to burning (you cannot afford to ignore — already driving new business needs).

Innovation Radars

2014+ SEP Innovation Radar:Economic


Burning issues Maturing issues Emerging issues

Rise of the Entreployee

Multi-Sided Markets

Industry Consolidaton

Venture Philanthropy

Shifting Centers of Economic Activity

Ubiquitous Access to Information

Greening Business

Shift to Knowledge-Intensive Industries

Competition for Natural Resources and Alternative Energy Sources

Back-Shoring

Multi-Currency Monetary

System

Stakeholder Power

Knowledge Process Outsourcing

Global Consumer Markets

Global Labor & Talent Market

Peer-to-Peer Trading

Cyber Threats

Economic Volatility

De-Commoditization



Back-shoringBack-shoring is a countertrend for Western companies that have off-shored manufacturing facilities to cheap labor cost countries. High transportation costs have made it more economical to back-shore production activities and automate them, thus eliminating labor and transportation costs.

Competition for natural resources and alternative energy sourcesAs long-term economic growth accelerates, we are using natural resources and energy sources at increasing rates. This leads to increasing competition over needed resources such as oil, water, energy, grain and raw materials.

Cyber threatsComputer hacking represents an increasing threat, especially for large organizations. Attacks can come from amateur hackers, terrorist organizations, government agencies and competitors (industrial espionage).

De-commoditizationCommoditization is a process that transforms the market for a unique, branded product into a market based on undifferentiated price competition. In economic terms, the market changes from one of monopolistic competition to one of perfect competition.

Economic volatilityAn economic downturn relates to a period of reduced economic activity, also known as a business cycle contraction. In economics, the term ‘recession’ describes the reduction of a country’s GDP for at least two successive quarters of a year.

Global consumer marketsIt is expected that a billion new consumers will enter the global consumer marketplace as soon as the last economic downturn subsides and revived economic growth in emerging markets pushes consumers beyond the threshold level of USD 3,700 in annual household income.

Global labor and talent marketOngoing shifts in labor and talent will be far more profound than migration of jobs to low-wage countries. The shift to knowledge-intensive industries continues to highlight the importance and scarcity of well-trained talent with degrees in science, technology and other technical fields.

Greening businessThe concept of, and discussion on, the carbon footprint originates from the green movement and has been on the political agenda for some time. It has recently been picked up by economists as well, and not just because of rising energy costs.

Industry consolidationIndustry consolidation refers to the mergers or acquisitions of many smaller companies into much larger ones within specific sectors. An acquisition, also known as a takeover, is the buying of one company (the ‘target’) by another. A merger is similar, but with two companies coming together with equal status.

Knowledge Process OutsourcingUnlike traditional business process outsourcing initiatives, Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) involves knowledge-intensive business processes that require significant domain expertise, analytic skills, and judgment and decision-making capabilities.

Multi-sided marketsIn the economic theory of two-sided markets, the value flow is made possible by a platform between two different markets. If one side of the market grows, it influences the other side of the market positive, the so called network effect.

Multi-currency monetary systemAs investors and multinationals increase their exposure to fast-growing emerging economies, international demand for developing economy currencies will grow, making way for a global monetary system with more than one dominant currency.


Peer-to-peer tradingPeople are increasingly buying and selling directly to and from one another using online trading systems (platforms). These platforms allow individual members to complete financial transactions by using an auction-style process that lets members offer used or new products and services for a specific amount or on a ‘best offer’ basis.

Rise of the entreployee‘Entreployee’ is the term used to describe a new type of employee who markets his or her working abilities on his or her own initiative and who, although formally a dependent employee, bears the risks that have traditionally been those of entrepreneurs.

Shifting centers of economic activityThe world has embarked on a massive realignment of economic activity as a consequence of economic liberalization, technological advances, capital market developments and demographic shifts.

Shift to knowledge-intensive industriesProducts and processes are too easily replicated; automation of simple tasks and transactions is widespread. Organizations will need to differentiate themselves through knowledge relationships with partners and customers.

Stakeholder powerFirms are increasingly influenced by the views and concerns of stakeholders, anyone that their business impacts. This includes anyone in the wider ecosystem that is impacted by the company: customers, anyone in the value chain and societies local to their business sites.

Ubiquitous access to informationThe increasing adoption of 3G smartphones (such as Apple’s iPhone and Android phones) is making access to anytime/anywhere information a reality. Access to information has therefore become almost universal.

Venture philanthropyVenture philanthropy (also termed philanthrocapitalism) is a system that bases its approach to fulfilling philanthropic goals on tried and tested concepts and techniques from venture capital and traditional financial investment.


The impact levels of new and emerging macro trends are defined as emerging (likely to drive business needs in the future—keep watching), through maturing, to burning (you cannot afford to ignore—already driving new business needs).


Transparency & Accountability

EU Integration Service-Oriented Government

Hacktivism E-Democracy

Privacy of Information

Protectionism

E-Politics

A�ordability of Social Security & ServicesLean Government

Government Activism

Emerging Powers

Green Politics


Innovation Radars

2014+ SEP Innovation Radar:Political



Affordability of social security and servicesAs the size of the workforce declines, funding for healthcare and pension assistance will shrink.

E-democracyE-democracy covers (online) communication media that gives citizens a limited ability for making leaders/politicians responsible for their actions in the public sphere. It is about the adoption of electronic technology in the existing or an improved democratic process.

E-politicsE-politics is a form of direct democracy that uses information and communication technologies and strategies for political and governance processes, along with cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying and organizing.

EU integrationEU integration is the process of political, economic and, in some cases, social and cultural integration of European states. Integration is needed to truly operate as a single market.

Emerging powersGlobalization is driving new dimensions of power; its definition has extended far beyond its military connotations to include economics, resources and technology. In terms of size, speed and directional flow, the transfer of global wealth and economic power is without precedent in modern history.

Government activismGovernment activism or intervention is any action taken by a government beyond the basic regulation of its economy or society. Intervention or activism can be aimed at a variety of political, societal or economic objectives.

Green politicsGreen politics or green ideology is the political principle that places a great importance on ecological and environmental goals, and on achieving these goals through broad-based, participatory democracy and consensual decision-making.

Hacktivism – alternative protestationIt is a form of online protest. A hacktivist uses the same tools and techniques as a hacker, but does so in order to disrupt services and bring attention to a political or social cause.

Lean governmentIdeally, government would have fewer rules, less bureaucracy and fewer public servants. A leaner government body must be more effective, this cannot just be about cutbacks.

Privacy of informationThere is a general expanding volume of (potentially) sensitive personal information held, not only in government and business databases, but also posted by people themselves (on Facebook for instance). This is driving public concern about privacy protection.

ProtectionismProtectionism is a policy of protecting domestic industries and workers against foreign competition by means of tariffs, subsidies, import quotas and other such restrictions or handicaps placed on the imports of foreign competitors

Service-oriented governmentPublic organizations are struggling with fundamental challenges. These are worsened by budget constraints and rising citizen demands, leaving public services in a position where they are expected to do more with less.

Transparency and accountabilityAccountability is an important factor in securing good governance and, thus, the legitimacy of public power. Accountability only enables negative feedback after a decision or action, whereas transparency also enables negative feedback before or during a decision or action.


Innovation Radars

2014+ CxO Agenda Radar


Emerging

Adolescent

Early adoption

Mainstream

Now Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4

SoLoMo

CorporateGovernance and Risk

Big Data

IT/OT ConvergenceSustainablity

Green IT

Analytics

Emerging Markets Growth

Cloud ServicesAsset Management

O�shoring Changes

Servitization

Customer Demands and IntimacyConsumerization of IT

Traceability and Visibility

Aging Workforce

Business Agility through IT Transformation and Liquid IT

Social Business

Open InnovationVideo

Smart Mobility

Collaborative Ideas Management

Lean Everywhere

Finding and Retaining Talent

Business / IT Alignment



Each trend has been analyzed from three perspectives: potential size of impact on your business; likely time to impact your business and maturity. The radar diagram provides a pictorial view of our findings, allowing you to quickly understand how disruptive each trend is likely to be and the actions you might consider taking. Polar co-ordinates have been used to depict the likely time to impact your business along with the potential size of the impact. Colors are used to represent the maturity of each trend.

`` Transformational: likely to require transformational changes within organizations.

`` High: it will have high impact at work on companies (process, products and services) and the everyday lives of users/consumers.

`` Medium: it will impact on people and organizations, enhancing company’s process services or the everyday lives of users and consumers.

`` Low: more likely to require minor improvements rather than radical changes.

`` Emerging (Red): mainly expressed by academia and a very small number of specialized markets.

`` Adolescent (Amber): expressed more widely by analysts and thought-leaders.

`` Early adopter (Green): seen more widely in the markets. Organizations starting to look for solutions.

`` Mainstream (White): there is a clear need and many organizations are implementing solutions.

`` Now-1 year: look today at how solutions address need.

`` 2-3 years: consider potential solutions with maybe some pilots.

`` 4+ years: understand now and consider the potential implications and how these could be addressed.


Aging workforceBaby-boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, are starting to retire, but for many continuation of work after the official retirement age will be a financial necessity.

AnalyticsThe aim of analytics is to extract knowledge from data by finding the internal relations between those data, applying advanced algorithms. Analytics enables the understanding of patterns, cause and effect and prediction in large data sets containing both structured and unstructured information.

Asset managementAsset management is increasingly a critical business activity for any asset-owning organization or enterprise; infrastructure, transport, manufacturing and chemicals are classic examples.

Big DataBig Data describes how you get competitive advantage from managing the new volumes of data that will become a concern for every knowledge company. We are witnessing an explosive growth of the information that all facets of humanity are creating and processing.

Business agility through IT transformation and Liquid ITBeing large and agile requires increased integration between the business and IT. The need for increased business agility and streamlined business processes in which IT is no longer the bottleneck to change, has led to the concept of ‘Liquid IT’.

Business IT alignmentThe majority of IT-enabled business change still fails to deliver what’s needed at the expected time and cost. The use of ‘next practice’ techniques which embrace diversity rather than artificially simplifying it are much more likely to achieve success.

Cloud servicesCloud Computing as a delivered service can be seen as the next generation of utility computing, which has been providing processing and storage on an ‘on demand’ basis for many years. It is now seen as the dominant form of IT service delivery for the future.

Collaborative ideas managementCollaborative ideas management allows the right people to get in touch to generate the ideas, and the right ideas to reach the right people. It can be key to ensuring that an innovation program is successful.

Consumerization of ITConsumerization of IT, starting with ‘bring-your-own-device’ (BYOD) and progressing to ‘bring-your-own-application’ in the enterprise is one of the most hotly debated subjects today. People increasingly expect tools at work that are as good and intuitive as those they have at home, or to bring those tools to work.

Corporate governance and riskStrong governance manages risks but can also inhibit innovation, and the best balance for both national finances and corporate policy is continuously sought. The recent financial crisis represented a failure of corporate governance and risk management.

Customer demands and intimacyThe Internet gives customers more access to information, more choice and a louder voice. Retaining customers becomes an increasingly complex task requiring intimacy and transparency to ensure their demands are met.

Emerging markets growthA profound shift in global economic power from West to East is under way with Western economies playing a diminishing role in the global economy over time whilst China, India and other emerging markets such as Brazil and Russia play an ever-increasing one.

Finding and retaining talentChanges in population demographics, generational differences, education concerns and differences in quality and depth of skills are leading to shortfalls of critical skills in all economies, resulting in increased competition to recruit and retain the best talent.

Green IT‘Green IT’ has two major themes: ‘Green for IT’: IT contributes to sustainable development by for example a lower carbon footprint; ‘IT for green’: IT to serve green growth by enabling smarter, lower consumption, greener, solutions.


IT-OT convergenceIT-OT convergence in manufacturing involves integrated architecture of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), manufacturing execution (MES) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.

Lean everywhereReducing enterprise costs and improving business processes remained high on the CEO agenda through 2013, with many CEOs investing in IT for these reasons. Lean provides a way to make continuous improvement through removal of waste and synchronization of processes to provide balanced throughput, matched to customer demand.

Offshoring changesMany Western production institutions have de-localized parts of their business to the East, in particular China. There is a concern around the profitability of these investments as profit from the sale of these goods is far lower than if they were made in the West.

Open InnovationOpen Innovation encourages organizations to seek inspiration from a wider ecosystem that includes partners, suppliers, customers, competitors, universities, consumers, and the many sources of knowledge in today’s widely connected world.

ServitizationServices are increasingly being employed as profitable and stable revenue streams to enhance commoditizing product businesses. Some leading firms are adopting a ‘solutions’ business model, offering customized solutions to clients, where manufacturing no longer is a differentiating process.

Smart MobilitySmart Mobility turns context sensitive information on a mobile device--such as where people are, when they are there, what they are doing there and who they are (and who they connect with)--into direct and sustainable business advantage.

SoLoMoSocial: leverage social behaviors to expand the reach and popularity of your service or application and to collect content (crowdsourcing).

Local: leverage location information (using GPS, Wi-Fi or Cell-ID) to increase proximity and relevance of the content to the user.

Mobile: use mobile as the primary vector of your service (mobile internet, native app referenced in app stores), enabling instant contribution and use.

Social businessSocial business includes all the social computing trends of the last decade and delivers an integrated vision on how to use social technology to leverage the enterprise ecosystem by making use of web technologies on any device for two way communication and collaboration.

SustainabilitySustainability is now taking center stage in political, social and economic arenas. It demands new thinking about how organizations can ensure that their business operations thrive rather than just survive in a world of limited growth and increasingly limited resources.

Traceability and visibilityAs workers become more mobile, and customers want to ensure the safety and origin of products, traceability will be key for products—from constituents to consumer—and for personnel movements and behaviors.

VideoVideo will become the de facto means of communication, collaboration and knowledge dissemination. This is causing a major change in ways of working and will have a similarly big impact on the need for companies to have a strategy its use, storage and management.


Innovation Radars

2014+ Enabling Information Technologies Radar


Emerging

Adolescent

Early adoption

Mainstream


AI Enhanced Robots

Context BrokerMachine-to-Machine

Next Generation Wireless Communication

Internet of Things

Natural Language Processing

Semantic WebSemantic Search Engines

Augmented Reality

Plastics Transistors

Natural Language Avatars

Open Source Hardware

3D Location-Analytics

Web-Based Peer-to-Peer

Big Data Processing

Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Software Defined Networks

Business ProcessManagement Systems

IPv6

Semantic Data IntegrationSerious Gaming

Mobile Payments

Multi-Touch

Biometrics

3D Printing

NoSQL

NFC

Machine Learning

Mesh Networks Distributed Social Networks

ComplexData Visualization

Cloud Orchestration

3D Displays

Nanocomputers

Miniaturized Power

Wireless Power

Fabric Based Computing

Holographic Data Storage

Computer Vision

Virtual Retinal Displays

Universal Translators

Physical Unclonable Functions



Each trend has been analyzed from three perspectives: potential size of impact on your business; likely time to impact your business and maturity. The radar diagram provides a pictorial view of our findings, allowing you to quickly understand how disruptive each trend is likely to be and the actions you might consider taking. Polar co-ordinates have been used to depict the likely time to impact your business along with the potential size of the impact. Colors are used to represent the maturity of each trend.

`` Transformational: likely to require transformation changes within organizations.

`` High: it will have high impact at work on companies (process, products and services) and people walk of live as user / consumer.

`` Medium: it will impact people and organizations, enhancing their processes and services, or affecting users’ and consumers’ lives.

`` Low: more likely to require minor improvements rather than radical changes.

`` Emerging (Red): mainly expressed by academia and a very small number of specialized markets.

`` Adolescent (Amber): expressed more widely by analysts and thought-leaders.

`` Early adopter (Green): seen more widely by clients markets. Clients starting to look for solutions.

`` Mainstream (White): there is a clear need and many clients are implementing solutions.

`` Now-1 year: look today at how solutions address need.

`` 2-3 years: consider potential solutions with maybe some pilots.

`` 4+ years: understand now and consider the potential implications and how these could be addressed.


3D displayAny display device that creates the perception of depth to the viewer can be described as a 3D display. 3D perception can be brought about by rendering a real volume in the air with light dots (volumetric display). It can also be artificially created.

3D location-analyticsGeographical information systems (GIS) are systems capable of capturing, storing, analyzing and displaying information referenced according to its geographical location, the next generation also taking the third dimension into account.

3D printing3D printing is a manufacturing technology that is used to build 3D objects. It superposes layers of material, originally a melted polymer, with each layer being built using techniques similar to inkjet printing.

AI enhanced robotsCoupled with robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables the creation of realistic autonomic simulations of physical systems. The underlying technology is built around advanced machine learning algorithms.

Augmented realityA user’s perception of the world is supplemented with relevant information via a device (headset or display). The superimposed information usually includes graphics, but could also be audio or other sensory information such as smell.

Big Data processingThe Internet has given rise to global companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter. They manage data on a massive scale and find ways to use it beyond its original means.

BiometricsAutomated use of unique and easy to measure characteristics of a person to determine and verify identity. Can be physiological (such as fingerprints, iris or veins) or behavioral (such as typing rhythm or voice).

Business Process Management SystemsBusiness Process Management Systems (BPMS) enable management of all the stages of business process lifecycle: design, modeling, execution, monitoring and optimization.

Cloud orchestrationCloud orchestration relates to the connectivity of IT and business process levels between cloud environments.

Complex data visualizationBusiness Intelligence (BI) tools feature traditional data visualization capabilities, such as the ability to generate curves, histograms or scatterplot from vectorial data; next generation data visualization covers much more complex Big Data problems.

Computer visionComputer systems that are able to gather information from images and become artificial vision systems implemented in software and/or hardware.

Context brokerContext brokers collect and store data, deduce context and trigger actions based on that context. They are critical to the delivery of context-enriched services.

Distributed social networksSocial network initiatives are developing social networking platforms that could be operated in a federated and distributed mode. Many projects are federated under the ‘federated social web’ banner.

Enterprise decision management and rulesEDM and rules spans enterprise governance of business decisions and business rules, up to implementation of business decisions and business rules supporting flexible business processes.

Fabric-based computingFabric-based computing aims to provide scalable and cheap IT resources to many different users and applications. The fabric is defined as a physical fully meshed network of IT resources (CPU, memory, storage and network).

Holographic data storageHolography records data through the full 3D volume of thick photosensitive storage medium. In addition, holography allows a million bits of data to be written and read in parallel with a single flash of light.

Internet of Things (IoT)The next revolution following the World Wide Web; it will provide new bridges between real life and the virtual world. The Internet will no longer be merely a network of ‘human brain’, but will integrate real-life objects, sensors and physical activities.

IPv6IPv6 was designed in the 1990’s to address several deficiencies of IPv4 including address space, improved security and privacy, and multicasting.


Machine learningMachine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence concerned with the conception and design of algorithms that allow computer systems to ‘learn’ without being explicitly programmed.

Machine-to-MachineMachine-to-Machine (M2M) technologies link machines to an information system, generally to automate existing humanly-performed operations or to enable new services based on remote connected devices

Mesh networksMesh networks are decentralized, local area networks, formed by meshes of peer nodes. Full-mesh has each node connected to every other node, while partial-mesh has each node connected only to some nodes.

Miniaturized powerNanogenerators are energy-harvesting devices based on highly miniaturized structures capable of converting ambient energy, such as kinetic energy, into electric energy.

Mobile paymentsPayments for products or services between two parties, with a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, to facilitate the act of paying.

Multi-touch user interfaceMulti-touch user interfaces (MTUI) can recognize many gestures from multiple places on a device simultaneously, allowing several users to interact with an application at the same time or one user to interact at different points with multiple inputs.

NanocomputersLiterally, denotes computing hardware with fundamental components that measure in the realm of nanometers.

Natural language avatarsAvatars and virtual assistants are the electronic equivalents of real-world reception desk staff, designed to help users on administrative tasks and to locate and browse information in a friendly, yet effective, way.

Natural-language processingNatural-language processing (NLP) is the automatic ability to understand text or audio speech data and extract valuable information from it.

Near Field CommunicationNear Field Communication (NFC) allows devices such as mobile phones to communicate wirelessly over a very short distance and perform tag or card reading, card emulation and device-to-device data exchange.

Next generation wireless communicationLTE and fifth-generation communications system (5G) are the next step in wireless communications. LTE is able to provide a comprehensive IP solution where voice, data and streamed multimedia give users an ‘anytime, anywhere’ basis with higher data rates than previous generations.

NoSQLNoSQL, which stands for Not Only SQL, refers to a trend in the field of database management systems that aims to give up the classical relational model.

Open source hardwareOpen source hardware (OSH) tries to extend the ideas and methodologies popularized in open source software development to hardware development.

Physical unclonable functions (PUF)Physically unclonable functions (PUF) can be seen as ‘hardware biometrics’ or a way to produce a ‘fingerprint’ of a physical object. Authentication of a PUF-equipped device is performed using a challenge-response protocol.

Plastic transistorsManufacturing technologies now allow us to create polymer-based transistors. Latest advances allow semiconductors to be printed on various substrates.

Privacy-enhancing technologiesThe career and personal life of internet users could be severely impacted if they are not cautious enough with the personal data they (or relatives) make available—through posts, multimedia content sharing, for instance.

Semantic data integrationSemantic data integration is an umbrella term for combining heterogeneous data using open standards and semantic technologies. Existing and legacy SQL-based solutions are already being turned into a semantic data cloud.

Semantic search enginesSemantic search is based on the notion of improving search engines by making the system aware of the meaning (semantics) of both the searcher query and the content of the searchable data.


Semantic WebThe Semantic Web is an extension of the Web that aims to be directly processed by machines. It is based on the idea that semantic information is explicitly provided and not inferred in any way.

Serious gamingAny games that do not have entertainment, enjoyment or fun as their primary purpose. Serious gaming builds on simulation (to train by practice) and gamification.

Software defined networksNetwork Intelligence aims to address the need for information visibility and for understanding real-time traffic. Software defined networks allow low-level network separation and fast reconfiguration based on software rules.

Universal translatorsSpeech recognition, machine translation and voice synthesis have significantly progressed and can be combined to deliver universal translators capable of transforming text or speech in a language to text or speech in another one.

Virtual retinal displayVirtual retinal display (VRD) entails broadcasting images directly onto the retina of the human eye. Lasers and LEDs are used to project the image. To the user, images and information will appear as if floating in front of the eye.

Web-based peer-to-peerPeer-to-peer (P2P) network technology involves creating overlays on top of established networks. Overlays follow alternative metrics and addressing schemes to adapt the search for shared resources among the connected peers.

Wireless powerWireless power aims at transferring electric energy to devices without the use of electric cords. Some devices, such as electric toothbrushes, smartphones and computer mice, can already be powered wirelessly.


Telecoms, Media & Technology Market View



Telecoms Business Imperatives

Ecosystems: drive, do not be drivenLast decade’s attempts by Telecoms companies to safeguard their exclusive ownership of the customer relationship by spanning the full services spectrum—from traditional communication, broadband access, device sales, media content production and gaming to payment, banking and web communities—only rarely led to sustainable return. The defensive reflex of existing market players in these domains, and Telecoms companies missing competencies outside of their traditional footprint, led to a first rebound.

Nonetheless, Telecoms companies need to strengthen their intermediary role in the digital value chain in order to actively participate in the evolution of new business models. They need to re-think partnership models, which might give them less control over the ultimate customer relationship but will enable them to accelerate demand for their core services. We expect strategic alliances with established brands in retail, media and entertainment, information technologies, finance and automotive to be key success factors in ensuring a prosperous future for today’s telecoms service providers.

Finally, telecoms service providers should increasingly focus on innovation work in order to explore new business models and test the ground for value add solutions in the marketplace. Externalized ‘speedboat’ entities, such as spin-offs and joint ventures, will be best suited to compete in the highly dynamic environment of Open Innovation.

Cash cow: how much money can you get out?Today, in all geographies, the revenue from the voice market is shrinking in both fixed and mobile, however the broadband data market is growing in both fixed and mobile. Telecoms companies are suffering significantly as their cash cow disappears into the distance, and they have a limited time to take advantage of the profit margins voice brings. Margins of the past are not accessible for current investments.

Business value: focus on network excellenceIn the uncertain waters of new global competition and emerging business models there is one fixed point on the compass of every network operator: its basic ‘bit pipe’ carrier services. It is the one most sizable item on the balance sheet and the core, indisputable value a telecoms company delivers to the rest of world. Thus, the importance of network capacity and service quality will grow in line with the increasing dependency that economies, governments and our social lives have on communication.

Network carriers need to explore next generation technologies, not only to increase capacity and customer experience, but also to implement strategies to turn technical features and capabilities into flexibly ‘productizable’ service differentiators. On the path to increasing commoditization of the bit pipe, intelligent management of the latter will be of paramount importance for sustaining

profitability and creating competitive advantage. Networks need to be optimized to efficiently handle the ever growing volumes of video and peer-to-peer streaming through intelligent content distribution, encoding technologies, network optimization or data offloading strategies. Equally, subscriber policy and quality of service management needs to enable better, real-time control over client-specific service delivery parameters.

Virtual reality applications, 3D and HD video, IP-TV, online games with demanding real-time requirements and professional applications delivered to zero-client desktops from the Cloud will also create the business case for monetizing differentiated service levels in that market segment.

Since the network and network connectivity layer are vital building blocks for successful Cloud implementations, the relevance of network excellence is growing.


Monetization: develop new models for core telecoms servicesThe challenge of the monetization of telecoms services is a totally different when you look at emerging, evolving and saturated markets. While emerging markets are characterized by high demand and promising growth potential, it is the wallet size of the average customer that requires attention when launching products, calculating subsidies and offering payment schemes. On the opposite side, saturated markets in developed geographies feature extreme competition, high customer expectations and consumer friendly regulation. For the latter, we see monetization opportunities in number of directions:

`` Tiered volume based data tariff schemes: As data usage soars, due to rich content, video, peer-to-peer communication and Web-TV, and, as Telecoms companies rarely receive payments from such third party applications, it is a natural for them to ask for a fair price-for-service scheme. This is nothing new to the industry, but should be re-evaluated in order to establish a new attitude to service value and differentiation after a few years of ‘all you can eat’ consumer mentality. At the same time Telecoms companies are also looking for third party sponsored content where the content provider pays for additional bandwidth needed for good quality viewing, or customers are offered to pay additional fee for the duration of a video clip to get higher bandwidth than defined by their subscription.

`` Service levels match client usage profile: Service availability, latency and jitter, average capacity or peak performance guarantees and security levels are service features that matter to customers and should be seen as niche sources of revenues. Price elasticity and level of adoption will differ for customer segments and implementation costs will need to be relative. To manage the latter, telecoms providers need to enforce their interest regarding SLA management and drive its standardization in industry organizations, such as TMF or GSMA.

`` ‘Anything connected’ telecoms services: Enhanced connectivity, almost ubiquitous mobility, intelligent and autonomous power supply and the inevitable move to IPv6 are all building the momentum for the transition into an anything connected world. The requirements for the underlying Machine-to-Machine communications are going to differ greatly: smart electricity metering and health surveillance will have opposing needs in terms of availability, mobility and bandwidth. Telecoms companies that manage to productize adequate service types will reap the fruits of early market entry.

`` Ubiquitous ‘all-in’ digital content delivery: A number of digital goods delivered by content providers over third party mobile networks place the consumer at risk of additional charges. Flat rates are not the only answer: instead, ‘sending party pays’—or subscription based pricing schemes that include any additional charges—could be implemented by

cooperation between the digital content provider and the network operator. Ultimately, such models will help secure a telecoms company’s revenue share with over-the-top (OTT) services.

`` Value-based tariff schemes: Increasingly, operators are offering pricing metrics based on value—metrics that more closely follow the usage patterns of the end-user. Through profiling analysis based on empirical data, and even end-user interviews, operators are increasingly offering tariffs based on value. With LTE, telecoms companies will be able to manage their networks to give priority to bandwidth in certain locations, for example. This could be integrated into new service bundles.

M2M provides new value-added servicesThere will be a ‘one-to-many’ relationship between an individual and his/her connected devices. These connected devices will not all be controlled by the Telecoms service provider (nor any other industry or player). Such connected devices could be user interface devices (such as PCs, tablets, smartphones or connected TVs), but also increasingly M2M--mainly metering--devices. All these devices might have a temporary situational relevance to the end customer. The greatest value would be provided to the end user by correlating and analyzing the data coming from/generated by these devices in real time, and acting on it in real-time with new value-added services.


Agility: avoid inflexible BSS/OSS that slows your paceEvery telecoms provider’s CIO is familiar with the easy argument that enterprise IT is constantly behind schedule. It is the Business and Operations Support Systems (BSS/OSS) that are the usual suspects. Your company should be able to respond quickly to the latest surprise move of the competition, and the newest genius of corporate marketing should not need months to bring new products to full commercial use.

The competition is further increasing along two dimensions: entry into the market of new low-cost competition and the innovations coming from new over-the-top entrants. Telecoms companies need to be agile to act, as well as react, in response.

The CIO’s question when it comes to IT innovation is not about the ‘if’, but rather about the ‘which first’:

`` Technological refresh projects need to be undertaken to catch-up with state of the art IT.

`` The introduction of new Radio Access Network technologies (that cater for more bandwidth and providing self-organizing and optimizing networks) will need full integration and support of the OSS/BSS in order to gain the maximum benefits of the new technologies.

`` Innovation pressures for new services, partnership schemes and wholesale arrangements need to be accounted for in the BSS/OSS stack.

`` The promise of cost optimizations made by IT virtualization, new enterprise desktop solutions and Cloud based services cannot be ignored.

`` Completely new domains of business, such as e-Health, Smart Grid, app stores, Cloud offerings, connected home and related partner ecosystems need to be enabled.

At current stage, IT is in catch-up mode and needs executive attention and smart budget allocation, combined with reliable, powerful partners to execute it. To get the most out of LTE (the technology that partly has to satisfy the huge data demand), OSS (and, to a certain extent, also BSS) needs radical changes: it needs to support more network technologies and provide more automation.


Telecoms Business Trends

Privacy: strengthen your brand’s trustworthinessOur social media engagement, online commerce, mobile payments, apps usage and growing number of sensors (monitoring our location, direction, speed, time, sporting activities, environmental temperature and more) leave long trails in the digital cyberspace. Our usage patterns, buying preferences and habits are of high interest to commerce and advertisement companies, which turn such knowledge into better placed, more relevant infotainment and buying suggestions. Moreover, in an ‘anything connected’ world, personal digital assistants will provide help in search and discovery, co-ordination and scheduling, planning and control in a variety of private and work situations.

The value of a personalized digital environment is increasingly being appreciated by users. As a consequence, we will see people’s perception about data privacy very much evolving along the lines of the value its mere exposure creates. In the future, we expect users to share privacy information far beyond today’s boundaries if they obtain corresponding value in return. At the same time, they are going to become much more discriminative about the brands and institutions they trust. Their loyalty will be significantly determined by the way their private data is being used and protected; thus, the sensitive management of this relationship should be at the top of companies’ priority list for the next few years.

Telecoms companies want to be key players in the ecosystem that is forming around the personal data economy. They are using the trust they have built to position themselves positively next to the over-the-top data companies.

Irrespective of the value that enterprises offer in return for private data, stringent protection against fraudulent use by third parties remains a basic condition for a trustful brand. High standards of data privacy and IT security management have to be established and kept at all times by telecoms companies so as not to put this vital asset at risk.

An uneven recoverySince its deep financial crisis in 2008/2009, the world has witnessed a fragile and uneven recovery with major developed economies only slowly increasing their pace of growth. The indications for 2013 were for a further slow-down across Europe; however the rest of the world was expected to hold on to a healthy level of growth, offering sound business potential for the telecommunication industry.

In a macroeconomic context:

`` The US market is still growing, mainly with smartphones.

`` We expect to see frontier economies (China, India and Brazil should not be called emerging anymore) clearly drive global telecoms market growth. Although the BRIC countries are reaching higher mobile penetration, the usage of smartphones—the driver behind high data usage—is a different issue. India is quite different from China or Brazil: in India there is a rapid uptake of mobile communications, partly driven by low-end mobile devices.

`` Africa is evolving in a similar way to India.

Saturated markets will continue to struggle with the dragging ARPU levels of a slowly increasing customer base. In Europe smartphones are replacing traditional mobiles in significant numbers.



Web giants will drive the digital evolutionUndoubtedly, the buzz around Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and the like will continue to flood the industry headlines over the next years. Disruptive innovators will spark further new developments in the digital world, expanding its footprint in our private and professional lives. New habits of interpersonal communication, a new definition of ‘social’ competence, a growing gamization and the need for always being in touch, from anywhere: all this and more creates excellent revenue opportunities for the advertisement and digital merchandise industry. Clearly, companies engaged in this space are the new age winners.

Despite telecoms service providers still struggling to place their stakes in this field of play, such developments are good news to them because the digital business and lifestyle can only be kept alive on the back of reliable telecoms network operators. Data transport and connectivity businesses are on their way to becoming a utility service: commoditized, but highly critical to the public and the global economy. To keep their positions, telecoms companies are going to need to make heavy investments into new infrastructure technologies and to seek expansion into frontier markets. The addition of national regulatory incentives is expected to be a catalyst for this process.

No winner to be expected (yet) in the race for dominance over the connected homeWhile mobility is being talked about on a worldwide scale, people’s homes remain a strategic battlefield for a share of the consumer’s attention. The gaming industry will continue to place new generation consoles into the center of the gamer’s entertainment experience and foster the adoption of ever new human-to-machine interfaces, like Kinetic or Wii U. Strong online gamer communities will readily adopt new services such as video and audio calls (is Microsoft going to include Skype into its next Xbox?), instant messaging, blogging and voting and also video-on-demand, catch-up TV, HD and 3D TV on their games consoles. Equally, Pay-TV companies are going to offer new set-top-boxes with the connectivity and intelligence to select and display high quality media content from a variety of sources in accordance with our personal preference profile.

Broadband providers will be exploring ways to bridge the gap between the simple internet router and a multifunctional media and entertainment hub: a gap that makes the difference between a commodity bit pipe provider and a digital lifestyle company. Beyond that, the digital home hub has the potential to play a key role in the future connected home, supporting energy and security management solutions, medical surveillance and assisted living services. We expect telecoms companies to engage more intensely in these domains, with dedicated business units and innovative market approaches.

However, the mobile phone is for many people the default communication device at home and, as such, data off-load via Wi-Fi offers new opportunities for mobile operators. In the first place if off-loads heavy data streams, but by detecting a mobile phone in its home zone it will allow operators to offer services that fits the needs at home.

The mobile revolution continuesPeople’s increasing mobility has been one of the main trends over the past decades and, consequently, is nothing new; however, the way that intelligent devices will further ease and drive our mobility is still in its infancy. Ever ‘smarter’ phones and ‘easier’ computers are going to further converge to a new device category: the smart mobile. Telephony is just one of many functions that it provides, with number crunching not one of its main features either.

Today, smart mobiles already encompass a voice and video phone, text messenger, camera, music and multimedia player, games console, navigation system, video beamer, remote control, personal information manager, social communities and enterprise application clients, plus a few more features—all under one umbrella. Although specialized devices provide higher performance, one simple argument makes the case for the smart mobile: the best camera is the one that you are carrying with you whenever it is needed!


Next, we expect to see increasing integration and automation of all these features into a more intelligent personal assistant concept. Further, new sensors are going to enrich the context-awareness of the smart mobile. An enhanced ability to set personal preferences and define simple work instructions (content filters, alarms for friends in the neighborhood, blacklisting of certain brand’s advertisements, automatic searches for product offers, to name a few) and a tighter coupling with our work environment are going to increase the spectrum of tasks our digital assistant will be able to execute on our behalf.

The convenience factor is going to further drive demand for lighter, more flexible and durable mobiles; mobile device sales have outpaced stationary PCs. Substantial efforts have been spent on the development of high-capacity batteries, the standardization of induction-based, wireless charging solutions and the active energy management of the mobile device. Apps revenues will continue to soar irrespective of the technology they are implemented in. Tablets, extended by an optional keyboard, placed into a virtualized, zero-client IT environment and guarded by maturing security appliances, will enable the proliferation of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) concept into the business context. Ultimately, smart mobiles are going to transform into a personalized user interface for future smart Clouds.

‘Social competence’ is being newly definedAlways in touch, informed of the latest community news in real-time, following brands and friends on Twitter, writing blogs and producing own videos on YouTube: this is what millions associate today with the term ‘social competence’. The new ‘social’ is not confined by geographical boundaries, is always on, non-discriminative and easy to use. It offers offer quick paths to self-exploration and provides a great stage for self-expression. Without any doubt, social communities will continue to thrive.

As a new quality, communication in the digital space has two important characteristics: firstly, it provides easy access to huge audiences all over the world and, secondly, it is being constantly documented in lasting, digital formats. By means of semantic search and data mining, valuable knowledge is being derived about sentiments, trends and priorities in the Web.

Telecoms companies will accelerate the adoption of social media marketing and monitoring, as well as community based sales and service, substantially. The social phenomenon will help increase visibility of the end-customer. Improved trend prediction models have the potential to help reduce churn, better campaign targeting will improve cross-selling and telecoms companies will have the opportunity to target friends of customers as potential new customers.

Telecoms companies will become more serious about their Cloud ambitionsWe expect to see telecoms service providers adopt the cloud business as a market expansion priority, and for that they need to build IT capability. Big market players like NTT Communications, Deutsche Telekom, BT and FT-Orange, along with smaller enterprise solutions providers, have built up capability over the last decade through a critical mass of IT related business. Others are building strong IT partnerships, ensuring they maintain some ownership.

The convergence of mobile, fixed and internet provider’s operations and the ever growing ‘IT-zation’ of telecoms technologies as a whole, strengthen the case for telecoms companies’ strategic expansion into IT related business.

At present, telecoms companies offer a portfolio of enterprise and corporate services ranging from desktop services to managed storage and data centers operations. For the next step they will need to respond to the fast march of Google, Amazon, Dropbox and the likes, who are conquering the consumer customer base with sticky cloud-based services that are easy to use, globally accessible, highly available and, beyond all, inexpensive. This is why we expect to witness some acquisitions of mid-sized IT players or partnerships with IT players by telecoms companies in the near future.


Verticalized businesses will mature and growFollowing this line of thought, telecoms companies will continue to deepen their competence in selected industries too—in some cases through seeking partnerships. Over the past years, they have been developing communication-centric solutions, which (in one way or the other) can be considered adapted for the industry-specific needs of their customers. In particular, enormous corporations and multi-national enterprises with their huge communication budgets—and very own requirements—have kept telecoms companies’ motivation for investment in more complex, customized offerings alive. Dedicated business units for in-car Machine-to-Machine communication (automotive), field force mobility solutions (insurance, transport, service industries), smart networks (utilities) and more, have gained the momentum that is needed to make the next step into verticalization: the enablement and support of industry specific business transactions, applications and, ultimately, processes.

For the business case to fly, the cost of connectivity must be low. 4G/LTE will make it economically viable and a lot more interesting for industry. As this grows, we will see the context awareness of smart mobile and of connected devices on the more grow.

We will see telecoms companies more actively shape the way communications are being integrated into businesses. They will engage in strategic partnerships with industry giants, sign cooperation agreements with service companies and pilot projects with R&D or academic participation in order to ease the adoption of telecoms services by better serving the specific demands of the corresponding businesses. At the top of the agenda we will see themes such as Assisted Living, The Connected Home, Smart Cities and Mobile Learning. Telecoms companies with a strong IT arm will be tempted to offer cloud-based industry solutions along with related support and service, to allow them to step into this new field of competition.

Cost optimization strategies to enter the next levelBefore significant network investments and the need for favorable negotiation positions with their technology vendors, Network Operators will increasingly look for joint initiatives to derive synergies by sourcing on a bigger scale. Beyond significant cost savings in the procurement of technological solutions, operators will have a stronger influence on the standardization and innovation developments being undertaken by the infrastructure vendor’s camp. We have already see this with Vodafone’s Luxembourg-based procurement company ‘Buyin’, with Deutsche Telekom and France Telecoms-Orange, and with ‘EverythingEverywhere’ in the UK and their procurement joint venture for procurement of customer and network

equipment, service platforms and IT. This has been followed by other big players in the industry who are looking for the economies of scale they need to compete with smaller peers. Further down the road we expect to see telecoms companies also join existing industrial alliances for the procurement of non-technology goods and services.

We are also seeing an increase in network sharing as a means to reduce operational costs. In some countries, the regulators are demanding a single network for different license holders—the regulators argue that multiple networks finally need to be paid for by the subscriptions of the end users.

Net neutrality regulation to put confines on mobile carriers’ monetization optionsBy the middle of 2011 only two countries worldwide had passed net neutrality protection laws, but we expect the public debate to accelerate and lead to the regulation of a number of further markets. While a non-discriminative regime for data being transported over the carriers’ mobile broadband highways seems a natural choice, it reduces the options of a telecoms company for tariff differentiation on content types. Instant messengers and social networks featuring voice and video communication are going to increasingly cannibalize the mobile carrier’s voice and SMS traffic at the price of further data volumes growth.


We expect mobile carriers to lobby against the regulation of network neutrality in order to protect running revenues as long as possible, but at the same time gear up for better differentiation on network excellence, service levels implementation and dynamic bandwidth management.

A software-driven marketWith robust and high performance IT now available at very attractive price points, implementing network functions using commodity IT is very attractive from a TCO perspective—especially now it can also provide the rich and reliable features required. Furthermore, with implementing the required features and function in the software layer allows short innovation cycles that are significantly shorter than the hardware lifecycles of traditional network function appliances. As a result, the telecoms industry is increasingly becoming a software-driven market with software-defined networking abstracting the networking hardware, with innovation coming from the software layer.

The two-sided business modelMany telecoms companies are exploring their business potential outside of the traditional ‘share of end user wallet’ that they have been targeting directly. They are exploring (with other industries) how they can offer network and customer intelligence to third parties for a fee through published APIs. Necessary data privacy frameworks across a to-be-established (personal data) ecosystem are being assessed cross industry. Telecoms companies are actively driving these discussions as they believe there is a significant role for them to play in this personal data ecosystem as a trusted custodian of consumer data.

An increasingly global marketplaceWe foresee many new use cases coming from international long-tail business cases, from highly specialized use cases for which there is no critical mass locally within the boundaries of an individual country. In other words, if there are any specialized ‘killer apps’ to appear then they are expected to have an international/global business case.


Telecoms Business Impact of Emerging Technologies and Solutions


Emerging

Adolescent

Early adoption

Mainstream

HIGH

TRANSFORMATIONAL

MED

IUM

LOW


SERVICE BUSINESS IMPACTAL

Big Data

Highly Miniaturized Power Generators

Multi-Touch Interfaces

Sensor Networks


Mesh Networks4G Wireless Communication

Biometrics

Nanocomputers

Cloud Orchestration

3D Location-Based Services and Geographical Information Systems

IPv6

Near Field Communications

Speech and Voice Processing Technologies

Wireless Power

Machine-to-Machine

Bring Your Own Device

Smart Device OS

Network Intelligence


Social Network Analysis (SNA)

Network Functions Virtualization

In-App Payments


Social Networks

Tablet Computers

Mobile Payments



End customer devicesToday, many personal computer use cases are moving from PCs to other devices; new smart devices, such as Tablet Computers, are providing more user-interface experiences through enhanced technologies, such as multi-touch interfaces and high-definition Virtual Retinal Displays (VRD). Tablets take advantage of the gap between smartphones and laptops that was not really filled by netbooks.

‘Second Screens’ change the media consumption experience and even the workplace. Any smart device with wireless connectivity can be used by a worker in addition to the corporate device; Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) will potentially change the workplace substantially. Wireless Power concepts will certainly push the usage of mobile smart devices. Wireless power aims at transferring electric energy to devices without the use of electric cords. Induction is currently the most used method.

This new market is expected to move quickly, with strong innovative competition, similar to that of the smartphone market. Multi-Touch User Interfaces (MTUI) can recognize many gestures from multiple places on a device simultaneously, allowing several users to interact with an application at the same time, or one user to interact at different points with multiple inputs. This in turn will enable new usages and needs, for example for face-to-face-plus-computer interactions.

The flow of data from tablets will be extremely challenging (the video usage is much bigger than on smartphones). Videoconferencing, chatting and social networking on the move will create a data traffic that will be challenging for mobile infrastructures. On the other hand, the new user experience also creates a significant market for mobile apps.

Mobile apps are becoming an inherent part of many software solutions today. Telecoms companies must look how to address the demands these pose and how to use apps to create better value. New value-added services will increasingly be pushed and monetized through mobile apps.

Tablets are already starting to generate their own business models (newsstands, book stores and more) and to reinforce emerging ones (music streaming, In-App Payments, personal data in the Cloud, for example). The main triggers are the overall increase in competition and rivalry, and the overlap of the partly merging telecoms and media markets.

A Smart Device OS (operating system) is specifically designed to control a smart device such as a smartphone, tablet, or connected TV. As smart devices become more powerful and start predating some usage segments of personal computers, the smart device OS market could be disrupted and enter a period of strong fragmentation. At this time

of increasing usage and importance of smart devices, telecoms service providers need to make sure that they are on the platforms with the highest demand. In addition they have to differentiate themselves through unique smart devices.

3D Location-Based Services and Geographical Information Systems in combination will increasingly enhance location based services. Geographical information systems (GIS) are systems capable of capturing, storing, analyzing and displaying information referenced according to its geographical location. Location-based services (LBS) take advantage of a user’s geographical position to deliver contextualized information or services. 3D GIS and 3D LBS are the next generation of GIS and LBS, taking the third dimension into account. For example, 3D urban mapping and fleet management will combine 3D visualization with GeoICT technologies. In combination with new broadband and Wi-Fi technologies, telecoms companies will see a variety of new services in the market that can be delivered by over-the-top (OTT) providers or by telecoms operators themselves.


Smart M2MMachine-to-Machine (M2M) technologies link the machines to an information system, generally to automate existing humanly-performed operations, such as meter reading, or to enable new services based on remote connected devices, such as e-health. M2M represents a huge business opportunity for the telecoms industry in application areas such as automotive, asset management, energy management, home and business security, and telehealth since they own the communication infrastructure that connects the dots. Highly Miniaturized Power Generators (energy-harvesting devices based on highly miniaturized structures capable of converting ambient energy, such as kinetic energy, into electric energy) and Nanocomputers (which could be evolutionary, scaled-down versions of today’s computers, or they may be revolutionary, based on some new device or molecular structure not yet developed) will enable more and more business models in the M2M arena. This will have a huge impact on the core business of telecoms operators as this can extend their enterprise business beyond established domains.

Sensor Networks are also impacting new services in the telecoms space. Sensor network is a generalized term for spatially distributed devices, with at least one sensor, that are able to detect and monitor events. Each has a transceiver, controller and power source. It can also include mobile devices with sensors, such as smartphones or vehicle on-board units. The underlying concepts are the foundation of the Internet of Things (IoT), which is an evolution of M2M technologies. Business opportunities for telecoms companies can be found in various scenarios: detection of environmental changes (for instance pressure/temperature), warning of impending disasters, vehicle traffic monitoring, surveillance and security, to name but a few.

E- and m-commerce technologiesNear Field Communications (NFC) does not need an introduction in the telecoms world anymore; meanwhile, a great number of vendors have included NFC as a standard feature of their mid- and upper-range handsets. It is not new to the financial world: neither credit card companies nor major banks have discovered the technology as a means to offer payment convenience and by that increase adoption of electronic payments in general—with or without a hosting mobile handset.

There have been many pilots and trials in the past few years. Some explored easy micropayment schemes, others tested ticketing solutions, and a few tried out loyalty cards, coupons and deal vouchers. These proved two things: first, a decent level of adoption by end users has been achieved and, second, some of the competitive attitude between the banks and telecoms companies performing the trials has not been resolved yet.

Mobile Payments have already been a topic of interest for some time now; however, in the last two years there has been another boost in investigation and development in this area due some new market trends:

`` Firstly, and as the major driver, the intensified competition in the mobile telecoms market has forced the mobile network operators (MNOs) to look for new revenue streams and value-added services that would differentiate them from competitors. Open Wholesale Interfaces, for example, will become a key measure for telecoms operators for integrating third party players, who increase the customer base and provide target group specific innovation.

`` A second trend is the mass roll-out of mobile smartphones over the last couple of years. These devices are capable of offering enhanced services with additional security around payment transactions, leading to a much higher user acceptance. Furthermore, the moderate price range of these new devices allows the device manufacturer to integrate the necessary mobile payment technologies, such as the above mentioned NFC.

`` Thirdly, there is increasing demand from the retail (to increase the speed of the payment-only process in their shops), the transport (public transportation, taxis, public parking) and entertainment markets (cinemas, restaurants). Alternatives to cash-based payments could reduce the payment cycle considerably and would reduce both fraud risk and merchant’s cash handling costs. Smartphones, which are the main enabler for mobile payments, are quickly penetrating the market, with worldwide quarterly sales of around 100 million units and double-digit sales volume growth.

Cloud technologiesAs Cloud emerges as a competitive sourcing strategy (in comparison to having your own or outsourced IT environment), a clear demand rises to integrate Cloud environments to create an end-to-end managed landscape of cloud-based functions. That so called Cloud Orchestration is about the connectivity of IT and business process levels between different Cloud environments.

Telecoms operators could act as a broker of services, complementing their own ones, or being a full provider of various third party services out of one hand. Orchestration needs between Clouds will force Cloud providers, like telecoms operators, to collaborate on open standards for communication across and integration within, Cloud environments. Current providers are creating a lock-in model


that inhibits widespread Cloud acceptance. This is not the only inhibitor. Open standards that allow changing Clouds and integration of Cloud functions across many Clouds, will speed the adoption of Cloud Computing dramatically. It is similar to the standardization of the Windows programming model.

In the future any new services offered by telecoms companies will be combined with ICT. Core networks will be combined with functionality and data that is either sitting in the data centers of telecoms companies or of over-the-top providers—in which case they might be anywhere in the Cloud.

Up until now consumers have mainly stored personal content on their PCs. But today, with consumers having a growing number of devices and a growing volume of content, they are starting to move their personal content (such as photos, apps, music, files) to repositories in the Cloud. This is being driven further through the consumer’s need for sharing.

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) makes use of virtualization technology to consolidate network equipment onto commodity IT technology, allowing network functions to be implemented using software. With new features/functions not requiring new hardware by default, NFV provides the agile infrastructure needed to run the software-defined networks that will enable future innovation in the telecoms industry.

Broadband data technologies4G Wireless Communication is the next step in wireless communications. A 4G wireless system will be able to provide a comprehensive IP solution where voice, data and streamed multimedia can be given to users on an ‘anytime, anywhere’ basis and at higher data rates than previous generations. It is a fully IP-based, integrated system

capable of providing high speeds indoors and outdoors, with premium quality and high security.

The rollout of the fourth generation technology LTE (Long Term Evolution) is accelerating, primarily because it is more cost-effective and efficient than 3G at transporting large amounts of data. Updates on the third generation technology UMTS will provide a cheap interim mobile broadband extension. In addition, Wi-Fi and in-store Wi-Fi will complement the UMTS/LTE based mobile broadband communication with annual data growth rates of between 25 and 50 percent: mainly video streaming. A quarter of North American big box retailers will start to offer free in-store Wi-Fi access to their customers. On the other side, Fiber-to-the home technology (FTTH), which simply uses light instead of electricity to send information, and DOCSIS 3.0, which increases the Internet download speed over existing cable TV lines, are achieving up to 20 Gbit/s in congested areas.

Meshed Networks also step into this gap and could offer a relatively cheap to set-up and maintain mobile mash network. Mesh networks are decentralized, local area networks formed by meshes of peer nodes. Full-mesh has each node connected to every other node, while partial-mesh has each node connected only to some nodes.

The acceptance of LTE as a comprehensive basic service will be driven by the services that are delivered through the mobile network. FTTH is competing against DOCSIS 3.0 and we can see major service providers, such as AT&T or Verizon, rolling out fiber optic networks. As consumers are increasingly using technologies that require high speed connections to use video-chatting, streaming videos and others, speed is a massive trigger point. Mobile operators spend a lot of money on providing mobile broadband for the benefit of the over-the-top (OTT) providers, such as

Facebook and Google. Mobile operators do not profit from the increase in broadband usage. Through policy management, the quality of service and smart capping of services, such as video, mail, FTP and HTTP, will help telecoms companies to restrict network load and better monetize their core assets.

4G will be the first generation of mobile data networks to support IPv6. This will lead to the next level of being always connected, and is an important milestone for the ‘Internet of Things’. IPv6 as a new internet protocol simply enables more devices to access the Internet. With increasing mobile traffic and new online business models, this simply means more traffic for telecoms operators. The question is how they can deliver more value from the various upcoming channels to the consumer and enterprises.

Web-based Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network technology involves creating overlays on top of established networks. Overlays follow alternative metrics and addressing schemes to adapt to the search for shared resources among the connected peers. Popularized by file sharing for music and video, web-based peer-to-peer enables a wide range of applications, including real-time multimedia communication, as with Skype. Web-based peer-to-peer can apply to most traffic-intensive services such as video distribution and streaming, or real-time communication. In some cases, it can be used as an alternative to content delivery networks (CDN). It is particularly useful in cases when a small amount of data is sent to a large number of peers. Although the impact on telecoms companies may not be dramatic in general changes could be very important on some specific uses. Communication and collaboration services accessible via the Web, via mobile devices, will be impacted first. Some impact is also expected on traffic-intensive content distribution platforms.


Data and analyticsSocial Networks in business is a new way of working using new collaborative tools based on social media technology. It makes it easier to work together and speeds up finding the right information by immediately enabling people to locate the right people, and the right knowledge. These tools enable the organization to work, not just along formal lines, but also along the cross boundary and informal lines that are essential for delivering the agility needed to meet geographic, product and market changes. Social context already plays a crucial role in shaping how things actually get done in any organization. Managers and individual workers rely on their personal knowledge of the workplace, or professional social context, and use informal communication channels, such as e-mail, the telephone, private conversations and, increasingly, social networking services, to carry out their work. Social network platforms are used increasing over mobile devices, such as tablets. This also has to be recognized by telecoms operators; they have the opportunity to enhance their services accordingly.

Social Network Analysis (SNA) is one of these opportunities. SNA is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, competitors, URL’s and other connected information/knowledge entities. The nodes in the network are the people and groups, while the links show relationships or flow between the nodes. SNA provide both a visual and a mathematical analysis of human relationships. The Social Network Analysis perspective includes theories, models and applications that are expressed in terms of relational concepts or processes. Telecoms operators, with their huge amounts of existing fragmented customer data, need to be aware of the new social dimension to develop predictions and learn about customer behavior in terms of churn rates, for example.

To address the need for information visibility and understanding of real-time traffic, Network

Intelligence is an emerging category of technology that can be leveraged by telecoms companies to offer and enhance new and existing services. Being able to analyze data flows in real-time will enable telecoms operators to act. For example, data flows originated by certain applications (VoIP, video, for example) can be billed differently. Certain users will have different access rights or different quality levels. Network Intelligence is the concept which will help telecoms operators to move from the ‘dumb pipe’ model to the ‘smart pipe’ model. Billing and CRM systems will need to be upgraded as a consequence. Security solutions will be enhanced; controls can be exerted not only onto users’ access to networks, but also while networks are being used.

Speech and Voice Processing Technology and Natural-Language Processing (NLP) promise various services opportunities that could be developed by telecoms companies. NLP is the automatic ability to understand text or audio speech data and extract valuable information from it, while Voice processing refers to all the treatments of voice or audio once it has been digitalized. Speech and voice processing technologies include basic capabilities such as automatic speech recognition (ASR), voice and speaker verification, speech synthesis (text-to-speech or TTS) and speech-to-text conversion (STT) techniques. New applications, such as speech analytics in contact centers, searching, automatic translators and automatic indexing capabilities of audio and multimedia content, all use some basic speech processing technologies.

The technology is now mature, robust and entering mainstream applications: enhanced access control and security applications with voice and speaker verification (for instance, a password reset application), hands-free operation of multiple devices, biometric security, speech-to-speech translation, speech-enabled web and many others. In particular, Biometrics could be an interesting field to step into for telecoms operators weaving

strong authentication techniques into their services. Biometrics is the automated use of unique and straightforward to measure characteristics of a person that can be physiological (for instance fingerprints, iris or veins) or behavioral (for instance typing rhythm or voice), to determine and verify identity.

Big Data is the practice of managing the growing amounts of information at an enterprise level, both structured and unstructured. It is crucial for analytics, ensuring that an organization maximizes the benefit of the information it has available, whilst ensuring its security. It tackles the issues of information silos, and is one key element in combating inefficiencies. Telecoms companies operate at the heart of customer information and should master the handling of crucial internal information like no other industry. They need to be fast in a rapidly changing market.

Career and personal life of internet users can be severely impacted if they are not cautious enough about the personal data that they (or relatives) make available through posts, multimedia content sharing and other means. Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET), and other ‘privacy mechanisms’ for the controlled disclosure of data such as anonymization, pseudonyms and ‘privacy-aware’ identity management, can help address these concerns. Loss of privacy can be considered the most important emerging risk with future IT systems. User privacy is an asset to protect within a given system or community and becomes a protection goal in itself. Trust building measures, including non-technical mechanisms, such as legal norms and insurances, and trust supporting institutions, such as Data Protection Acts, can help to reduce the risk level on all risk layers. Telecoms operators must put customer privacy on top of the agenda to build trust and give confidence in using new services—particularly if they are to become key players in the ecosystem that is forming around the personal data economy.


Media Business Imperatives

Lead in business transformationFrom old to new media, from tape to file-based content, from linear to non-linear, from single media distribution to multicast: media and entertainment companies who understand the impact of technology and swiftly adapt their business will keep their audience’s attention, attract new viewers and gain competitive advantage. The new landscape is a mix of print, (IP)TV, events, online and mobile—and is constantly changing its balance.

All these changes are being driven by changing consumer behaviors and expectations. Consumers today are well-informed, connected and already have many alternative ways for reaching content. Content consumption has switched from the traditional ‘Director’s Choice’ over to ‘My Choice’; media companies are now just one of many gateways to what’s available. Consumers will look through search for branded content, their social networks for recommendations and specific media brands for specific subject matter. They also generate content and, as such, become a separate channel that enhances formal/branded content. There is a unique opportunity for media companies to moderate and integrate these channels to enhance their brand recognition such as Apple created with celebrity published play-lists for music.

New technologies can enable profitable growth in multiple niche markets, such as the long tail, since niche consumers are more emotionally involved, have a higher value add perception and are increasing willingness to pay for content.

To successfully compete against new market players, media companies need a deeper understanding of their audience and to be able to deliver high-quality, informative, educational and entertaining content that their audience segments seek. At the same time, they need to explore innovative ways of monetizing content while developing existing schemes: from paywalls, subscription, micropayment, through advertisement-related revenues to e-commerce and betting. All options need to be considered as there is not yet a single answer to the question “Who will pay for content?”. A wider availability of free content combined with new competitors—such as Spotify and Netflix with their price aggressive ‘all-you-can-watch’ models—will shake up usual payment behaviors and force traditional media companies to react.

During 2012, consumers became used to the new form factors of tablets and smartphones as a preferred media interface. These were neither early adopters nor tech-oriented yuppies, but mass-market. After an initial phase of experimenting, consumers soon settled down into a behavior that will be stable for the coming years. It is now that they are selecting their preferred media sources for these new devices. Media companies need to make sure they are part of this new mass-market behavior.

Enable business agilityThe ability to make quick changes to current business models and to swiftly roll-out new services is critical in this phase of industry transformation. Modern media asset management, publishing systems and workflows are architected to allow the rapid additions of new linear and nonlinear platforms, serving an increasing number of devices and distribution channels. Media companies are taking two approaches to addressing the agility challenge:

`` True Service-Oriented Architectures with an agnostic plug and play capability are increasingly being deployed within media organizations to enable agility. This is also an enabler for organizational change: separate teams are no longer required to manage the different versions of the same content for different platforms.

`` At the same time, media organizations are out-tasking infrastructure and business processes, allowing them to focus valuable resources on their core business—their brand, their content and their audience’s viewing experience. Not only does this improve agility, it also reduces costs and complexity while keeping them ahead of a technology curve that is advancing at an unprecedented rate.



Create once, repurpose manyThe technological changes in the market are very disruptive. A multimedia company is best positioned to survive these challenges with a complete coverage of the media channels perimeter. A broad portfolio—magazines, digital, events, broadcast—that delivers content in a relevant context will provide an interesting and sustainable platform for commercial companies to reach their audience. Consumers are demanding access to their content of choice through all these key outlets.

The addition of new channels brings with it complexity, both in distribution and in the management of digital rights. Today, media organizations must renegotiate distribution rights with the content owners for all the multiple channels they now wish or need to address. The same challenge comes with securing that content and with providing access through these multiple channels via complex variable DRM solutions. Where in the past an infringement of rights may have incurred a fine from the content owners, now such breaches could easily result in withdrawal of licensing for current and future content rights from the creators/studios. Complexity in both the contractual rights and the necessary security solutions around multiplatform DRM will only grow further as the number of channels increases; by not getting it right today, the chances of addressing it tomorrow will soon become incredibly hard—if not impossible.

Historically, the addition of new channels and devices to the media delivery chain has led to a rich zoo of platforms to be serviced. Often, the linear and online teams in media organizations have, through operational and technical necessity, been separate silos. New production and publishing technologies mean that this no longer needs to be the case: an item of content can be published in the appropriate format to multiple platforms at the touch of a button. However, the practicalities

of transforming the organization along such lines are often daunting. Media companies should focus on creating great content and a great viewing experience (the things they do best) and approach the challenges of the technological transformation in close co-operation with experienced and agile partners.

The successful production and distribution of content—and, ultimately, support of marketing and sales objectives—is dependent on use and movement of media assets being simple and cost-effective. The move to digital production and distribution is now well advanced in many organizations, and is combined with a rapid increase in the need to reuse, reformat and repurpose content for different outlets. The ability to do this quickly and cheaply is central to being able to offer the market appropriate content in a cost-effective way. Most organizations are able to find and reformat content; however, speed and cost make a substantial difference to the bottom line, and differentiate those that do it well from those which are now playing catch-up.

Catch-up in shaping audience intimacyGrow audience penetration and market share; this has always been an imperative for businesses. But media is late to the game and in catch-up mode. With the shift from the ‘Director’s Choice’ to the audience taking control with ‘My Choice’ now taking place, personalized web delivery and consumption of media provides numerous opportunities for highly-tuned advertising and related cross- and up-sell. Knowing the customer, while being able to tag content appropriately and relate it to other materials and adverts such as books or apps (not only for products, but also for programs and downloads), is vital. More content will become available for consumption via the Web through the growing adoption of smart devices, second screen and OTT services.

Ensuring user expectations are correctly set for the availability and cost of content is critical to optimizing the commercial opportunities this provides. With users having wide access to free and low-cost content, media organizations need a deep understanding of their diverse customer segments, along with the content and viewing behaviors and desires of each, to successfully monetize high-quality content.

Mind data privacyNetwork architecture, data encryption, tight security controls, data leakage protection, intrusion detection: these are all things not typically considered a top priority at most media companies (pay-TV providers are an exception here). However, with the growth of Cloud services, mobile computing and social media, plus the continued improvements in processing capabilities, traditional security models will no longer suffice.

As we have seen recently, large media organizations, such as Sony, Facebook and Google, have experienced security breaches and significant data leakage. Information security is imperative for today’s media enterprises on their journey from an impersonal broadcast content distributor to a trusted brand offering a personalized media experience and exchange.

But this is not just about leakage of personal data; fail to prevent the leakage of licensed content and media organizations may find themselves losing their license/rights to distribute.


Media Business Trends

Service virtualization on a path to rapid adoptionCloud is the perfect enabler for new media; it represents a transformation from ownership to utilization. What is the point of having a vault full of valuable broadcast assets if you are not yet making full use of them across all delivery channels? The Cloud is also a social trend that implies shared creativity and ongoing change—a perfect picture of media today.

Cloud allows media organizations to close the gap that keeps opening up between technology landscapes and business opportunities with speed, scale and synergy. Cloud is non-linear, user-driven and happening whether you like it or not. It might threaten current media operations and revenue sources, but it can also radically transform your Operational Excellence and audience outcomes.

With Cloud, the underlying elements are pushed out of the business: there is little to no infrastructure to manage, no software to install and the second more computing resources are required, they can be previsioned! The Cloud service provider ideally should be responsible for the overall infrastructure; the integration and interoperability of the software tools and applications incorporated as part of defined service; and, most importantly, the integrity and security for the environment as well as the data and assets that are being served—freeing up IT departments’ time for more productive tasks.

The beauty of a Cloud (hosted) solution is that you can quickly evolve your solution from simple and stand-alone to a solution that is fully integrated with legacy systems, reducing the cost and complexity of set up, operations and management. Furthermore, there is no longer a need to manage multiple licenses or to ensure interoperability between the different systems; a Cloud service provider will do this, all under the umbrella of a single license. The real decision to be made here is around whether to utilize low-cost public based Cloud services or a business-based Cloud service with the added guarantees of integration, interoperability and security?

Cloud-based ‘... as a service’ models will continue to grow in consumer and business contexts alike. Improvements in security, content encoding and encryption techniques will provide a greater level of confidence in these services, but in the meantime media companies still need to create the ecosystems that will deliver the end-to-end value chain. For example, ActiveVideo Networks has developed new capabilities for its cloud-based app platform, called CloudTV. It helps cable operators reduce churn while also offering subscribers the ability to watch video-on-demand (VOD) titles on one screen and then seamlessly move to another within a predetermined access window. An ecosystem needs to be built around this in the Cloud to deliver its full business value.

On the opposite side of the equation, iCloud, Chromebooks, Office 365, catch-up TV, Netflix and the likes, consume enormous amounts of bandwidth. Bandwidth of online and mobile is reaching its limits; therefore the Cloud trend will collide with the available bandwidth. Bandwidth will improve over the years and, with smart solutions, this collision can be postponed to create a responsive user experience.

Will a big fat pipe change the way we live?But it’s not just about the bandwidth: compression technologies are advancing, further increasing the amount of data travelling down the pipe. Both high speed fiber in the ground and high capacity airborne carriers will improve the user experience dramatically. There will be no more eight hour wait while a film downloads and, for mobile consumers, content will be available anytime, anywhere.

High speed, anywhere access to content will have a significant impact on the way we live: we will all be able to access the content we desire and meet the people we need to see from the comfort of our living rooms … or anywhere else we choose.



Smart devices to enter media workers’ professional environmentThe proliferation of smart devices (particularly smartphones and tablets) has been huge. Coupled with a wide range of applications addressing linear, non-linear and social media, these devices have become, in many cases, the preferred means of interacting with rich media—be that broadcast, print, or online media. This technology is finding its way into traditional media devices. A typical example would be LG, Samsung and Panasonic’s Smart TV sets that now allow simultaneous TV channel viewing and internet access.

Increasingly, media employees (including freelancers, contractors and trusted third parties) are using their own devices on corporate networks; they are working with standard consumer tools, such as Skype, Facebook and Yammer, to interact with each other. So, when previously we have talked about ‘the martini moment’ for viewers, we should perhaps also refer to anytime, anyplace, anywhere (and on any device) working for media company employees and the organizations they work with to make and distribute their content. The user, not the service provider, is defining the types of device and services that need to be provided.

Audience engagementSocial communities, both online and otherwise, can gravitate around content and brands, as well as around communities such as in Facebook and MySpace. Content providers can exploit the interest in their content brands by enabling fan-based communities and providing targeted content/advertising to cross-/up-sell related products. In addition, these communities can be engaged with web chats and by providing ‘behind the scenes’ type content that can build on the quality of the consumer engagement.

There are many examples of additional content being made available for high profile media brands; enabling a greater level of engagement with the user community can improve the quality of this interaction with the consumer and strengthen ‘brand loyalty’. The nature of the brand will allow different exploitation models to be adopted. Traditional media publishers have adopted a number of different approaches: some newspaper titles have provided subscription models with limited free access to their content online and the remainder behind a ‘paywall’; others have adopted a different style of content presentation (with subtly different feel/voice to the newsprint versions) along with advertising features to exploit the content.

With the growth of smart devices comes the shift from passive viewing to active engagement. Smart devices allow the user to both feedback thoughts to the content provider and share ideas with friends, family and their wider community and network, all while viewing content.

In all cases, the sense of community is engendered by brand associations, comments on articles/features, opinion sharing, and such like, along with targeted advertising based on brand values and specific topic based relationships.

Personalized infotainment and advertisement will go multi-screenThe rise of social media, coupled with mobile internet devices, is changing the TV experience. A new dimension has been added to television viewing through the networked effect of social media services, such as Twitter. In the past, a family sat around their TV and there were private conversations about what was being viewed.

Now, with the widening adoption of smart mobile devices, the consumption of content from different providers on different devices in the same physical area, such as the family’s living room, is increasing. Specifically, with live events and broadcasts, the modern ‘spectators’ are using mobile screens (besides the TV or event) to enhance their experience. Some examples of mobile apps are NBA Courtside, Masters Golf, Formula1, Rabo Cycling, NOS Second Screen and Tour de France.

More importantly for media companies, this has become a two-way relationship with the service providers; an aspiration that finally becomes true after years and years of a number of technological trials. The future of television is not just social and solo, but will be interactive and participative. The best of it is that current statistics suggest that Social TV or Web TV (meaning embedded in the TV device) will not reduce the use of ‘second screens’. As real-time knowledge of the audience is readily available, the relevant consumer engagement along with targeted advertising becomes a reality.


Relevance of mobile games is growingThe mobile gaming market continues to be a key area of growth. Innovations in production and distribution of games are emerging. We can expect to see further advances in mobile sales channels, following the US examples of AT&T and Zynga. Phones tailored for interactive mobile gamers have already hit the market, but have not joined the mainstream yet. The promise of mobile gaming to the media industry is very much related to the license business, but also in-game purchasing and advertising. The latter is seen as being more effective than TV marketing in today’s world. It gives game developers a new source of revenue, allowing them to offset the increasing costs of development as gamers’ expectations continue to grow.

There has, however, been a backlash from some gamers who see this advertising as simply greedy. In-game purchases of digital goods—from additional game levels, new characters and cheats up to real world merchandising—have proven to be in line with gamers’ interests and, together with easy payment modalities, will increase in popularity. ‘Gamization’, the introduction of competitive elements, rewards and infotainment into social apps of various natures, is already building on the entertainment element as a successful means of engaging with users.

Green is here to stayBroadcasters are generally high profile organizations, often spreading the green message as part of their output; consequently they are in the spotlight themselves. But there are practical considerations: many broadcasters reside in old inefficient premises that are no longer fit for purpose and are causing a huge financial overhead. New or renovated premises can deliver a working environment that aids productivity, enables relevant processes and workflows, positions the broadcaster for the future and saves money in the long term. This also presents a great opportunity to positively transform the operational and technical landscape.

Alternative contentThe desire to be informed in a different manner and collaborative media is an opportunity for citizens to regain control of the information they consume and publish. The number of ‘citizen journalists’ is on the rise, providing many points of view to inform debate.


Media Business Impact of Emerging Technologies and Solutions


Emerging

Adolescent

Early adoption

Mainstream

HIGH

TRANSFORMATIONAL

MED

IUM

LOW


SERVICE BUSINESS IMPACTAL

3D Media

SOA

Intelligent Cross-Enterprise Integration

Multicast StreamsMobile Advertising

Mesh Networks

Online and Mobile Payments

Business Process Automation

Social Gaming

Cost-E�ective Workflow Management

Cybernetics

Browser Apps

Near Field CommunicationsIPv6 Online and Mobile

Micropayments

Virtual World and 3D

IP Connected TV New Compression Techniques

Windows 8

Multi-Media in Social Networks



Connected TVOne unit to provide TV, PC, Web and phone opens the potential to increase penetration of IPTV/VOD offerings to traditional TV consumers. The installed base of IP Connected TV sets is slowly but steadily picking up, with speed of adoption determined by the typical replacement life cycle. Connected TVs will become mainstream though, and will open the door for internet enabled services, either via a channel on the TV or an over-the-top and second screen solutions. This will broaden and deepen the experience, using TV as a media device, for example app store for connected TV. To date there is no real standard and different industries are competing: the telecoms, consumer electronics and IT industries.

MulticastInternet centric media distribution—such as Google TV, Apple TV and Netflix—is growing exponentially and competing with the consumption of conventionally broadcasted content. Under the umbrella of a traditional broadcaster brand, it also creates a huge opportunity to enhance the addressable market space and engage consumers in a social and interactive way.

Industry agreement on how best to provide Multicast Streams will be needed to ensure that the increased consumption of content does not swamp the Web. IPv6 is expected to help traffic management and consumer tracking, and advanced streaming technologies will allow for easier content distribution to a variety of client devices: from large TV screens to smartphones. H.264 codes will substitute MPEG2 technologies in all domains and allow for efficient distribution of next generation quality content.

4G networks will boost the on-the- move consumption of digital media, and enable new business services for mobile operators and media companies.

Virtual worlds and 3DEnhancing content through Virtual World and 3D technologies will move into new applications. Clearly, movies and sports including advertising are in the forerunners, but we can expect to see a lot of activity in this area by the major technology companies. Telecoms operators, such as Orange, and broadcasters, such as Sky, have already diversified into 3D Media. It is likely that new businesses, products and services will emerge around this technology.

There may be a market opportunity for a 3D compromise though: a ‘2.5D’ solution that provides higher depth perception than current High Definition, but not as high as a full 3D. The main advantage is that there would be no need for specialized eye-ware to experience 3D.

Apps or browser?Consumers love the speed and feel of apps on their tablets. Media companies have mixed emotions. Apps offer great navigation and design possibilities and people are willing to pay for them. But, apps can come with a high cost: in the case of Apple’s App Store—30 percent of the revenue goes to Apple, there is no direct relationship with the audience, and you need to develop and maintain apps for different platforms.

Web-app technology and HTML5 are developing rapidly and new Browser Apps will be able to achieve the same look-and-feel as native tablet apps. Once these exist, media companies will move to the Web in a massive way in order to really engage with their audiences. This will be driven by publishers and supported by low-cost tablets with only a single feature: a browser.


X-PaymentsIt was thought that Online and Mobile Payment methods were either too difficult or insecure and diverse for the mass-market—especially in the micro-payments domain. Apple was the first major player to break the mold and to make payment easy and fully integrated as a complete service.

2012 saw the start of new mass-market mature payment methodologies that increased the adoption of Online and Mobile Micropayments. This is based on Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, but more importantly—highly secure and insanely easy to use.

Mobile advertisingWith the upcoming IPv4, fast development of mobile devices and the leverage of Wi-Fi technology, we will see new varieties of Mobile Advertising and marketing. The demand for IP addresses in emerging markets, such as China or India, is exploding and the enabler for that is IPv4. The result is a more ‘online’ world than ever with multiple access points for the consumer and enterprises. As a result, we will see more complex marketing strategies that have to include reaching out to the customers on more channels and in different environments, and communities for not only connectivity but contextually aware services.

Asset management solutionsLinked with the business-to-business integration concept above, we believe the media industry should develop interfaces, or a Mesh Network with client adaptors, to provide integration across their respective archives. The objective would be that from

within an organization you could search not only the internal but also partner libraries, which will need to include cross-organization searching, charging and collaboration.

This does not only apply to the media sector, but we believe it is something that will grow across all sectors in the future: more Intelligent Cross-Enterprise Integration. For example, if you logged into your bank’s website, and looked at the direct debits on your current account, currently it would simply tell you ’British Gas‘, a reference number and the last charged amount. In the future this would be a hyperlink where you would click on the direct debit and be presented with details of your gas consumption, usage history, price history and other information—direct from the supplier’s site.

This will require development of a trusted services mesh, where vendors can each link into each other’s data within extensive security controls.

Back to digital media asset management: better management of content repositories will reduce current data-volumes and file-size growth rates. Further, higher and higher definition of content capture will drive innovation for better handling of large files and New Compression Techniques.

Workflow management toolsBusiness Process Automation has become a major topic, either due to need to save cost and time, or to standardize operations. Automatic quality control and transcoding are demanded in an all-file domain. The cost of the enabling technologies has not reduced significantly compared with, say, five years ago, but the range of operations available is

increasing year-on-year. Media organizations can now see definite financial benefits arising from the associated investment.

Automating processes also demand that the organization takes a look at its current operations in detail, possibly identifying process efficiencies that don’t require substantial investment—for example P7S1.

Most recent large-scale tenders from broadcasters have centered on such tools and their deployment. This technology can drive significant savings, though a large proportion of the projected savings are at the expense of jobs. This is not a good message to be putting out during an economic downturn, and maybe a non-starter in certain emerging economies where the cost of employing armies of operational staff is still less than the investment in tools.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is the current buzzword in broadcast engineering circles. It’s not always the most appropriate solution, but we need to be clear on the advantages of this and have the right relationships in place. We also need to be looking at more Cost-Effective Workflow Management: enterprise-class applications come with a hefty price tag and, as we have seen in the digital processing world, new entrants are taking a sizeable share of the market and forcing the tier one providers to cut their cloth accordingly.


IPv6The new internet protocol both enables more devices to access the Internet and increases data compression, enabling more data forms to travel efficiently. As it spreads around the world, the availability of more data across more addresses is helping to drive different types of net communities and content delivery innovations.

IPv6 makes it possible to use unimaginable sextillions (3.4 * 10 to the power of 4) of IP addresses (IPv4 enables ‘only ‘ 4.2 billion). When you think about connected households with connected home appliances, and watching TV over the Internet or VoIP (which is already a reality today), more room means more freedom of design.

Windows 8In 2012 we saw an enormous push from Microsoft to gain a position in the tablet market. As the proliferation of Windows 8 grows, so will user expectations. This is already a major competitor to Apple and Android with key drivers being the vast market share that Microsoft has in the PC market and its ability to leverage this share with synchronization tools and collaboration tools for the tablet, and ultimately the connected home.

CyberneticsCybernetics is eroding the boundaries between man and machine. Brain pacemakers to control mood and artificial nervous systems are being implanted in people today. Artificial eyes that are video cameras have been in use for years. The entertainment uses of such technology are only now starting to be explored. Personal gadgets and tools like Google Glass will change the way people consume and create multimedia contents.

Multi-media in social networksMulti-media in social networks is a fusion of audio-visual content with social networks, where communication is through audio and video instead of simple text. It leverages the new digital world, the growth of on-demand services and the fragmentation that has occurred in artists and repertoire (A&R).

As multimedia takes off in social networks, value will migrate from traditional media players to the new online media players. Already for the online news portal, particularly YouTube, a fair share of hits are coming from the traditional media business.

Social networks can also provide insight that is useful for personalization and advertising. Social Network Analysis technologies enable useful information from the vast quantities of social networking data to be extracted and analyzed.

GamizationAdding Social Gaming and entertainment interface to applications will establish itself as a universal means to attract users’ attention. In the context of a social games and ever expanding user communities, the volume of digital goods purchased and advertisements placed will grow substantially.


Innovation Radars in Detail



2014+ SEP Innovation Radar in Detail: Socio-Cultural

Emerging issues Maturing issues Burning issues

Urbanization

Inherent Reliance on Technology

Changing Attitudes Towards Work(place)

Digitally Connected Society

Changing Family Unit

Eco-Awareness

Information Owned by Many

Multi-Ethnic Society

IndividualizationAging Population

Community Building

Intensive Lifestyles



Aging populationConceptThe aging population constitutes a shift in the distribution of a country’s population towards a higher average age. Population aging arises from two (possibly related) demographic effects: increasing longevity and declining fertility.

Asia and Europe are the two regions where a significant number of countries face severe population aging in the near future. Within twenty years, many Asian and European countries will face a situation where the largest population cohort will be those over 65 and the average age will be approaching 50.

TrajectoryUntil recently, there were no more than five percent of people over 65 in any given country, but greater longevity, combined with a 59 percent decrease in world fertility between 1950 and 2050, has led to this demographic changing significantly.

In 2000, the number of people aged 60 and over was 650 million. By 2025 this number will grow to 1.2 billion, and by 2050 to 2 billion. Significantly, there is also a sharp increase in the proportion of elderly people in less developed countries. In 1950, 4 percent of the population of less developed countries was aged over 65. Today, that proportion has risen to nearly 6 percent, and is projected to reach nearly 15 percent by 2050.

There are two subsets of aging population: retired people, who can still be active (working

or volunteering, for instance), travel and consume; and those who are dependent owing to poor health or general infirmity.

As they become more dominant in society, older people are also likely to demand goods and services tailored to their specific needs, a reversal of the current trend whereby stores generally seek to attract the younger shoppers.

Some Japanese economists see advantages in this scenario, notably because it encourages and makes possible further automation and technological development without the usual social efforts and consequences of reducing the wages of the labor force and unemployment.

Social welfare and health systems have begun to experience problems. Pay-as-you-go pension systems are unsustainable. The largest area of expenditure now is healthcare, and the cost will increase dramatically as the population ages. Many governments will face hard choices between higher taxes, a change in tax systems (such as from labor to consumption) or a reduced government role in providing healthcare. In the UK alone, the National Health Service (NHS) is mandated to demonstrate savings of £20 billion by 2015, and systems that improve quality of care and reduce costs will be prioritized.

Socio-economic disparities will become more pronounced in aging societies and thus frictions may arise if not dealt with appropriately.

An aging population also means an aging workforce. The first wave of Baby Boomers turned 65 in 2011. In OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries there will be 20 million fewer people of working age in 2020 than there are today. Employers will therefore have to get smarter about how they attract and retain good people. The war for talent will mean companies keeping workers on the payroll for longer, and recruiting older people (especially those aged over 50). There might even be a significant effect on global migration; as workforce levels decline in high-income countries, the vacuum might need to be filled by immigrants from low-income countries.

Changing attitude towards work(place)ConceptAttitudes relating to work (work-life balance) and the workplace seem to be shifting, especially in the ‘advanced’ economies. Basically it is about giving a person more control over the conditions at work. It is accomplished when people feel dually satisfied about their personal life and their paid occupation.

A phrase that brings the idea of work-life balance into focus is ‘Work to live, don’t live to work’. It is also related to the physical location where work would need to be performed (home, office, someplace else) and the way people are (or want to be) managed.


Several developments underpin the growing strength of this trend: the growing number of women in the workplace, the entrance of Millennials (or Generation Y) into the world of work, environmental concerns, cost reduction motives and the general transformation to knowledge-intensive economies.

TrajectoryWomen are making serious inroads in the labor force. The number of highly educated women is steadily rising. Currently around 57 percent of women are employed and by 2025 it is estimated that gainful employment for women will be 65 percent in the EU. This means changes to work(place) requirements, and to society in general, as the classic gender-related role patterns are further eroded.

Companies will increasingly face demands from employees (male and female) for a better work-life (and career) balance, and more flexibility in location (remote) and time. These initiatives, sometimes known as “Best Place to Work”, are a means not only to improve the work environment, but to develop high-trust workplace cultures that help companies to attract and retain talent.

In 2015, Millennials (or Generation Y) will constitute the majority of the workforce. They are motivated by flat hierarchies, virtual teams, flexible working conditions and fascinating tasks and less by material incentives. Millennials also have high expectations about the workspace technology provided by their employers. This will challenge many of the conventional wisdoms of current management, organization, process, IT and security.

Recently, working from home is being discussed again, perhaps boosted by the need to cut costs during the recession and environmental concerns. Employers

are increasingly seeing this approach as a business necessity that yields great savings. Money is saved on travel, overheads and subsistence, with the added bonus of creating carbon-free jobs. These discussions are now quite often held under the theme of ‘new-ways-of-working’.

For employees, individuals who are seeking to improve their own work-life balance may ‘downshift’. Individuals who ‘downshift’ might: choose to work fewer hours so they can spend more time with their family; take on a different job role or title, typically with less pressure or responsibility and often for less remuneration; decide to give up working entirely, possibly becoming a ‘stay-at-home’ parent; or work less and at the same time make lifestyle choices, such as adopting a less consumerist approach that requires less substantial outgoings.

Will traditional offices be extinct in 2021? Well, things will probably be different; people will not commute to the office daily. However, some research suggests that only a small proportion of people today would like to work from home.

Changing family unitConceptOver the past couple of decades, particularly in the West, the traditional family unit has radically changed and new models have arisen.

There has been a decrease in the number of children living in families that are headed by a couple and an increase in those living in families with a lone parent. In the UK, nearly a quarter of children live in lone-parent families, compared with a fifth ten years ago and an eighth in the early 1980s.

It is not only the family unit, but households in general that are changing: the growing trend

is towards ‘singularization’. In Europe, between 20 and 25 percent of all households comprise one person, while in the US the figure is even higher. It is not confined to the West. In Taiwan, for instance, the figure is also around 25 percent.

TrajectoryThere are more people living by themselves, or in one-parent households, in the UK than people living as part of a traditional nuclear family. An increase in divorce rates in the eighties was thought to be the main contributor to the changes seen, but today the increase in lone parents is mainly attributed to a growth in the proportion of births outside of marriage.

In 2006, 25 percent of homes in the UK were single-person households. By 2021, 40 percent of all British and Dutch households are forecast to be under single occupancy. This is put down to a variety of factors, such as people staying single until later in life, divorce being easier, increased social and personal mobility and longer lifespans, especially for women.

The trajectory has taken shape over the last 30 years, more than the life of one generation. The social changes to which this trajectory is attributed are firmly embedded within Western cultures; it would be very hard for any government legislation or policy to reverse the trends. We can therefore expect to see a continued growth in families headed by a single parent.

It is interesting that there is diversity within political parties in terms of strategies regarding changing family dynamics. Some parties are trying to reverse the trend, proposing policies that would benefit married couples, whereas others are accepting that this trend is here to stay and looking at designing policy that accepts these changes.


A continued increase in single person households may further decrease housing availability and increase debt as people borrow to afford a decent home.

Consumer goods companies, shops and stores still tend to cater towards the traditional family unit and younger shoppers, though there are now retail concepts coming up that focus on single person households, for instance, holidays targeted at singles are set to grow.

Community buildingConceptCommunity building is directed towards the creation or enhancement of community between individuals within a regional area (such as a neighborhood) or with a common interest (that may or may not be limited to geographical boundaries).

In the industrialized nations, the apparent loss of community is seen as a key cause of social disintegration and of the emergence of antisocial behavior.

Community building is a means to increase social justice, individual well-being and reduce the negative impacts of otherwise disconnected individuals.

TrajectoryIncreased personal and social mobility decreases the likelihood of generations of the same family living in the same geographical area. It also leads to a rise in single person households, with young professionals, in particular, more likely to move around and live alone, away from their traditional (family) and geographical networks.

As a consequence of this, and possibly as a backlash against the trend towards individualization, new ways of community

building are emerging. Much of this activity occurs on the Internet, and Web 2.0 is an important carrier wave.

On the Internet, this trend is rapidly maturing. There are something like 500,000 comments posted on Facebook every 60 seconds, and during the ‘Arab Spring’ we witnessed the enormous impact it had on the ability of Arab democracy movements to organize themselves.

In real life, things are moving more slowly in general. There is an increased emphasis on participation in neighborhoods, gated communities in the USA being an extreme example of this. Society might become more inclusive.

Where people follow the Web. 2.0 credo of ‘share and win’, focus shifts away from the individual toward the community and common welfare. People make use of their collective intelligence, build networks and organize their community activities by themselves.

Co-operation is also an important behavior trend for the more digitally-connected Generation Y, as are connections and relationships (community), social or personal justice and authenticity. This group tends to be more socially aware than their predecessors. As a result of this digital connectivity, societies can expect a greater level of social activism, with greater outreach across cultures and political parties.

Digitally connected societyConceptA digitally connected society is an electronic grouping of individuals, enabled by the Web, characterized by common interests. It may have a distinctive culture and institutions.

A ‘society’ may refer to particular people, such as a specific ethnic group or to a broad cultural group. It can also refer to an organized group of people associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic or other purposes, sharing a common identity.

TrajectoryThe following components are common to societies:

`` Social networks: maps of relationships between people with proximity, frequency of contact and type of relationship (such as a relative or a friend) defining various social networks. Since the adoption of web- and Web 2.0-enabled mechanisms, these features have had an enormous impact: members are always in close contact and can be called upon anytime, anywhere, using any device.

`` Social network services: web-based software systems designed to support interaction and collaboration over a network, such as chat, messaging, e-mail, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, wikis and ‘folksonomies’ (a user-generated taxonomy used to categorize and retrieve web content). Social features are now considered a required component of consumer services and technologies, from telecommunications (Skype and Tango have now integrated social connections features) to media, relying in social ‘virality’ for content distribution.

This is enabling people to share information easily and consult each other on any number of issues, such as product information, instead of relying on professional critics. In line with this, social networks are also turning into a primary source of news and information for people connected to them as a news story can circulate a large international network within minutes, keeping the entire network connected all the time.


One of the reactions of companies will be (and has already been) to offer more customer-to-customer forums as a marketing instrument.

Societies that are connected are enjoying the huge benefits and opportunities brought about by this continuing advancement include information accessibility, social connectivity, work productivity and personal independence. This extends well beyond just consumer-related influence and into the realms of social events and politics. These social networks provide a useful tool to mobilize a group of people who share the same political beliefs to solve political issues such as corruption in government.

The emergence of smartphones (such as iPhone and Android) with integrated apps (instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook and such like) makes this trend even stronger. Mobile social networks based solely on the mobile channel are emerging. As these are inherently focused on aspects of mobility and location (Instagram, Foursquare), there is a view that social networking on desktops is on the decrease.

According to recent figures there are over two billion internet subscriptions, so roughly a third or more of the world’s population is connected. It has been predicted that by 2020 between 70 percent and 80 percent of the world’s population will be connected, thanks to support of local governments in developing countries. Popular social networks and supporting social network software services have already developed and operate worldwide; there are a number of countries where local social networks particularly thrive, such as in China, Russia, South Korea, Japan and Brazil.

Eco-awarenessConceptThe green movement (or eco-movement) is a political and societal movement that advocates goals, including environmentalism, sustainability, non-violence and social justice concerns.

Supporters of the Green movement, called Greens, adhere to green ideology and share many ideas with the ecology, conservation, environmental, feminist and peace movements.

TrajectoryGreen ideology is based on three axioms:

`` It is impossible to expand forever into a finite space.

`` It is impossible to take infinitely from a finite resource.

`` Everything on the surface of the Earth is interconnected.

There are several acronyms for this type of consumer: LOHAS is one of them. LOHAS stands for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. It is used to describe the personal values of these consumers. The products they buy are based on their personal, social or environmental values.

There are signs that eco-awareness or green consumption is really taking hold. Survey figures show a tripling of green purchasing in 2008 compared to 2007. Generally, consumers would like to buy more sustainable goods if the quality of these products is seen as higher. The 2011 Green Brands Survey recently found that consumer interest in green products continues to increase and has expanded across categories: from personal care, food and household products to automotive, energy and technology goods.

Recent scandals about food adulteration (such as horse meat contamination in Europe) is raising a growing concern about the quality of food. The processed food market is becoming increasingly complex and a lack of regulation makes consumers start to question the origin, ingredients and quality of the products they eat, leading to changes in shopping habits.

In a 2011 PWC survey for the World Economic Forum, 64 percent of CEOs said they are sensing a shift in consumer preferences towards environmentally and socially responsible businesses.

An international poll, released early 2013, however, found public concern in environmental issues (including global warming, the loss of species and air pollution) to have dropped to its lowest level in two decades.

IndividualizationConceptIndividualization is a term used to describe a process towards a moral, political or social outlook that stresses human independence and the importance of individual self-reliance and liberty.

Individualists promote the exercise of individual goals and desires. They oppose most external interference with an individual’s choices, whether by society, the state, or any other group or institution.

There is a growing freedom of choice granted to individuals within society.

TrajectorySome argue that individuals are not duty-bound to any socially imposed morality and that individuals should be free to choose to be selfish (or to choose any other lifestyle) if they so desire. Others would argue that individualist goals are not selfish, so long as they do not harm others.


A central value (not just for Generation Y, but also for Generation X) is self-reliance. This will become a more prevalent societal value as the Baby Boomer Generation passes. Of course, surviving as an individual is easier in good economic times than in bad times.

In some quarters there is a sense that the rise of individualism corresponds with the decline of community. This argument sees individualism as having damaging consequences, as it fuels selfishness and greed or can lead to isolation and fear as people struggle to cope and are forced to live alone.

Technology has and is still enabling us to increasingly leading separate lives. It is becoming increasingly easier to isolate ourselves physically from other people at home or at work. At the same time, using evolving and accelerating communications technology, we are becoming more connected in other ways. The many options for self-expression that are available now and are bringing us to an entirely new level of individualization.

Western countries have the highest degree of individualization, but we are also witnessing increasing individualization in, for instance Asia. According to experts, access to education, media and growing affluence are the main drivers behind this trend.

As an opposite trend to individualization, online media and adoption of social networks has amplified the fascination of celebrities and the adoption of similar habits and lifestyles by entire communities. Through these social networks, celebrities influence the way their avid fans (who are more determined than ever to replicate their favorite celebrities) think and behave.

Information owned by manyConceptWith the first generation of the Internet, information was provided and owned by the few for the consumption of the many. The second generation Internet sees the many now willing and able to contribute to the wealth of knowledge and information.

Companies and individuals alike are now no longer in control of the information written about them on the Web, with nuggets of information appearing within many diverse sources. It is not easy to either seek out all the information or influence the impression that it is making.

TrajectoryTo date, the Internet reputation is often overlooked by companies and individuals. The power of the Internet reputation has not yet hit home in many instances, and its impact on brand (positive or negative) is not fully understood.

We may see this come to a head in the next few years: major brands could be hit hard if they do not acknowledge that their brand’s identity and the information about it are being created in a wider context by the ‘many’. Failing to manage the reputation of brands on the Internet may have damaging consequences.

If one major brand is affected in this way, there will be an initial knee-jerk reaction from others as the message is brought home. Initially, other brands will fight hard to regain control of information about them, but this is doomed to failure as information proliferation cannot be controlled on the Web.

In the longer term, companies and individuals will embrace the ability of the Internet to build or destroy their reputation, and managing the Internet reputation will become a mainstream activity.

Even governments are increasingly unable to control the flow of information. Disconnecting an entire country from its Internet service to keep protesters in Egypt from organizing on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking platforms was in vain. China already has some of the world’s most far-reaching online restrictions and is increasing them still further.

Inherent reliance on technologyConceptReliance on technology means that our personal world, and our society, cannot function without the use of technological devices. This includes cell phones, debit and credit cards, computers, the Internet and cars.

For instance, smartphones and tablets have become an essential tool in our lives, little technological Swiss knives that can be used anywhere. Users are confident that with that technology at hand anytime, they can face any challenge that might arise in their daily lives; they do not plan their itinerary anymore because they know that, if need be, they can look up the map or timetable on their smartphone.

Internet of Things (or equipping all objects in the world with minuscule identifying devices) will be, alongside mobility, transformative of daily life. Your ability to interact with objects could be altered remotely based on immediate or present needs, in accordance with existing end-user agreements.

Our trust in technology has already profoundly changed our personal behaviors.

Trajectory The use of personal electronics has taken off dramatically over the last 20 years. Technology has moved from novelty to necessity in a very short time. People, for instance, prefer consulting the Internet for information than looking through a book.


Some studies show that the mobile phone is the second object (after their keys, but before their wallet) that users realize they have forgotten and left at home. Day and night, it serves as a personal assistant and as a remote control for their world.

We also rely on it to do more and more for us: no need for a camera, the smartphone has one; no need to check up on info on the Web on the desktop before leaving house, look it up on the smartphone or tablet if and when required. The multitude of apps available cover the diversity of needs that could pop up during the day.

In the near future, the wallet will not be necessary either: the mobile will be the means of payment, as well as the transport ticket. It may even be a key (already tested in Japan).

Things are developing in a direction that ‘everyone’ might have primary digital device (PDD). It is this PDD that keeps users connected 24 hours a day at home, in transit and at work. It is used to download and record music, video and other content, and to keep in touch with family, friends and acquaintances. It will, in the future, also be context sensitive, understanding what information needs to be downloaded.

While new technologies can enhance lives and streamline the way we do business, unfortunately there are individuals and entities who will attempt to exploit them to do harm.

This is not the only danger; just think of what would happen if we had no electricity to power our devices. It would not only impact our personal lives, but society and the economy as a whole (stock exchanges rely on computers, which rely on electric power).

Gartner believes that the Internet of Things (in which computing is embedded in a wide range of different entities in the real world; such as, vehicles and appliances) is the next development after mobility.

Intensive lifestylesConceptLife seems increasingly intensive, especially with the amount of information people get and variety of ‘must-do’ private activities that are now available. Personal lives can be very demanding.

However, this concept is not solely about intensity of the personal lives. The idea of intensive lifestyles relates to work and the work-life balance of a person and his or her control over the conditions in the workplace. Balance is accomplished when people feel satisfied about both their personal life and their paid occupation. It mutually benefits the individual, business and society when a person’s personal life is balanced with his or her own job.

TrajectoryThe obsession with being busy can be seen in the way the work ethic has invaded childhood: children must be kept busy at all times, is the prevailing wisdom.

Researchers in Scotland have recently identified a syndrome that has been called ‘Busy Lifestyle Syndrome’. This syndrome is triggered by our busy lifestyles, where we are bombarded with too much information, causing information overload. The consequences are that attention spans and concentration levels are going down and memory loss is getting common and affecting younger people.

A busy lifestyle also affects people’s diets. Research shows that consumers are moving away from traditional meals toward quick, convenient foods, helping to fuel healthy growth in the global snack foods market.

A fairly recent trend is ‘downshifting’. Downshifting is a behavior or trend in which individuals seek to simplify their lives in order to escape from the rat race and obsessive materialism. It reduces the stress, overtime and psychological expense and emphasizes an improved balance between leisure and work by focusing life goals on personal fulfillment and relationship building instead of the all-consuming pursuit of economic success.

Multi-ethnic societyConceptMulti-ethnic societies, in contrast to mono-ethnic societies, integrate different ethnic groups (irrespective of differences in culture, race and history) under a common social identity larger than one ‘nation’ in the conventional sense.

All cities and most towns can be regarded as multi-ethnic societies.

Many nations that today are considered ethnically homogeneous, such as Japan, have their origins in a complex process of ethnic integration.

TrajectoryA precondition to the success of a multi-ethnic society is a common (or overlapping) language. Even in the EU, English is the lingua franca for business and scientific exchange.

Even more important than a ‘common language’ is an atmosphere of tolerance and understanding.


Transnational migration flows shape societies’ future character. This has always been the case. Households in the West are increasingly multi-ethnic. In big cities, their multi-cultural or cosmopolitan nature is more accepted. In the periphery, multi ethnicity causes suspicion and fear. Nonetheless, such cultural tensions are not always consistent and might be more about clashing value systems; there has been almost no problem with the introduction of Islamic banking systems into European countries, but there is widespread aversion to the Islamic practice of arranged marriages.

Forced mixture or co-existence of ethnically different populations might be the reason for the outbreak of nationalistic and racist tendencies, which, over the years, can grow strong enough to seriously threaten or even destroy a multi-ethnic society. Debate in several European countries has recently culminated in governments declaring the multi-cultural society dead and that a new approach was needed.

However, as the populations age in the in high-income countries, their workforce levels will decline and the vacuum will need to be filled by immigrants. Tightening of immigration flows challenges growth prospects in Europe and the US.

UrbanizationConceptUrbanization is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change.

Urbanization is also defined by the United Nations as movement of people from rural to urban areas with population growth equating to urban migration. Urbanization is closely linked to modernization, industrialization and the sociological process of rationalization.

Urbanization occurs naturally from individual and corporate efforts to reduce time and expense in commuting and transportation, while improving opportunities for jobs, education, housing and transportation. People move into cities to seek economic opportunities.

A major contributing factor is known as ‘rural flight’. In rural areas, often on small family farms, it is difficult to improve your standard of living beyond basic sustenance. Industrialization of agriculture has reduced the size of the rural labor market.

In cities, social mobility is possible. People, especially the elderly, are often forced to move to cities where there are doctors and hospitals that can cater for their health needs.

TrajectoryHumanity is rapidly urbanizing; the size and number of cities will continue to grow, particularly in the developing world. It is estimated that up to 80 percent of the world’s population will be living in urban areas by 2050.

Currently there are around 400 cities with more than 1 million citizens. Globally the number of people living in large cities will increase.

The number of megacities, cities with more than 10 million inhabitants, is also increasing. There were only two megacities in the world in 1950. By 1975, the number of such cities had grown to four; by 2000 to eighteen. The United Nations expects 22 megacities worldwide by 2015, of which 16 will be in developing countries, including the cities around the Pearl River Delta (home to China’s manufacturing center and currently accounting for 10 percent of the Chinese economy). There are plans for massive

infrastructural projects to connect these cities, thus creating a new city would encompass a country the size of Switzerland.

Urbanization and the development of large cities pose massive challenges in areas of governance and government planning, public health, sustainability (cities use 66 percent of the world’s total energy, create 75 percent of CO

2 emissions and need massive amounts

of water), crime (due to slum conditions), infrastructure, housing, mobility and economic development.

There are also many social-cultural impacts of urbanization: cities have a big impact on their surrounding rural areas; the mass media depict city life as superior; it dominates what is deemed to be the ‘standard’ language; better services are received in the city due to its wealth; the fertility rates in cities are usually lower than in rural areas due the cost of children, food and living space; as a city grows, the cost of housing and infrastructure also grows, combined with the fact that the number of people competing for jobs is more than jobs available, unemployment, drug abuse, crime and homelessness also increase.

In the developed world there is a special consequence for the rural areas, they are becoming leisure centers. Second residences are becoming more popular, either in the home country or abroad. In countries such as Greece, Italy, France and Spain, between 10 and 15 percent of housing stock is comprised of second homes. Of course the economic downturn has had an impact on demand, which sees prices dropping off in most areas. Some countries have also instated a tax on these kind of second homes.


2014+ SEP Innovation Radar in Detail: Economic



Rise of the Entreployee

Multi-Sided Markets

Industry Consolidaton

Venture Philanthropy

Shifting Centers of Economic Activity

Ubiquitous Access to Information

Greening Business

Shift to Knowledge-Intensive Industries

Competition for Natural Resources and Alternative Energy Sources

Back-Shoring

Multi-Currency Monetary

System

Stakeholder Power

Knowledge Process Outsourcing

Global Consumer Markets

Global Labor & Talent Market

Peer-to-Peer Trading

Cyber Threats

Economic Volatility

De-Commoditization



Back-shoringConceptBack-shoring is a countertrend for Western companies that have offshored manufacturing facilities to cheap labor cost countries. Technological advancement makes it possible to produce goods or deliver services with less people, so that labor costs become less relevant. High transportation costs have made it more economical to back-shore production activities and automate them, thus eliminating labor and transportation costs.

There is also movement in terms of the de-offshoring of manufacturing towards the USA. As the purchase power parity of the US dollar falls, and since unemployment is high in the USA, the economic balance between manufacturing in Southeast Asia and manufacturing close to home in terms of total cost of ownership is tilting towards bringing some production back to the USA.

The high costs associated with quality control over production in China, the difficult response times for replacing a defective production lot and the extended management attention needed to offshore manufacturing are already making some companies return to local production.

On a political level, the things that make a country, or region, special need to be identified and preserved for electoral purposes. This inevitably spills over in to the economic outlook of countries and regions.

TrajectoryGlobal trade may slow down and become local trade as transportation costs of resources, workers and goods increases. Global resources, notably energy, may become the object of increasing ‘resource nationalism’. The shape of conflict around trade may take the form of protectionism on the basis of regional blocs.

In a world of commodities and homogenization, companies are increasingly called upon to produce items closer to individual customer specifications, and producers look for ways to differentiate their products in mature, saturated markets. In the West, developed manufacturing could therefore shift to a model of ‘distributed manufacturing’ based on smaller, localized plants affording greater product customization. Manufacturing production would take place in modules put together in small, fully automated assembly lines close to the consumer. Details can be adapted to meet individual tastes, and no expensive and time-consuming transportation is needed.

Competition for natural resources and alternative energy sources ConceptAs long-term economic growth accelerates, especially in emerging markets such as the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), and despite the current economic downturn, we are using natural resources and energy sources at increasing rates. This

leads to increasing competition over needed resources such as oil, water, energy, grain and raw materials.

What is the best way to cope with the strong volatility of demand and related price fluctuations? How can economic growth and sustainable environmental demands co-exist in the longer term?

TrajectoryIn the next two decades, by 2030, World demand for oil is projected to increase 21 percent over 2007 levels. Without significant new discoveries or radical innovations, supply is unlikely to keep up. There are similar surges in demand across a broad range of commodities. In China, for example, demands for copper, steel, aluminum, wood and coal have increased in the past decade.

The world’s resources are increasingly strained. Water shortages, in particular, will be the key constraint to growth in many countries. Fights for water (and more conflicts over valuable territory, then religion) will dominate. The world’s atmosphere will require dramatic shifts in human behavior to keep it from being depleted.

Recent climate change conferences and new legislation from the EC have reasserted environmental issues on the economic agenda. Reactions to the economic crisis also lean to alternative sources, amongst others, to reduce oil dependency. According to recent analysis from the Citi Group, the improvement in global vehicle efficiency and the substitution


of natural gas for oil could be enough to put in a plateau for global oil demand by the end of this decade.

Chinese and other Asian investments in Australia, Latin America and Africa can be seen against the backdrop of competition for natural resources, as part of a strategy of securing direct access to these resources.

Prices for raw materials may have been relatively low recently, due to the economic downturn, but as the economy of the world recovers, prices in critical resources might rise rapidly.

The intensification of the usage of alternative energy schemes may alter the power balance between stakeholders on the planet. For example, the usage of lithium may go up exponentially with the advent of electric cars, making other countries rich and powerful: the new Middle East. The same rationale is true for solar and wind energy for countries with large sun-bathed areas or topologies favoring wind usage.

Cyber threatsConceptComputer hacking represents an increasing threat, especially for large organizations. Attacks can come from amateur hackers, terrorist organizations, government agencies and competitors (industrial espionage). Exposition is difficult to measure and counter-measures are difficult to partner with business imperatives such as agility and openness.

According to McAfee, an internet security company, corporations around the world face millions of cyber-attacks a day. Most attacked sectors include industry, academia, government, financial institutions, power grids and physical infrastructures, as well as the military in the air, land, maritime and space domains.

Classified information that is not handled securely can be intercepted and even modified, making espionage possible from any side of the world.

Leading experts on hostilities waged via the Internet sustain that even the most powerful nations, including US, China or Russia, might be locked in a tight race to build destructive cyber weapons capable of seriously damaging other nations’ critical infrastructure.

TrajectoryPotential targets in internet sabotage include all aspects of the Internet, from the backbones of the Web and the Internet Service Providers to the varying types of data communication mediums and network equipment of companies and individuals. Most vulnerable are enterprise information systems and databases.

Electrical grids and telecommunication systems are also deemed vulnerable, especially due to current trends in automation. The United States Department of Homeland Security works with industry to identify vulnerabilities and to help industry enhance the security of control system networks, ensuring that security is built in as the next generation of ‘Smart Grid’ networks are developed.

Military activities that use computers and satellites for coordination are at risk of equipment disruption. Orders and communications can be intercepted or replaced. Transportation infrastructures are also vulnerable to disruption.

Financial institutions are also at risk: security breaches have already gone beyond stolen credit card numbers and fraud transactions on the stock markets.

The past three to four years have demonstrated a number of virus attacks that jeopardize critical business core data and information, and processes. The impact of such attacks can grow such that enterprises and organizations will be impacted at a level that will jeopardize their existence.

According to the September 2012 Norton Cybercrime Report, an estimated 556 million people across the globe experienced cybercrime in the 12-month period that ended in August 2012, with an estimated USD 110 billion in direct financial losses. Research in the UK shows 93 percent of large organizations and 87 percent of small firms were targeted during 2012.

Cybercrime is rapidly expanding beyond hackers and criminal organizations. It now includes terrorist networks and nation states seeking to inflict damage or steal classified information from public and private computer systems.

De-commoditizationConceptCommoditization is a process that transforms the market for a unique, branded product into a market based on undifferentiated price competition. In economic terms, the market changes from one of monopolistic competition to one of perfect competition. Consumers usually benefit from commoditization, since perfect competition usually leads to lower prices.

Branded producers often suffer under commoditization, since the value of the brand (and ability to command price premiums) can be weakened. This is why branded producers are keen to de-commoditize their offerings.


TrajectoryToday, ‘Chinafication’ (copying), emerging technologies, increasing global competition and the rising expectations of consumers are increasingly driving products and services to look like commodities.

Products can be placed on a continuum of evolution, classified thus:

`` Commodity: charge for undifferentiated, look-alike (raw) materials

`` Goods: charge for distinctive tangible items (packaged products, final goods)

`` Services: charge for the activities you perform (on top of the delivery of products)

`` Experience: charge for the feeling customers get because of engaging you (on top of delivery of services)

`` Transformation: charge for the benefit customers (or ‘guests’) receive as a result of spending that time

Economic volatilityConceptAn economic downturn relates to a period of reduced economic activity, also known as a business cycle contraction. In economics, the term ‘recession’ describes the reduction of a country’s GDP for at least two successive quarters of a year. The last downturn began with a slowdown in the US housing market in 2006. Homeowners, many of whom could only barely afford their mortgage payments when interest rates were low, began to default on their mortgages. Default rates on sub-prime high-risk loans to clients with poor or no credit histories rose to record levels. The impact of these defaults was felt across the financial system, resulting in the collapse of financial institutions all over the world and the general widespread economic crisis, from which some say we are slowly recovering, while others forecast a new second dip in economic terms.

Volatility is about the swings from boom to bust. Before the last recession economic volatility seemed to have been greatly reduced. Over the last two years we have seen massive swings in the stock markets, going up and down in magnitudes that seemed hardly thinkable before.

TrajectoryAlthough no completely reliable predictors exist, a significant stock market drop often precedes the beginning of a recession. Dramatic changes in unemployment rates also often indicate a recession. This has certainly been true of the current economic crisis. Strategies for moving an economy out of a recession vary depending on which economic school policymakers follow. While Keynesian economists may advocate deficit spending by governments to spark economic growth, supply-side economists may suggest tax cuts to promote business.

Capital investment. Laissez-faire economists may simply recommend that governments let natural market forces play themselves out. Greater controls and international regulation is a possible outcome of the current economic crisis.

The world was slowly recovering, led by the emerging markets (China), with much of the growth in the Western economies (until this point) stemming from massive government stimulus packages.

The wider economic climate is now quite different, with a two-speed world likely to persist into the medium term: buoyant growth in the East and in emerging economies whilst most of the Western economies are projected to show weak growth constrained by sovereign risk, debt leveraging, the Euro crisis, volatility in the financial markets and unemployment.

The IMF recently spoke of a ‘three-speed’ global economy, with developing nations growing rapidly, the United States recovering faster than most other developed countries and Europe continuing to suffer from insufficient demand and incomplete government policies.

Whatever the case, the effects of the last crisis are likely to be felt for a decade.

Global consumer marketsConceptIt is expected that a billion new consumers will enter the global consumer marketplace as soon as the last economic downturn subsides and revived economic growth in emerging markets pushes consumers beyond the threshold level of USD 3,700 in annual household income, a point when people generally begin to spend on discretionary goods. This figure will continue to grow.

TrajectoryFor the first time since the industrial age began, today the 5.4 billion people living in emerging economies account for more than half of global GDP, on a purchasing power parity basis. This share of the global economy is set only to grow in the future. The IMF expects developing markets to grow by an average rate of 5.7 percent through to 2014, dwarfing the growth rate expected for most advanced economies.

Also, the developing economies of today often have lower debt levels, higher foreign exchange reserves and they make up over 82 percent of the world’s population, representing around 5.4 billion potential consumers with an estimated combined purchasing power of over USD 25 trillion by 2025.


Over the next several decades, the number of people considered to be in the ‘global middle class’ is projected to swell from 440 million to 1.2 billion, or from 7.6 percent of the world’s population to 16.1 percent, according to the World Bank. Most of the new entrants will come from China and India.

Consumers, wherever they live, will increasingly have information about and access to the same products and brands.

China’s growing consumer class will continue to compete more intensively with Western consumers for needed resources such as oil, water, energy, wood, grain, manufacturing raw materials and luxury goods, such as expensive German automobiles. Although there are some protectionist measures being taken, which focus on boosting internal consumption, it is expected that these are just temporary.

Global labor and talent marketConceptDespite growing unemployment numbers, ongoing shifts in labor and talent will be far more profound than migration of jobs to low-wage countries. The shift to knowledge-intensive industries continues to highlight the importance and scarcity of well-trained talent with degrees in science, technology and other technical fields. Drivers behind the shift include the growing employment demands of the rising productivity imperative and our aging society. Essentially, this is about moving jobs and mobility of talent.

TrajectoryThe increasing integration of global labor markets is opening up vast new talent sources. The number of university-educated young professionals in developing countries (33 million) is more than double the number in developed ones. At the same time, geography will become irrelevant as highly skilled workers become more mobile.

Companies will hire globally and workers will move internationally to follow opportunities and that jobs can exist in one location while the worker is in another. Global labor and talent strategies will become as important as global sourcing and manufacturing strategies.

On the other hand, some predictions state that in the next two decades there will be too many low skill workers for full-time employment. The onus, therefore, is on firms and policy makers to generate jobs for those who aren’t as highly educated, in both advanced and developing economies.

Greening businessConceptThe concept of, and discussion on, the carbon footprint originates from the green movement and has been on the political agenda for some time. It has recently been picked up by economists as well, and not just because of rising energy costs.

A carbon footprint is the total set of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organization, event or product. The carbon footprint of an individual, a nation or an organization is measured by undertaking a GHG emissions assessment. Once the size of a carbon footprint is known, a strategy can be devised to reduce it.

TrajectoryThe mitigation of carbon emissions through the development of alternative energy sources, such as solar or wind energy, represents one way of managing the problem. A carbon footprint can be efficiently and effectively reduced by undertaking a number of measures:

`` Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to accurately determine the current carbon footprint.

`` Identification of hotspots in terms of energy consumption and associated CO

2 emissions.

`` Where possible, changing to another (renewable) energy source such as wind turbines, solar panels, or even nuclear power, however controversial this might be.

`` Optimizations of energy efficiency and, thus, reduction of CO

2 emissions and other GHG

emissions contributed from production processes.

`` Identification of solutions to neutralize the CO

2 emissions that cannot be eliminated by

energy-saving measures.

`` Utilizing technology to find operation management efficiencies or drive sustainability into purchasing practices. These advancements allow companies to look at real-time data on a host of issues, such as carbon and water use, and make immediate recommendations that will conserve resources.

Whatever the case, on one hand more and more businesses are going out of their way to show their green face to the public, but on the other hand, the vast majority of businesses are only doing what they absolutely need to do in order to comply with regulations and reporting standards. ‘Green’ is still seen as a cost and not an investment. It is just part of the license to operate.

However, in a recent survey for the World Economic Forum, 64 percent of CEOs said they are sensing a shift in consumer preferences towards environmentally and socially responsible businesses, underscoring that consumers perceive value in a company’s reputation.

Industry consolidationConceptIndustry consolidation refers to the mergers or acquisitions of many smaller companies into much larger ones within specific sectors.

An acquisition, also known as a takeover, is the buying of one company (the ‘target’) by another.


A merger is similar, but with two companies coming together with equal status. Such actions are commonly voluntary and involve stock-swap or cash payment to the target.

TrajectoryA number of trends are driving industry consolidation:

`` Economies of scale: reducing duplication of departments or operations, thus lowering cost.

`` Increased revenue/market share: absorbing a major competitor increases power to set prices.

`` Cross-selling: for example, a bank buying a stock broker could then sell its banking products to the stockbroker’s customers.

`` Synergy: better use of complementary resources.

`` Geographical or other diversification: smoothing earnings results, which, over the long-term, smooths the stock price of an organization.

`` Vertical integration: companies acquire part of a supply chain and benefit from the resources.

The near collapse of the financial system and the ensuing economic downturn accelerated this process. Stock prices and company valuations are still relatively low now so acquisitions and mergers are ‘cheap’.

Macroeconomic and geo-political factors are still causing great uncertainty and businesses remain extremely cautious about the future. But as economic recovery starts, companies will feel confident enough to start new acquisitions. We can expect a sustained recovery in M&A activity once a period of stability and confidence has returned. The acquisition and mergers market is already picking up.

On the other hand it is also something of a mixed bag: in the financial sector de-consolidation is looming. As failed banks are broken up, discussion is taking place on the subject of prohibiting particular services taking place within a single company. Furthermore, since many financial institutions have proven to be too complex, and despite being judged too big to fail, even the outright splitting up of the corporate giants is on the table.

Knowledge Process Outsourcing ConceptUnlike traditional business process outsourcing initiatives, Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) involves knowledge-intensive business processes that require significant domain expertise, analytic skills, and judgment and decision-making capabilities.

The goal is to deliver value by providing superior enterprise decision-making as opposed to cost-saving alone.

TrajectoryThe KPO industry is projected to grow to around USD 17 billion during 2013-14, with India to account for approximately 70 percent of the global KPO industry. This is a slower development than was predicted in earlier years.

Banking, finance, securities, and insurance (BFSI) research and analytics services are more than average growth areas, as are legal, paralegal and Intellectual Property (LPO) services, and publishing.

Data management, search and analytics services are laggards, as are translation and localization services, and architectural services.

Process transparency is a major barrier to using KPO services. Many organizations don’t track which decisions are made by whom carefully, relying extensively on informal social processes and soft skills. It is unclear how much using KPO would disrupt existing operations in these cases.

However, requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, and radical transparency movements like full-cost accounting, shareholder activism, eco-labels and moral purchasing, have tended to require organizations to be more explicit about when decisions are made and by whom.

A fully developed service economy enables KPO by treating all functions as services, as do more technical trends such as Service Oriented Architecture, enterprise application integration and teleworking: it is easier to outsource a job if it is already being performed outside the head office.

Across the spectrum, KPOs are emphasizing value addition and value creation rather than lower costs and labor arbitrage opportunities. The emphasis will shift from “I can save you money because of cheaper labor” to “I can save money by doing it smarter and increasing productivity”. This trend will take offshoring and outsourcing from the discrete provision of varied services at a lower cost to a more holistic delivery of integrated services that ‘create value’ for the buyer.


Multi-sided marketsConceptTraditionally, relationships in business have a linear supply and demand nature (1:1): products or services are delivered in one direction and money returns in the opposite. In the economic theory of two-sided markets, the value flow is made possible by a platform between two different markets. If one side of the market grows, it influences the other side of the market positive--the so called network effect. For example, the more consumers are using a specific gaming platform, the more game developers will create games for that gaming platform, which in turn attracts more gamers. There are various other successful examples such as credit card platforms (linking the merchants and customers) and broadcasters (linking the advertisers and consumers).

Information-based platforms can develop the concept of two-sided markets into multi-sided markets; collecting data-through transactional and social platforms creates for stakeholders multiple use cases in the same information domain. These platforms are able to cross-link contextual data coming from different market sides and create value from such linkage.

TrajectoryThis theory is applied in social networks, where consumers are not charged for the service, but the platform reuses consumer’s personal data on an anonymous aggregated or individualized basis. These platforms often evolve into value networks or ecosystems in which one business at one side of the market stimulates the business at another market side by sharing information and, eventually, the customer base.

The upside is that trust can be built slowly, step by step, as more and more information is shared. The downside is that trust and the entire new value can be destroyed

by one single unwanted privacy violation of consumer or business data. Market participants have to be aware that they have a responsibility to protect the information being provided in order to maintain the ecosystem.

These value ecosystems will not only influence the collaboration between the competitors in the same market, but will also force a cross-sector collaboration based on shared information. Multi-sided markets will transform into what we call ‘multi-purpose transaction systems’.

Multi-currency monetary systemConceptAs the 21st century unfolds and the world is recovering from the financial crisis, the growing power of emerging markets is clearing the way for a world economy that is more multipolar.

As investors and multinationals increase their exposure to fast-growing emerging economies, international demand for developing economy currencies will grow, making way for a global monetary system with more than one dominant currency. Establishing a multi-currency international reserve currency system is seen by some as an inevitable outcome of shifting economic power, and for others as a way to maintain the stability of the international financial system. Such a global multi-currency reserve system could include the US dollar, euro, renminbi, yen, pound sterling and other currencies.

TrajectoryThroughout history, paradigms of economic and financial power have been drawn and redrawn according to the rise and fall of states with the greatest capability to drive global growth and provide stimulus to other countries.

Over the past decades, the world has witnessed emerging economies rise to become a powerful force in international production, trade and finance. Developing countries’ share of international trade flows has risen from 30 percent in 1995 to an estimated 45 percent in 2010, and it is projected to rise even more. Much of this rise has been due to an expansion of trade among developing countries.

More than one-third of foreign direct investment in developing countries originates in other developing countries. Emerging economies have also increased their financial holdings and wealth. Emerging and developing countries now hold two-thirds of all official foreign exchange reserves. This is a reversal in the pattern of the previous decade when the developed economies held two-thirds of all reserves.

In 2011, the World Bank iterated that “the most likely scenario for the international monetary system is a multicurrency system centered around the U.S. dollar, the euro, and the renminbi.” And in 2012, the European Central Bank concluded that the international currency system was already becoming tripolar.

Others have a different opinion, arguing that nothing has really changed over the past couple of decades, in terms of currency competition or concentration. This might of course change in the future, but is certainly not the case right now.

Peer-to-peer tradingConceptPeople are increasingly buying and selling directly to and from one another using online trading systems (platforms). These platforms allow individual members to complete financial transactions by using an auction-style process that lets members offer used or new


On the one hand this can be said to stem from corporate management being increasingly forced to reduce costs and increase flexibility and innovation; on the other, it can be seen as the increased ‘promiscuity’ of employees that do not want to be tied down to one employer ‘for life’ and reflective of an increasing number of self-employed workers.

TrajectoryWhilst self-employment is unlikely to replace employment as the dominant logic of exchange in the labor market, the nature of employment will continue to evolve. Increasing dependence on technology could stimulate further specialization and the requirement for complex skills in the labor market.

The costs to employers of recruiting skilled workers may decline as the presence of internet recruitment tools continues to grow, speeding up search and selection. Some companies are starting to unbundle work in radical ways, using technology to ‘crowdsource’ labor and divvy it up into micro-jobs, which can be farmed out to unaffiliated masses of remote workers.

Training and retaining workers, on the other hand, may become increasingly difficult and costly. There is a growing freelance workforce made up of people who see themselves not as having a single job so much as having several at once.

Members of the new generation (Generation Y) are also increasingly seeing themselves as entrepreneurs and only secondarily as employees working for a company. This group also demands that work is both enjoyable and inspiring.

products and services for a specific amount or on a ‘best offer’ basis. Members are typically rated by their risk level, based on transaction history. Members can browse for other people based on various demographic data.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) trading does not use third-party banking institution intermediaries and members are not always looking for great margins. This means that selling prices, rates and terms are often much more favorable for the buyer.

The concept of peer-to-peer trading has developed from being a community practice into a legitimate business opportunity. Growing cost-consciousness and belief in community is leading people away from the centralized and controlled forms of consumerism and towards the idea of sharing and cooperation.

TrajectoryP2P marketplaces are an evolution of the traditional business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketplaces. B2B or B2C marketplaces have been in operation since 2000.

P2P trading platforms are often referred to as eBay-like mechanisms for goods or Craigslist for rentals, as these two services are the most famous C2C marketplaces and classified platforms.

P2P trading has also moved into financial services. A good example of this is the growth of money lending sites where individuals lend each other money and set their own rates, which are often better than bank rates.

Peer-to-peer trading is driving the rise of decentralized or stateless digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, with its own internet payment processors and digital wallets.

The fast development of this market is due to a combination of the following trends:

`` Networking infrastructure and high-bandwidth penetration are reaching a level that allows social networks and C2C marketplaces.

`` Limited physical storage space in the dense urban environment is preventing consumers from keeping goods they only occasionally use.

`` Eco-awareness and consumers’ increasing environmental concerns is leading to less resource waste and a reduction in overconsumption.

`` Consumers are increasingly becoming users (renters), rather than owners, of goods.

`` A knock-on effect of the economic downturn is that people are more disposed to selling items, and/or buying second-hand goods.

Some are even arguing that we are witnessing the rise of a ‘sharing economy’ or ‘collaborative consumption’. The concept is simple: access to goods and skills is more important than ownership of them. In 2013 Forbes estimated “the revenue flowing through the share economy directly into people’s wallets will surpass USD 3.5 billion this year, with growth exceeding 25 percent. At that rate peer-to-peer sharing is moving from an income boost in a stagnant wage market into a disruptive economic force.”

Rise of the entreployee Concept‘Entreployee’ is the term used to describe a new type of employee who markets his or her working abilities on his or her own initiative and who, although formally a dependent employee, bears the risks that have traditionally been those of entrepreneurs.


The decline in loyalty to a single employer could continue as a result of both flexibility in the labor market and changing attitudes and preferences amongst workers. Uptake of non-standard working patterns is likely to increase (flexible hours, multiple jobs and working from home) within the scope of employment contracts.

Shifting centers of economic activityConceptCenters of economic activity will continue to shift profoundly, not just regionally, but also globally. The world has embarked on a massive realignment of economic activity as a consequence of economic liberalization, technological advances, capital market developments and demographic shifts.

TrajectoryAlthough there will undoubtedly be shocks and setbacks, this realignment will persist.

Today, Asia (excluding Japan) accounts for 13 percent of world GDP, while Western Europe accounts for more than 30 percent. Within the next 20 years, the two will nearly converge, and by 2050 the BRIC countries are projected to be the largest contributors to economic output.

Some industries and functions (manufacturing and IT services, for example) will shift even more dramatically.

There will also come a point where emerging markets, such as China and India, are no longer just sources of cheap supply and demand; they will increasingly become global hubs for capital and important centers of upstream innovation.

This shift derives from two key sources: sustained increases in oil and commodity

prices have generated windfall profits for the Gulf States and Russia; and relatively low labor costs combined with certain government policies have generated high profits in Asia, particularly in China and India.

This is, however, not just the story of the ‘rise of Asia’: the shifts we are seeing within regions are as significant as those we are seeing between regions.

The United States will still account for the largest share of absolute economic growth for the next few years. The whole world has been hit hard by the economic downturn and so, relatively speaking, things will largely stay the same.

Consumers in APAC and LATAM haven’t experienced job losses as extensive as US and Europe, and large markets (such as China, India and Brazil) are continuing to see steady growth.

Shift to knowledge-intensive industriesConceptProducts and processes are too easily replicated; automation of simple tasks and transactions is widespread. There is increasing competition from emerging (and low-cost) countries. Organizations will need to differentiate themselves through knowledge relationships with partners and customers.

TrajectoryKnowledge production itself is growing: worldwide patent applications, for example, rose between 1990 and 2004 at a rate of 20 percent annually.

The hunt for competitive advantage will focus increasingly on improving the productivity and performance of knowledge workers.

The issue is also often being recast in terms of a knowledge-based economy (where the discourse is often focused in terms of ‘knowledge and higher education clusters’ or ‘knowledge hubs’) as a means of developing industrial policy that will enable the region to remain or become competitive in the global economy.

One of the new battle grounds is the struggle to retain knowledge advantage in connection with clean or low-carbon energy technologies. The developed countries are taking measures to ensure supremacy in clean technology; they do not want “the technology that will transform the way we use energy to be invented abroad.” (Barack Obama, 2010).

Competitive struggles between knowledge-intensive enterprises are increasingly being fought on two fronts (the legal battlefield and in the marketplace) as the creators, producers, publishers, distributors and consumers of intellectual property-based products pursue their interests. High-profile lawsuits and legislation have highlighted this.

Stakeholder powerConceptFirms are increasingly influenced by the views and concerns of stakeholders, including anyone in the wider ecosystem impacted by the company: customers, anyone in the value chain and societies local to their business sites.

With the connectivity and tools of the Internet enabling individuals to express their viewpoints, and a growing trend of individuals listening to their peers rather than marketing messages, firms must be wary of their reputation on the Internet and that this reputation is largely in the hands of their stakeholders.


TrajectoryConnectivity and participation will only grow and brand reputation will be influenced more and more by individual stakeholders. People expect to be listened to; they now have a medium through which to express their views if they are ignored.

Further, this is a growing opportunity for firms to better understand the needs and wants of their stakeholders. In doing so they can increase market share by building a strong and wholesome reputation of trust and openness.

Materiality analysis is becoming increasingly important in firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting guidelines. It allows firms to identify and prioritize issues, and ensure more space is allocated in their reports to issues truly important to stakeholders, giving stakeholders confidence that the company is addressing their concerns.

Ubiquitous access to informationConcept Information is increasingly available. The most obvious manifestation of this trend is the rise of search engines such as Google, which make an almost infinite amount of information available instantaneously. The increasing adoption of 3G smartphones (such as Apple’s iPhone and Android phones) is making access to anytime/anywhere information a reality. Access to information has therefore become almost universal.

Also, the recent US decision to make more information available, so that smallcos can offer services based on it, is a real change.

TrajectoryInformation is rapidly becoming a commodity; knowledge is becoming the new competitive advantage. Consumers, wherever they live, will increasingly have information about and access to the same products and brands.

Information-based enterprises will find themselves increasingly challenged to move beyond commoditized products and service experiences to new levels of added value and life enrichment through knowledge.

Companies adopting Big Data techniques and advanced analytic methods will improve their productivity and customer engagement; customers expect greater transparency of operations and more accurate business decisions.

If information, for instance in the form of content, is ubiquitous, it will be largely valueless. Information is no longer scarce and therefore it is not data; it is the knowledge drawn from the clutter of information that will become valuable.

Venture philanthropyConceptVenture philanthropy (also termed philanthrocapitalism) is a system that bases its approach to fulfilling philanthropic goals on tried and tested concepts and techniques from venture capital and traditional financial investment. It typically focuses on mid- to long-term partnerships and investments comprising financial, intellectual and human capital.

The philosophy is the application of financial investment techniques motivated by the maximization of return on ‘social investment’. This is not (necessarily) a monetary return: the motivation for the investment being of a principally philanthropic nature.

Venture philanthropy is characterized by partnership engagements, varying financing techniques (grants, loans, structured financial instruments) and a desire for donors and recipients to maximize quantifiable ‘social returns on investment’.

TrajectoryClimate change, and public perception of the causes, and the economic downturn have raised corporate responsibility and ethical operations high on the agenda of corporate decision-makers. Companies are cognizant of their local and global responsibilities. This awareness and motivation is rising within the workforce, as is social activism.

Mobilization and management of financial, intellectual and human capital investment requires increasingly sophisticated techniques. Businesses seeking to maximize their positive societal impact will require similar advisory and management services as would be expected with any venture capital investment.

There is significant potential to augment the corporate responsibility agenda, providing transparency and quantification of outcome for philanthropic investments. Business ethics, ethical offshoring and outsourcing are also likely to be impacted. For example, through creation of improved healthcare and education schemes in areas of regional development, to benefit and retain employees through improved services.

Formation of partnerships, ‘philanthropic matchmaking’, management and measurement of investment, are all services for which demand will rise.


2014+ SEP Innovation Radar in Detail: Political


Transparency & Accountability

EU Integration Service-Oriented Government

Hacktivism E-Democracy

Privacy of Information

Protectionism

E-Politics

A�ordability of Social Security & ServicesLean Government

Government Activism

Emerging Powers

Green Politics




Affordability of social security and servicesConceptAs the size of the workforce declines, funding for healthcare and pension assistance will shrink. Trends compounding this problem are: an erosion of the private sector’s willingness to deliver defined healthcare and retirement benefits to the majority of their employees, longer life expectancy and rising healthcare costs.

TrajectoryGovernments will wrestle with various options, from higher retirement ages to tax-free income beyond the minimum retirement age, but the fundamental choice is between higher taxes and lower benefits.

The debt burden and large budget deficits from financial and economic rescue packages will have a major impact on public sector spending in general. This has now turned into a debt crisis. In some countries austerity measures have to be taken immediately to prevent financial collapse.

Others will have to take drastic measures in the near future. This further compounds the affordability issue. In several countries, debate is already under way on the subject of raising the retirement age. As a result of the slow recovery from economic downturn, a lot of people are still drawing on unemployment benefits, putting further stress on the fiscal position of many countries.

Healthcare budgets are shrinking. In the UK, for instance, the National Health Service (NHS) is mandated to demonstrate savings of GBP 20 billion by 2015.

The problem is not confined to developed economies: the governments of many of the emerging economies must also decide what level of social services to provide to citizens in terms of healthcare and retirement security, among other services. Changing demographics of a world where populations are constantly shifting will make decisions of this kind even more complex.

The adoption of private sector approaches is likely to permeate into the provision of social services, with innovative concepts (such as the potential application of technology to save resources by enabling people suffering from chronic conditions to be treated away from the hospital, in their own homes) emerging.

E-democracyConceptE-democracy covers (online) communication media that gives citizens a limited ability for making leaders/politicians responsible for their actions in the public sphere. It is about the adoption of electronic technology in the existing or an improved democratic process. E-democracy can focus on: an increase in political process transparency; an extension of citizens’ direct involvement and participation; and/or improving information and discussion that will enhance the forming of opinions.

There are strong links between e-politics and hacktivism. The use of online communication enables these to operate at a variety of levels: local communities, nations and even internationally.

TrajectoryThroughout recent history citizens have used the technological means at their disposal. Just think of what print, the telegraph and telephone did for transparency and information provision. As technology advances, and on the basis that its accessibility grows in line with current trends, the conduct of democratic politics might increasingly be dominated by online and other technology-enabled forms of participation. E-democracy is a natural extension of Web 2.0 into the democratic arena.

With increased ease of access, citizens may start to interact with their political representatives (either in person at mass deliberative events, or through mass online referenda using computers and smart phones) on a daily basis. Large numbers would be able to register their opinions almost instantaneously with very little effort.

It may not only revive the democratic process, but also prompt debate about the nature of democracy itself, increasing pressure for constitutional reform and the creation of new outlets for participation in public life. Just think of the role of Facebook and Twitter in recent democratic movements in the Middle East.


During the 2011 G8 summit in the French town of Deauville, amongst other things, support was declared for the Internet’s role in democratic movements: “The Internet has become the public arena for our time, a lever of economic development and an instrument for political liberty and emancipation. Freedom of opinion, expression, information, assembly and association must be safeguarded on the Internet as elsewhere... We commit to encourage the use of the Internet as a tool to advance human rights and democratic participation throughout the world.”

How to actually safeguard it, is a difficult matter. Proposals considered during the World Conference on International Telecommunications 2012 in Dubai would establish regulatory oversight by the UN of aspects currently governed either by community-based approaches, such as Regional Internet Registries and ICANN, or largely national regulatory frameworks. These were heavily criticized by the West because they would in effect negatively impact the free flow of information online.

E-politicsConceptE-politics is a form of direct democracy that uses information and communication technologies and strategies for political and governance processes, along with cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying and organizing. It can be used for governance of local communities, nations and even function internationally.

Democratic actors and sectors in this context include governments, elected officials, the media, political organizations and citizens/voters.

TrajectoryAs technology advances, and on the basis that its accessibility grows in line with current trends, the conduct of politics could increasingly be dominated by online and other technology-enabled forms of politics. It is a natural extension of consumer Web 2.0 into the political arena.

Media, research agencies, NGOs, pressure/ lobby groups and the political establishment itself all have a role to play here. With almost no restriction on the potential for the public to involve themselves in political processes (for example, the public could vote in immediate parallel with every parliamentary vote), politics has no choice but to engage in this way.

It may revive the democratic process, but also prompt debate about the nature of democracy itself, increasing pressure for constitutional reform and the creation of new outlets for participation in public life.

Principals of e-politics were successfully used in, and formed a central part of, the Obama presidential campaign. In other countries governments and political parties are following suit. The Dutch Prime Minister, for instance, experimented with a special Twitter hash tag that enabled citizens to directly ask him questions about budgetary matters. These questions were then answered by him personally in true Web 2.0 fashion: in an internet video message addressing the questions and the people who asked them.

Early in 2013 an interesting initiative commenced in Spain: the introduction of Partido Del Futuro. It is an experimental method that uses the Internet to build a democracy without intermediaries, replacing existing institutions that have become delegitimized in the minds of citizens.

EU integrationConceptThe European Union (EU) is a single market with a common trade policy, a common agricultural/fisheries policy and a regional policy to assist under-developed regions.

Creating a single market is the cornerstone of its introduction of the Euro, adopted by sixteen member states.

EU integration is the process of political, economic and, in some cases, social and cultural integration of European states. Integration is needed to truly operate as a single market.

Since the end of the Cold War, states in Middle and Eastern Europe have been applying for membership. There are now 28 member states.

TrajectoryA single market (or common market) is a customs union with common policies on product regulation and freedom of movement. A union of all three factors of production (land, capital and labor) and of enterprise (removing the physical, technical and fiscal barriers) is needed. For both business and consumers, a single market is a very competitive environment, making the existence of monopolies more difficult.

Enlargement creates larger markets and a bigger and more varied labor force. This growth creates the need for political and organizational reform of the EU.

The so-called EU Constitution failed to be ratified by enough member states. The Reform Treaty or Treaty of Lisbon (2007) has now finally been ratified by all member states and entered into force in 2009.


The current debt and financial crisis in the southern region, particularly Greece and Cyprus, has posed serious challenges and doubts about the cohesion and future of European integration. The basic dilemma is that there is a significant trade off: on one side, without further integration it seems that the EU cannot go further however, on the other side, given the crisis situation, lacking public support and fears over the loss of national sovereignty, integration becomes very difficult. The much discussed Banking Union is an example.

In his speech of 23 January 2013, the UK’s Prime Minister re-introduced discussions on a Europe of two speeds. Some argue this crisis could mean the end of the Eurozone (or at least a single one) while others argue it will push integration forward.

Emerging powersConceptGlobalization is driving new dimensions of power; its definition has extended far beyond its military connotations to include economics, resources and technology. In terms of size, speed and directional flow, the transfer of global wealth and economic power is without precedent in modern history.

Globalization is not only causing a relative power shift among nation-states, but also an increase in relative power of non-state actors such as businesses, tribes, religious organizations and criminal networks. A multipolar international system is slowly emerging. This new global landscape is inherently unstable; risks such as nationalism and protectionism are rising. Historically, emerging multi-polar systems are more unstable than bi-polar or uni-polar systems.

TrajectoryGeopolitical instability is increasing as trust in international institutions and the US is decreasing. There are existing tensions between ‘old’ and ‘new’ powers (for example, between Japan and China, the US and Russia, Brazil, India), as well as the new countries emerging as the global economy shifts East. The recovery from global economic crisis will not stop the shift eastwards, in fact, the world is extensively depending on China to be the powerhouse of global economic recovery.

In the medium term, the US will stay the single most powerful actor. The emerging powers will increasingly claim a high degree of freedom in shaping their own political and economic policies, instead of fully conforming to Western norms, because of their growing political and economic power. China has been creating inroads and investing in ‘new’ low-wage countries in Africa and Latin America, amongst other things, to secure direct access to raw materials and energy, surpassing the US to become Africa’s biggest trading partner.

The international agenda is still being shaped by issues (such as the financial and economic crisis, and global warming) that can only be addressed by a multilateral approach. This is a good example of the power shift that is taking place: it was not the G7 or G8 countries that came together to discuss measures concerning the credit and economic crisis, it was the G20; on September 25, 2009 its leaders announced that the group will replace the G8 as the main economic council. The Western supremacy in international institutions such as the IMF is also being challenged “so as to reflect the growing role of developing countries in the world economy”.

There is also the realization in the US government that the US can’t ‘go it alone’. China and the US are even being forced to work together to combat the financial and economic crisis; neither can afford a US debt default.

There was concern that the economic crisis would be an opportunity for Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF) to buy up many businesses in the West. This is not materializing for most of the emerging powers, except for China. China has increased its spending, buying mining interests from Australia to Canada and looking for acquisitions that may give it technology, big brands or market access. In addition, Chinese companies have moved into Europe and the US: luxury textiles and vineyards in Italy, electronics makers in France, engineering in Germany and car makers in Britain are only some of China’s purchases. In 2012, Chinese investments in Europe hit a record high with roughly 86 percent of those investments in the service and industry sectors.

Government activismConceptGovernment activism or intervention is any action taken by a government beyond the basic regulation of its economy or society. Intervention or activism can be aimed at a variety of political, societal or economic objectives, such as promoting economic growth, increasing employment, raising wages, raising or reducing prices, promoting equality or addressing market failures.

There is always some government activism or intervention. Discussion mostly centers on the balance between state and market forces. It ranges from a laissez-faire doctrine on the one side, to a communist-planned economy on the other.


TrajectoryCredit crisis, economic downturn, green issues and health and safety are some of the issues that seem to be leading to increased government activism. Measures taken by governments in reaction to the credit crunch and economic downturn have really brought the issue of government activism or intervention to the forefront. We have been witness to unprecedented government interventions such as relief packages for financial institutions, nationalizations, economic stimulus packages and regulatory intentions.

In discussions about the causes of the credit crisis and ensuing economic downturn, it is often argued that governments were not active enough to start with, and had they been more active in regulating the markets instead of relying too much on self-regulation, the crisis would not have occurred or could have been managed better. Governments and states as a whole are taking a look at the balance between the state and the market. Whereas at the beginning of the economic downturn governments were focusing on economic stimulus packages, many are now ‘intervening’ by massive cutback programs.

Radical plans to restructure the banking sector itself have been discussed. Debate seems to have tapered off somewhat, but is certainly not gone. The existence of banks deemed ‘too big to fail’ (that required the intervention of the state to save) is leading to the concept of a new system in which these largest banks either do not exist, or have their commercial and merchant bank activities completely separated. In the EU bonuses in the banking sector are being capped. The debate in the financial sector may be extended to other sectors where players may at present be ‘too big to fail’.

According to a World Economic Forum report, policy-makers must consider the unintended consequences arising from regulation and government interventions. The report argues that the growth of unregulated and highly leveraged investment vehicles was in part due to market participants’ activities being designed to avoid regulations. In addition, there are fears that impending overregulation that will hinder growth. Allen Greenspan argued in 2011 that government activism is even hampering economic recovery; it induces a degree of uncertainty and crowds out investments.

Green politicsConceptGreen politics or green ideology is the political principle that places a great importance on ecological and environmental goals, and on achieving these goals through broad-based, participatory democracy and consensual decision-making.

‘Greens’ claim their ideology represents a fundamentally new way of addressing societal and political problems.

In addition to ecological issues, green politics is concerned with issues such as social justice, civil rights and non-violence.

TrajectoryGreen politics is increasingly emerging into the mainstream, owing to the increasing public consensus that we are seeing more radical environmental shocks, crises in the field of energy and resource supply, and a growing awareness of the cost of inaction. It might be possible to envisage ‘Green Government’ as being a government based on a central ideology of resource management, environmental protection and sustainability.

Legislation and new (sustainability) reporting and accounting requirements for government and companies is sure to follow. Large companies in Europe have urged the European Parliament to set more ambitious targets: CO

2 reductions greater than the

original 20 percent agreed.

Green Government seems to have been boosted by the global economic downturn, with the EU agreeing upon new tougher CO

2

emission standards. It is often linked to plans to combat the economic downturn, with many of the economic rescue packages containing investments in sustainable and clean projects and technologies. However, even though there is broad consensus that action must be taken globally, the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December 2009 and Cancun in 2010 closed with a deal that many countries admit, falls far short of the action needed to tackle global warming. At the heart of this lack of agreement lies a fundamental conflict of interest between developed and developing nations. In December 2011 (Durban) another attempt was made to come to global legally binding climate change regime.

In December 2012 the 18th conference reached an agreement to extend the Kyoto Protocol, which was due to expire at the end of 2012, until 2020, and to make good on the 2011 Durban outcome that a successor to the Kyoto Protocol is set to be developed by 2015 and implemented by 2020. The stated goal is to keep climate change below two degrees Celsius. The conference also incorporated the concept of ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change into the negotiations. This will probably remain controversial, but it does at least recognize suffering, along with the costs of mitigation and adaptation, as subjects.


Investments in sustainable energy can also be seen as the background to energy security, ensuring countries cannot be held to ransom by threats of energy supplies being cut off. Carbon tariffs and taxes (on goods that are produced in ‘high carbon’ countries or factories) are becoming a reality. Climate policy is increasingly, therefore, not solely about the environment and ethical responsibilities: it is becoming focused on economics and competition around new energy technologies owing to the importance of keeping the technological lead in this area.

Nuclear power is a low-carbon source and for that reason it was getting back in the picture as a viable energy resource. However, the Fukushima nuclear crisis has caused a varied response overseas. While nations like Switzerland and Germany have announced that they will phase out their nuclear power plants, other nations--such as China, India, South Korea, France and the United States--remain committed to nuclear power. Interestingly a US Energy Information Administration report shows that the US gets more energy from renewable sources, than it does from nuclear power.

Hacktivism – alternative protestation ConceptWhile NGO, political movements and lobbies used to resort to traditional means of protest, such as marches, political lobbying and classical communication campaigns, new forms of protestation are appearing. These embrace new technologies and have adapted to the evolution of society towards a culture based on images, mottos and emotions, rather than on calm, argumented discussions. It is a form of online protest. A hacktivist uses the same tools and techniques as a hacker, but does so in order to disrupt services and bring attention to a political or social cause.

These new movements use mediatized flash mobs, electronic protests, powerful media actions or techniques coming from hacking to carry their messages in a very efficient way. While mainly used by smaller movements, these techniques are gaining popularity in the ecological movement (Greenpeace, Sea Shepherds), in particular in the fight for more privacy or transparency.

Whether hacktivism is a crime may be debated. Opponents argue that hacktivism causes damage, is very disruptive and should be considered cybercrime; others insist that such acts are the equivalent of a protest and therefore protected as a form of free speech.

TrajectoryHacktivism is said to be at least as old as October 1989 when several US government machines where penetrated by the antinuclear protestation worm. In the years following there were notable attacks, including distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), network sit-ins, defacing and rerouting web pages, stealing and leaking information (whistle blowing, most notably WikiLeaks).

Recently it is the scale, speed and ease in which attacks can be organized that have really changed. It is, for instance, the scale of the WikiLeaks information release, the scale and speed of the denial-of-service attacks by supporters on organizations such as Visa and PayPal, and actions by the Anonymous collective: a group of individuals with a shared set of ideals, who have strong affinity with internet culture and who protest against governments and companies that they feel are unjust. In 2012, attacks included a massive data leak of 1.6 million records relating to a variety of organizations, including NASA and Interpol.

Documents and secret information are much more accessible, transportable and sellable than before. Growing connectedness and automation will mean increased vulnerability for anyone, everyone and all organizations.

Moreover, changes to politics and the economy (such as the growth of single issue politics, the escalation of rhetoric in mainstream politics and the media, the continued economic uncertainty and an increasing willingness to resort to violent protest) are indicators that this trend might grow even further.

Organizations and governments will need to review cyber security in new ways: both from the hacktivism perspective and the state and criminal threat. There is a delicate balance required, ensuring responses to increased data security needs do not hinder the exchange and sharing of information in such a way as to reduce the ability to work effectively and compete in the market.

Lean governmentConceptWhereas, in the past, discussions about the size of government were split along ideological lines, there now seems to be broad consensus that government must become smaller and less costly.

Ideally, government would have fewer rules, less bureaucracy and fewer public servants. A leaner government body must be more effective--this cannot just be about cutbacks. Consequences of the economic and debt crisis, however, give this term a whole new meaning.


TrajectoryLean, is about reducing ‘waste’; process improvement with emphasis on ‘less’ and ‘smarter’ and on outcomes that are ‘better’. The use of Big Data and advanced analytics can improve government services and increase overall efficiency, for instance, by using predictive algorithms and advanced data analysis to identify suspicious patterns and detect and prevent fraud.

With the rising costs of pensions and healthcare, it is imperative that government expenditure is checked. Decreasing the size of government is an obvious potential contributor to this. European Union fiscal policies (for example the Euro) were meant to contribute to this, with budget deficits being limited by member states. However, to promote a speedy economic recovery, restrictions are being interpreted more loosely, but are also being heavily debated.

Nevertheless, massive budget deficits require equally massive cutbacks. In the past, countries, such as the US and European Union members, have kept expenditure up to stimulate the economy, but today they are being forced to implement drastic cutbacks and immediate hard choices. All in all it will take another ten years to get budgets ‘balanced’ back to where they were two or three years ago.

Some countries have implemented austerity measures during the last 2 or 3 years, whereas others, have only recently taken far-reaching actions. In addition to cutbacks, privatization and outsourcing of non-core processes are contributing to limiting the size of government. There are, however, signals that political ambitions are somewhat contrary since there is also more discussion and legislation promoting government intervention in the private sector.

Whether cutbacks or stimulating the economy (or smart combinations) is the best approach is a hot topic for debate in the European Union and US, where the fiscal cliff (a simultaneous increase in tax and cut in government spending from previously enacted laws) was nearly reached late in 2012 after a lack of consensus.

Privacy of informationConceptPublic concerns over security and terror threats, and the increasing dominance of e-communications, provide the ideal climate for mass surveillance, creating ongoing concerns over personal privacy.

But it is more than just this: there is a general expanding volume of (potentially) sensitive personal information held, not only in government and business databases, but also posted by people themselves (on Facebook for instance). This is driving public concern about privacy protection.

TrajectoryInformation about every individual is stored on databases: information and images captured on CCTV, loyalty cards, transactions (on the Internet or face-to-face), social networks. These databases are becoming more prevalent and information more readily shared, with Big Data tools increasingly allowing them to be analyzed and tracked.

Furthermore, personal details are more readily shared among government departments and there may be a network of databases shared between public and private bodies. Mass surveillance is probably going to increase. The introduction of national ID card systems with biometric details, CCTV, behavior tracking and license plate recognition systems are in place in some countries. Facial recognition

technology is maturing rapidly and can be employed for law enforcement purposes, as well as commercial applications such as interactive billboards.

There is tremendous public debate, both within countries and between countries, when it comes to privacy of information and the fight against terror. A failed terrorist attack in Detroit led to the introduction of body scanners in airports, bringing the debate into the domain of really personal privacy. The public is concerned about how much is recorded about them in relation to their financial and taxation affairs, their family and medical history, employment records and transactions with government agencies. They are worried about the inconvenience and damage that may result from information being incorrect or out of date, and the danger that their personal information will be misused, wrongly disclosed, merged inappropriately with other personal data or revived at a time when it would be better buried or destroyed.

Privacy of information is not limited to official data stores of personal information. Internet identity theft continues to rise, as well as the use of the Internet for organized crime. Facebook users, for instance, are in many cases rethinking how much information they should provide when creating a page. There are numerous examples of students being refused University places after lecturers scrutinized Facebook posts and pictures about them.

A recent survey showed that web surfers are growing increasingly unconcerned about a lack of online privacy. Instead focus has shifted from interest with online privacy to preoccupation with online reputation. Even before Google Glass, which can instantly record video and publish it to the Internet, is introduced to the market, there are places


and public bodies trying to ban it from use in specific circumstances. Some fear that when Google Glass becomes commonplace, everything will change and not only for the better.

ProtectionismConceptProtectionism is a policy of protecting domestic industries and workers against foreign competition by means of tariffs, subsidies, import quotas and other such restrictions or handicaps placed on the imports of foreign competitors--or, put another way, the seeking of measures that favor domestic industries and workers.

Protectionist policies have been implemented by many countries despite the fact that virtually all mainstream economists agree that the world economy generally benefits from free trade.

There are two main types of protectionist measures: tariff and non-tariff measures. During the passage of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), from the post Second World War era until the early 1990s, many protectionist trade barriers fell. In 1995, such trade protection was formalized with the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

TrajectoryThroughout history, wars and economic depressions (or recessions) have led to increases in protectionism, while peace and prosperity have tended to encourage free trade. The dire straits of the current world economy make calls for protectionism, therefore, attractive to many.

During the G20 Summits since the start of the crisis, the attending countries pledged to refrain from new protectionist measures. They have done pretty well so far; global trade is not threatened and is still rising. However, in October 2012 WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy warned: “at a time of continuous economic difficulties, trade frictions seem to be increasing”. He urged G20 governments “to redouble their efforts to keep their markets open, and to advance trade opening as a way to counter slowing global economic growth”.

The WTO found that between mid-October 2011 and mid-May 2012, the G20 countries imposed 124 new restrictions (tariffs and antidumping investigations), its highest point since 2008 (although these only impact 0.4 percent of imports). The trend seems to be downward.

There are also other more subtle kinds of protection. As governments prop up failing firms, they are subsidizing failing industries to the detriment of competitors elsewhere.

They are also discriminating against foreign companies since their subsidies are typically just for national champions. Related to this kind of protectionism is the policy of ‘buy national’ provisions within the economic stimulus plans. The stimulus package in America mandated that new spending goes to domestic producers of steel, cement and other products, and imposed a special tax on some foreigners who win government procurement contracts along with some good old ‘red-tape’ impositions. Protectionist measures can also be taken in the financial arena.

This also includes pressure on banks that have received government investment to reduce foreign activities and direct their funds to investments in their own countries.

Finally, there is competitive currency depreciation that makes a country’s exports cheaper. This is the basis of disagreements with China who, as the West believes it, should revalue the renminbi (or yuan). The complaint is that Chinese exports are now artificially competitive.

Environmental (or sustainability) protectionism may also be seen as a trend in the future. We might see it as a tariff imposed on products not produced in a sustainable fashion and are thus ‘unfairly’ cheap, or as stimulus packages for the development of clean technologies that favor only certain big companies. In an indirect way, therefore, the development of electric cars may lead to some form of protectionism.

It is unclear how this will develop in the near future. There is a slight upward trend with a slow recovery and it is therefore not surprising that there is a great deal of pressure on politicians and government to ‘do’ something. It is also said that the current progression of globalization and embedding of liberalization in national laws and regional trade agreements will defuse a lot of protectionist pressures. Nowadays, many companies have cross-border ownership and supply chains that span the globe. Therefore, stopping trade will not help as much as it did before and possibly even hurt companies and citizens.

Under pinning this is recent research by HSBC. Next to top-down number-crunching, it also looked at bottom up expectations to predict that world trade will grow close to 90 percent over the next 15 years.


Service-oriented governmentConceptPublic organizations are struggling with fundamental challenges. These are worsened by budget constraints and rising citizen demands, leaving public services in a position where they are expected to do more with less. Government services will be designed to meet the needs of citizens and business.

TrajectoryConsumers of government services are increasingly intolerant of both poor service and higher taxes. The need to address this issue will increase given that massive budget deficits will require equally massive cutbacks. The rules-driven, inflexible approach to government is on its way out: 80 percent of respondents in an American survey believe that, in 15 years’ time, their customers (citizens and businesses) will place a higher premium on personalization of service. However, there are some differences between countries on the level of urgency.

As consumers have come to expect on-demand products and online services, they are coming to expect the same from governments. The abundance of smart devices, mobile phones and tablets is also raising new demands as citizens now expect to be able to easily access services on their phones as well.

The improvement of service delivery will help governments to regain trust and improve the legitimacy of government. To achieve this, a drive towards service integration, a focus on electronic service delivery (e-government) and multi-channeling, the promotion of deregulation and an increase in the power given to street level civil servants, is required.

On 28 December 2009, a new European Union directive came into force for the services industry. This directive obliges government to serve these companies electronically with one single point of contact. During 2013, major pilots were conducted as part of Action 84 (of the Digital Agenda for Europe) to support seamless, interoperable and sustainable e-government cross-border services. As this e-government spreads and simple processing tasks decrease, there will be consequences for the type of employees and skills public services need.

Transparency and accountability ConceptIn politics, accountability is an important factor in securing good governance and, thus, the legitimacy of public power. This also increasingly holds true for private enterprise.

Accountability differs from transparency in that it only enables negative feedback after a decision or action, whereas transparency also enables negative feedback before or during a decision or action.

TrajectoryAccountability and transparency are used synonymously with such concepts as enforcement, responsibility, liability and other terms associated with the expectation of account-giving. The public demand for transparency and accountability is not confined just to politics and government. It is also increasingly central in discussions related to problems in the administrative, managerial, marketing, legal, professional, security and moral arenas. In the public arena, perceived conflicts of interest have been greeted with growing public outrage.

The credit crisis and ensuing economic crisis has increased the need for transparency and accountability as the lack of these in financial institutions and products are seen as one of its causes. Despite regulation of the financial sector being in place prior to the crisis, it was not enough to avert the problems. Measures to increase transparency on an international level are much debated, at least for the financial system, with tougher regulation, such as the new measures in the EU regulating bonuses, already being passed.

New rules on transparency and accounting with regard to corporate social responsibility are not unimaginable. Companies will eventually be forced to give detailed accounts for all environmental and social ‘inputs’ in their products. According to the International Resource Journal “There is more pressure than ever for companies to implement practices that promote transparency, avoid corruption, advance environmental sustainability, protect human rights, and facilitate ‘local content’ objectives in the supply chain”. This means that systems must support tracking and auditing of new regulations of all kinds.

Recent events have underpinned (new) dimensions of transparency and accountability: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill changed the dialogue about government-company accountability; WikiLeaks is shifting the boundaries of government transparency; the offshore leaks are just another example that banking secrecy is losing out to transparency; and the popular uprisings in Arab countries show the rising demand for accountability based on increased information.


CxO Agenda in Detail


Emerging

Adolescent

Early adoption

Mainstream


SoLoMo

CorporateGovernance and Risk

Big Data

IT/OT ConvergenceSustainablity

Green IT

Analytics

Emerging Markets Growth

Cloud ServicesAsset Management

O�shoring Changes

Servitization

Customer Demands and IntimacyConsumerization of IT

Traceability and Visibility

Aging Workforce

Business Agility through IT Transformation and Liquid IT

Social Business

Open InnovationVideo

Smart Mobility

Collaborative Ideas Management

Lean Everywhere

Finding and Retaining Talent

Business / IT Alignment



Aging workforceConcept Baby-boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, are starting to retire, but for many continuation of work after the official retirement age will be a financial necessity.

Impact A disproportionate percentage of senior workers will be leaving their current positions in the coming years, taking with them their knowledge unless their company attempts to elicit it to prevent increasing corporate risk.

Some industries will see a surge in the number of older workers, with their workforce spanning four generations. Managing older workers, who have historically tended to get less training and performance management, presents challenges as they stay longer and their learning styles need to be considered when introducing new technology if they too are to adapt well.

The increase in life expectancy is also causing a huge impact on pension fund costs: in the Netherlands, an increase in average life expectancy of up to half a year added about EUR 11 billion to the costs of the four biggest pension funds in 2010 and several European states are increasing the age at which state pensions can be claimed.

AnalyticsConcept Analytics is an old practice that began to be used in scientific environment and is now a common practice in business of all sectors. The aim of analytics is to extract knowledge from data by finding the internal relations between those data, applying advanced algorithms. Analytics enables the understanding of patterns, cause and effect and prediction in large data sets containing both structured and unstructured information. It:

`` Analyzes large complex structured and unstructured data

`` Models the data

`` Delivers insight

ImpactAnalytics provide:

`` Fact-based planning, decision making and measurement through the use of models

`` Descriptive hindsight through conducting ‘rear-view mirror’ assessments

`` Prescriptive insight through using internally generated data to drive changes in the here and now

`` Predictive foresight through understanding internal and external signals and patterns being generated from the business ecosystem

TrajectoryAnalytics will find more and more mainstream use in many industries and will increasingly involve the combination of structured and unstructured information. The availability of the vast amounts of data coming from new collaborative sources makes analytics essential to understand those data and to use them for decision making.

Emerging examples include:

`` Reducing losses due to credit card frauds through Big Data analytic infrastructure

`` Maximizing operational efficiency using the ability to run adhoc and interactive queries

`` Reducing call length and call wait time in telecom support using real time analytics thereby increasing the revenue

`` Improving marketing effectiveness by targeting the right potential customers, taking into account their interactions with the company by any channel

`` Adapting services to customers’ needs by including sentiment analysis in the decision making process

`` Using self-service Business Intelligence to ensure consistent customer service in the event of staff turnover

`` Enabling doctors to choose the best course of care using decision support systems based on advanced Big Data analytics

`` Device predictive maintenance based on real-time data provided by sensors


Asset managementConcept Asset management is increasingly a critical business activity for any asset-owning organization or enterprise; infrastructure, transport, manufacturing and chemicals are classic examples. Improving the knowledge, control and prediction of costs associated with fixed, vehicle fleet, linear and mobile assets is a high-priority agenda item for the CEO.

40 percent of the world’s raw resources are consumed by the construction of buildings alone and efficient design is key to reducing operational costs. There is a worldwide shortage of engineers, so construction and maintenance practices must be made more efficient.

Cost forecasting, optimization and the balance of investment versus risk requires a whole-life approach to managing asset information from the point of inception to decommissioning.

In the construction industry Building Information Modeling (BIM) is being applied globally as a means of applying control of data and information related to investment activities at the point of project inception in order to drive through-life efficiencies in maintenance of assets.

Enterprises that are responsible for asset ownership or management will be required by legislation in many countries to develop data and information interoperability and exchange mechanisms.

In these countries construction industry organizations will be required to standardize and publish metadata and information pertaining to their products and services or risk exclusion from major contracts.

ImpactIn the UK, all suppliers to government organizations will be required to implement BIM practices by 2020. This will require the entire supply chain to comply with data and information provisions. Legacy assets will require re-surveying to bring them in line with new-build standards for asset information. All new major construction projects (and eventually including lesser scale projects) will require data integration activities.

More design and development projects will be undertaken virtually with greater use of 3D, 4D (time) and 5D (cost) modeling required.

Computer-aided design (CAD) and engineering organizations will be required to define and agree information interoperability standards for data integration; CAD, geographical information systems (GIS) and structured asset information data sources will require distinct new integration technologies.

Organizations involved in asset management, construction or product design will be required to publish product catalogs. The protection of intellectual property in product designs will require new security paradigms.

TrajectoryAll public sector construction projects in the UK in excess of £1M will be expected to follow BIM practices by 2016. The wider construction industry will be expected to follow by 2020 as a result of reduced construction costs.

The EU and North America are following similar trajectories around BIM standards in similar timescales; BIM is the first truly global digital construction technology.

Planning, design and CAD tools will expect to integrate with enterprise data repositories, ERP and financial back office systems in the next five to ten years.

Asset lifecycle management toolsets will become part of every asset owner’s estate of systems, or will be outsourced to a specialist organization in a similar timeframe.

Big DataConcept Big Data describes how you get competitive advantage from managing the new volumes of data that will become a concern for every knowledge company.

Data is no longer an asset in itself. We have and we produce more data than we can manage. The problem is the ability to get the right data or to extract the right information from the data.

We are witnessing an explosive growth of the information that all facets of humanity (business, government, social, personal) are creating and processing.

IDC projects that the digital universe will reach 40 zettabytes (ZB) by 2020, an amount that exceeds previous forecasts by 5 ZBs, resulting in a 50-fold growth from the beginning of 2010.

This increasing demand for processing and storage has a profound impact for ICT, both technologically and commercially: as the world gets more connected with more online services and more sensors, even more data will be produced and collected. And the data is diverse: structured, non-structured, video, telemetry...

Traditional infrastructures and software architectures are being overwhelmed, so new approaches are being defined for the capture, processing, storage and analysis of vast quantities of information. Internet giants, such as Amazon, Google and Facebook, have been at the forefront of this evolution, having developed with their own platforms, tools and techniques, which are now becoming mainstream in other sectors/industries.


ImpactBig Data can be a nightmare for companies to manage (data overload), but can also be used to get valuable insights if data--which is frequently unstructured--can be processed into meaningful information. A ‘data-driven organization’ can take advantage of all the data it holds as an asset--not only for internal improvement, but also to offer new products and services to its customers. To do this it needs to overcome the technical challenges inherent in large volumes, and adapt to the impending ‘data deluge’.

New skills and processes are needed to adapt to this new situation. The data explosion is driving evolution of ICT in enterprises, with a ‘wave of change’ that encompasses:

`` New cloud-based infrastructures and architectures to manage the data lifecycle in unprecedented volumes

`` New tools and techniques to extract value from that data

`` Most importantly, the new mindset for a ‘data-driven organization’, which derives value from data for new products and services

Huge changes in organizations will result at both strategic and operational levels, and even in Human Resources. The emergent role of the Data Scientist will be a scarce resource of math-savvy people with business orientation who can unearth the unexpected relationships in the data that bring clear business value. The correct use of Big Data will help companies differentiate themselves from others, and create the new business of ‘data services’.

Trajectory Technologically, the basis of Big Data is being established now, but there are some important areas of exploration, especially in the field of ‘real time Big Data’--the integration of Big Data and cloud (Data Analytics as a Service)--and to address the problems of security and privacy. We see the following trends:

`` Verticalization: each industry/sector has its own ‘Big Data pains’, so there will be a lot of specialized solutions

`` Horizontal: solutions will concentrate on retail/marketing, centered on in-depth knowledge of customers based on diverse data sources (internal, social networks, external data)

Big Data information governance inside companies needs to mature, and this will demand specialized knowledge that goes beyond of that of the Data Scientists.

The concept of Big Data originated with data-driving offers to customers through, for instance, loyalty cards. It is now sufficiently mature that social networking recommendations are having more impact than traditional auto-recommended cookie-based ones.

It will evolve in future into making the most of others’ data. Open government may or may not spur the private sector to release more data in the hope of stimulating economic growth as people combine the data in innovative ways to create new products and services.

Business agility through IT transformation and Liquid ITConceptBeing large and agile requires increased integration between the business and IT. The business/IT interface has to be optimized appropriately for the business to meet the often contradictory drivers of innovation, resilience and value for money.

The agile business is a vision in which all of this comes together to allow, for example, the process control of an ERP system with the flexibility of a smartphone app.

The need for increased business agility and streamlined business processes in which IT is

no longer the bottleneck to change, has led to the concept of ‘Liquid IT’. Liquid IT copes with the volatility in both consumption and provision of IT by the notion of ubiquitous computing power and connectivity. All services are easily turned off and on to get more or less, just like a tap.

Liquid IT leverages Cloud Computing foundation technology, which has already transformed the way IT service are delivered, as well as other advances in mobile devices, federated security, network architectures and SLA management. But as it is really about flexible processes taking advantage of IT, it also includes fundamental changes in financial management and governance.

For the business user, Liquid IT is not about technology, but fluid access to services that make the user experience seamless. By separating device and application, but keeping specific content delivery connecting users to services, the user is unaware of where services are running and no longer cares. The result is the ability to swiftly deploy services to meet business needs whilst hiding technical details behind a self-service portal. The whole IT stack becomes building blocks from which one can put together a ready to use solution.

ImpactSpeed: a strong benefit is fast provision of new business services to enable growth, plus the ability to scale the size of IT services to meet sudden changes.

Cost: more than the cost itself, it is the changing of the cost model which brings the biggest impact here, by transferring many costs from CAPEX to OPEX and paying for IT follows a simple utility model.

Flexibility: this covers both the need to satisfy users and the ability to increase services continually rather than in big jumps and the ability to assemble business processes from standard building blocks.


Ease of use: users can change their profile without the need for complex contract changes when standard services become more widely available.

Overall, Liquid IT results in universal access to computing, storage and information power.

From the business perspective, by using Liquid IT an organization can pursue one business strategy but swiftly change to a second one if circumstances change.

From the CIO perspective, the following features are important:

`` Building blocks with high standardization and interoperability

`` Automatic mechanisms for a global orchestration of IT infrastructure

`` Consistent use of federated identities

`` Provision of standard business services charged in an OPEX model

`` Network expansion for identity based access

`` Liquid integration into ERP

TrajectoryTo make it happen, the IT industry needs to change the way IT is built, operated and invoiced. This will require information management, access control and standardization.

Most benefits will be seen by users and it may appear that the risks are being transferred from the users to the owners. However, in the long run the owners have the governance and stewardship elements which make up the landscape.

Business IT alignmentConceptMuch progress has been made over the years but, despite the progress, the rule of thumb persistently remains that the majority of IT enabled business change still fails to deliver what’s needed at the expected time and cost. That’s not to say there are not significant successes, or indeed that the issues are not overcome in the end, but where major business change or cost reduction is needed, the chances of failure still tends to outweigh, by some margin, the chances of success.

What’s more, the world is getting more complex, and CIO and IT functions are becoming increasingly hard to understand for the CEO, at the very time that IT is becoming increasingly critical to business success. The IT of the Web (‘IT version 2’) is different to the IT before the Web (‘IT version 1’). Many businesses are continuing to apply ‘IT version 1’ in an ‘IT version 2’ world, with harming effects. Despite attempt after attempt, many of the old issues about IT in business persist, including IT seriously constraining business change and still costing too much.

If things weren’t challenging enough, a new set of external issues is emerging, some cyclical, but others structural. These issues add further to the plates of business management, with several of them recurring across private and public sectors.

ImpactSolving the problem requires management practice to move away from methodologies that worked in the 1950s towards new concepts that are emerging. There is increasing recognition that ‘best practice’ management and IT techniques do not address the complexities and opportunities brought about by the inter-related and inter-connected world.

The new CIO is aided by emerging management techniques founded in ‘systems thinking’ such as leverage points, Cynefin and VPEC-T. These illuminate the solution of complex problems in a way that recognizes their complexity and avoids the oversimplification needed previously. The new CIO doesn’t throw away the best practices, but rather uses the next practices to inform their use.

New CIOs also report that the next practice approaches they adopt help in starting to finally tackle some of the oldest problems with IT in the business, often passed on from one CIO to the next.

At the same time, new IT models such as cloud are making it financially possible for IT to break out of past constraints.

Cloud ServicesConceptCloud Computing as a delivered service can be seen as the next generation of utility computing, which has been providing processing and storage on an ‘on demand’ basis for many years. It is now seen as the dominant form of IT service delivery for the future.

The big players in this game have built infrastructure on an industrial scale: there are often stories in the IT press as to how many hundreds of millions they are investing, or how many thousands of servers they are hosting. This scale, combined with standardization of hardware, software and operational processes, gives them the economies of scale that they need to be able to offer the flexible use of low-cost shared services over the Internet.


The essential characteristics of Cloud Computing are:

`` On-demand: provision is instantaneous, typically self-service and entirely virtual, with no need to consider physical components

`` Over the Internet: broad network access, usually via the Internet

`` Multi-tenant: a shared or pooled environment, used by multiple customers

`` Elastic: easily scaled up or down in response to demand

`` Consumption-based: pay for what you use, rather than a fixed amount.

For example, Amazon’s ‘Simple Storage Service’ provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the Web for cents per Gb. As of Q2 2011, it claims to store over 449 billion objects.

There are currently four main categories of these services:

`` Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): A user of IaaS can provision processing, storage, networks and other fundamental computing resources, and can deploy and run software-like operating systems and applications. The user does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, but does have control over the operating system, storage and deployed applications. Additionally, there may be limited control of a select set of networking components (for example host firewalls).

`` Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS): A user of PaaS can deploy self-created or acquired applications, created using programming languages and tools supported by the PaaS provider, onto a cloud infrastructure. The user does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.

`` Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS): A user of SaaS can access the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface, such as a web browser (such as a web-based email), or by other applications via SOA calls using web services. The user does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, including network, servers, operating systems, storage or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.

`` Business Process as a service (BPaaS): A BPaaS user receives end-to-end business process in a transactional manner, typically across multiple underlying systems that could be a combination of cloud based, outsourced or on premise. The service is created by orchestrating the business process across all of the underlying applications with appropriate workflow.

Adopting Cloud Services can bring significant benefits:

`` Supply side:

`– Variable and potentially lower application service costs, currently as low as a few dollars per month for entry level web applications

`– Dramatically reduced capital expenditure because services are charged mainly by usage

`` Demand side:

`– Anytime, anywhere, any device access to information, irrespective of the physical or perceived enterprise boundaries

`– Improved business agility because IT services can be introduced quickly, with flexibility to scale up or down capacity in minutes

ImpactCloud Services will see increasing adoption, particularly for companies that do not handle a lot of personal data, whose IT costs are under pressure and who need to be able to quickly ramp up and down the level of services.

Revenues from IaaS, PaaS and SaaS business models are projected to be up to 30 percent of IT providers’ income in the next four years. New entrants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple will make their presence felt.

Analysts feel the PaaS market will consolidate and most IaaS will be consumed as part of PaaS or SaaS offerings in a few years’ time.

PaaS is a highly strategic layer in the Cloud stack as providers can exert pressure on lower-level suppliers (IaaS) and higher level consumers (SaaS and BPaaS), Players in the Cloud market must either develop an in-house PaaS capability or partner with PaaS providers.

TrajectoryThis process is at the beginning. Whilst the position for IaaS is clear, PaaS definitions and decisions are made right now. Significant SaaS market share is projected to occur in two to four years.

Collaborative ideas managementConceptThe recent IBM CEO Study of 1,700 global CEOs reported that they identified technology as the most important external force on their organizations. What’s more, CEOs now consider technology (especially social media) as an enabler of collaboration and relationships.


ImpactA successful collaborative ideas management process can:

`` Improve agility

`` Reduce costs

`` Develop new business

`` Help grow internal expertise and knowledge networks

`` Help align Web 2.0 technologies with business needs

`` Improve employee satisfaction and wellbeing

As part of the Open Innovation trend, collaborative ideas systems are being opened up to partners with appropriate agreement about sharing the benefits and risks. Here trust is an important factor.

Consumerization of ITConceptWhen the iPad was launched, it was greeted with enthusiasm by individuals, but not in the same way by many IT departments. But pressure at boardroom level has forced organizations to adopt them for, amongst other uses, paperless board meetings. Now analysts see tablet usage growing at the expense of time spent using laptops and smartphones, with laptops being used more for longer sessions.

This is just one example of why consumerization of IT, starting with ‘bring-your-own-device’ (BYOD) and progressing to ‘bring-your-own-application’ in the enterprise is one of the most hotly debated subjects today. People increasingly expect tools at work that are as good and intuitive as those they have at home, or to bring those tools to work. This attitude is extending to applications as well as devices and users increasingly ask questions such as “Why cannot I use Facebook to manage my team?” or “Why cannot I use Skype to communicate internationally?”.

It is one thing encouraging your talented workforce to come up with new ideas to help your business innovate and gain competitive advantage, but organizations require a framework in place to gather those ideas and allow them to deliver their full potential.

At the same time, new IT tools are holding out the promise of enabling collaboration, not only internally but externally for speeding up development of new products, services and ways of working.

Collaborative ideas management allows the right people to get in touch to generate the ideas, and the right ideas to reach the right people. It can be key to ensuring that an innovation program is successful.

To ensure a wide range of ideas is generated, wide publicity is required to ensure individuals are aware that ideas are being sought and that a process is in place to ensure that all such ideas will be assessed. The process should involve KPIs, a budget and owners of ideas, and there should be support at global and local level and recognition of those who participate. Stimulating the process by posing challenges related to the organization’s goals can be useful.

Most importantly there should be a credible process to execute ideas which go through the process. A key part of the framework is required is to take all ideas from conception to a point where they are delivering value or, if an idea is a no-go, on to an exit point.

Collaborative idea management tools guide an organization through the publicity, concept gathering, assessing and nurturing processes to ensure that maximum value is achieved.

ImpactEven where connectivity to the enterprise network has been forbidden (using administrative or technical controls), people are still using personal devices to store notes and to-do lists, some of which could be considered confidential from the enterprise’s perspective.

More business professionals are buying their own software as they believe IT departments were too slow to respond to their requests.

To take advantage of consumerization, CIOs must ask two questions: “Why shouldn’t we?” and “Why do employees have access to better, faster, newer technology at home than at work?”. Consumerization can deliver significant benefits to an organization and many are looking to adopt a consumer or a ‘bring/buy-your-own’ (BYO) scheme. Today’s BYO discussions are often limited to device choice, but BYO may soon extend further into other aspects of the corporate infrastructure and applications also.

Resulting benefits range from cost reduction, creation of an infrastructure ready to meet the demands of the future mobile workforce and a focus on securing and providing the services that really matter to the business. The pressure for change from both the current and future employee is higher than ever before and this is only going to increase as the pace of innovation in ‘cool’ consumer technology continues.

Once a consumer approach has been established, it means one less thing for the CIO to think about, enabling a shift in focus to the added-value services that really matter to the business. The main challenges are security related, but tools are becoming available to impose the appropriate corporate policies irrespective of the device the individual has at any one moment.


TrajectoryBring your own device has been, and remains, a hot topic. One recent Citrix survey of 700 global CIOs revealed that “94 percent of organizations were planning to allow staff to bring their own devices to work by 2013”.

Corporate governance and riskConceptStrong governance manages risks but can also inhibit innovation, and the best balance for both national finances and corporate policy is continuously sought.

The recent financial crisis represented a failure of corporate governance and risk management. It has produced a backlash about the need for stronger government financial regulation, which was previously deemphasized to allow entrepreneurial growth. In the UK one senior banker has even voluntarily given back a knighthood and some of his pension as a result of criticism in a report, and another has resigned a high level role.

Some CEOs feel that uncertainty about the level of financial regulation is a major uncertainty for their business. The sovereign debt crisis has similarly resulted in a demand for stronger accountability and regulation within the Eurozone.

ImpactThe perception of poor corporate governance can hugely impact public perception. Pattern-based strategies aim to improve the ability to foresee the unexpected, and improve risk management in the future.

Corporate governance shapes all aspects of how corporations interact within the society that they are a part of. Companies with comprehensive corporate governance have a significant competitive advantage over the long term.

Customer demands and intimacyConceptCustomers are increasingly looking for personalized products and services that more closely fulfill their requirements from the car insurance of your dreams down to personal greeting cards from companies such as Moonpig.com.

The Internet gives customers more access to information, more choice and a louder voice. Retaining customers becomes an increasingly complex task requiring intimacy and transparency to ensure their demands are met.

More sophisticated techniques are increasingly used to understand customers and customer groups, with ‘corporate reputation managers’ being hired to shoulder the burdensome responsibility of managing online image.

ImpactOrganizations need to understand what it is that customers want, where they are looking for low-cost goods and services, and where they are looking for personalized ones.

For personalized goods, organizations are putting in place models that allow them to deliver on the customers’ new specialized demands. To do this will require an intimacy with customers, perhaps identifying safe customers with whom they can work closely to bounce ideas off.

Services and products will need to be developed in such a way as to be easily adaptable to new bespoke customer solutions or niche sub-market solutions as they emerge.

At the other end of the scale, organizations need to understand where customers are looking for low-cost, basic, value products and services, to ensure that they can profitably meet customer demands.

Emerging markets growthConceptA profound shift in global economic power from West to East is under way with Western economies playing a diminishing role in the global economy over time whilst China, India and other emerging markets such as Brazil and Russia play an ever-increasing one.

Emerging economies are typically growing at six percent (China, India, and Indonesia) whereas mature economies are lucky to be growing at half that rate, if at all. Almost all European CEOs expected growth in emerging markets in 2012, whereas only about half expected growth at home.

China is likely to overtake the USA as the world’s largest economy within the next quarter of a century, and the ‘Eurozone crisis’ has resulted in bailouts in Portugal, Greece and Cyprus.

ImpactIn the last few years, most CEOs have developed a new very different strategy to align with the above. Industrial companies recognize that being a global leader means having a real presence in emerging markets.

Companies based in emerging markets see other such countries as the most important export targets and not the traditional mature economies.

Although growth is generally strong in emerging markets, competition is pushing margins down and the business model has to be rigorous to withstand the pressure. Also, the problems in the US economy and the Eurozone crisis have weakened demand for manufactured goods from China.

Many emerging economies are investing aggressively in research and development (R&D) and in their skills base. The focus of


worldwide focuses the attention on the global warming issue, in some the economic crisis has significantly reduced the ability of organizations to invest in green projects alone. This has caused a greater focus on initiatives such as Green IT which can bring both business and environmental benefit.

‘Green IT’ has two major themes:

`` ‘Green for IT’: IT contributes to sustainable development by for example a lower carbon footprint.

`` ‘IT for green’: IT to serve green growth by enabling smarter, lower consumption, greener, solutions.

ImpactGreen for IT:

`` IT accounted for percent of total CO2

emissions in the EU in 2009.

`` Up to 70 percent of this comes from data centers.

`` This can be reduced by virtualization, low consumption equipment and changing from ‘always on’ to ‘always available’.

IT for green:

`` Information technologies can contribute to reducing CO

2 emissions by up to 15 percent

by 2020, through use of technologies such as Smart Grid.

`` Strategy of using decarbonized (renewable) energy supplies.

`` It is generally agreed that effect of IT for green will be five times more important than effect of the related ICT consumption.

`` There is considerable public and political debate and are legally covered by different regulations around the world.

global R&D is shifting from the West to India and China. As a result, highly skilled sectors in the Western labor market are likely to face increasing competition from the East, causing further pressure on public spending in the ‘old world’. The European share of world GDP is decreasing.

Finding and retaining talentConceptTo stay ahead of the competition, organizations rely on talented individuals to both sustain high performance, and innovate with fresh thinking and new ideas. Changes in population demographics, generational differences, education concerns and differences in quality and depth of skills are leading to shortfalls of critical skills in all economies, resulting in increased competition to recruit and retain the best talent.

Equally, as the workplace evolves into an increasingly fluid environment, traditional corporate levers of status, security or financial reward are no longer as effective. Relationships, networks and exposure are being seen to hold higher value, as individuals both invest and drive their own careers.

ImpactAt an organizational level, ensuring the right people are recruited at the outset is key. Talent profiles must be defined and encompass the type of person most likely to succeed in the current organizational environment and in line with business priorities. Tracking data and leveraging analytical insights can then build a robust picture of those most likely to flourish, and these insights can inform future decisions as well as immediate interventions.

Cultivating a workplace to both attract and sustain talented individuals is equally as important, and organizations continue to focus on engagement. Corporate-wide

initiatives (such as agile working agendas, collaborative office environments, varied incentives and total reward offerings) all encourage individuals to participate and identify the benefits they value the most, moving away from a one size fits all approach.

However, whilst an organizational strategy to recruit and retain talent is important, the reality of this proposition rests with managers. In the recent Gallup survey, the single most important variable in engagement was shown to be the quality of the relationship between the employee and their direct manager or supervisor. Qualities such as showing interest, articulating consistent expectations, valuing people’s unique qualities, and encouraging and supporting people’s growth and development were all identified as critical attributes.

In summary, talented individuals are vital for any organization seeking to retain a competitive advantage. However it is the manager population who are most likely to impact the motivation of talented individuals to perform, innovate and invest their time in the organization. Overlooking the importance of managers, and the role they play in fostering the right conditions for talent, may limit the return on the organizational investment.

Green ITConceptOn March 20, 1987 the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

This idea is clear common sense and gained ground in the early years of the millennium. However, whilst green and environmental issues continue to be politically important in many countries, and unusual weather


IT-OT convergenceConceptTraditionally, enterprises have optimized the use of their IT systems in different, still ‘isolated’ business areas of value creation, putting barriers in place of significant business improvement.

IT-OT convergence in manufacturing involves integrated architecture of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), manufacturing execution (MES) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.

Looking along at the vertical data flow of a company, from shop-floor to top-floor, they still struggle integrating the process automation layer (PLC/DCS/SCADA), the production automation layer (MES) and business automation layer (ERP); interfacing is not the solution.

Impact Convergence is predicted to help reduce costs and risk, and improve the quality of decisions. The scattered application landscape (especially on the shop floor level) will give way to an integrated application landscape making use of the strengths of PLM, MES and ERP systems. This will happen on a global level.

The integration of the aforementioned three value chains will decrease new product introduction times dramatically (by more than 50 percent) as well as reducing waste, improving customer satisfaction, lowering risk and improving the quality of decisions.

According to Gartner’s website “An independent world of ‘operational technology’ (OT) is developing separately from IT groups. If IT organizations do not engage with OT environments to assess convergence, create alignment and seek potential integration, they may be side-lined from major technology decisions--and place OT systems at risk.”

Lean everywhereConceptReducing enterprise costs and improving business processes were both high on the CEO agenda in 2012/13, with many CEOs investing in IT for these reasons.

Lean provides a way to make continuous improvement through removal of waste and synchronization of processes to provide balanced throughput, matched to customer demand.

The focus is on five principles:

1. Process efficiency: focus on maximum customer impact, delivering to customers what they want, when they want it, at the quality level they want--overall standardization in processes with no waste.

2. Performance management: delivering on customer outcomes is continuously monitored along cost, quality and efficiency in a structured and consistent approach.

3. Organization and skills: individuals within the organization have the skills and knowledge to always deliver on their accountabilities.

4. Mindsets and behaviors: people and teams putting the customer at the heart of the business.

5. Clients: focusing on the most significant satisfaction factors for clients.

ImpactBy applying lean techniques, companies can optimize the use of resources by removing barriers to efficiency that add no value to the business, such as cumbersome administrative procedures.

The lean approach is designed to assess company processes to better identify sources of waste, variability and lack of flexibility in the way we work.

The manufacturing advisory service in the UK notes these benefits from its improvement projects, many done with lean methodology:

`` 26 percent improvement in delivery performance

`` 33 percent improvement in stock turns

`` 25 percent increase in productivity

`` 26 percent reduction in scrap

`` 33 percent reduction in space

To ensure a lean approach does not remove major innovations, some companies use a structured innovation approach, such as TRIZ, to compliment it.

Offshoring changesConceptMany Western production institutions have de-localized parts of their business to the East, in particular China. There is a concern around the profitability of these investments as profit from the sale of these goods is far lower than if they were made in the West.

However, offshoring is not just about India or China; many more locations worldwide are now being tapped into as potential new sites, with key countries being Brazil and Russia. In manufacturing, Vietnam and Cambodia are of growing importance.

The cost of offshoring to countries such as India and China is, however, increasing as the workforce increases its skills and broadens its portfolio to include delivery. This requires a skilled workforce, particularly in the field of research.

Offshoring nearer home to an alternative, less expensive country (sometimes called nearshoring) gives some of the benefits of offshoring, such as reduced costs, but without some of the cultural and time zone barriers that can be experienced when offshoring further afield.


Open Innovation results in attributes not present in closed innovation:

1. The ability to leverage significant diversity within and outside the company

2. The ability to share risk on new innovations

3. The ability to make money from unused ideas and buy other’s useful ideas

4. The ability to adapt the business model

TrajectoryThe early adopters of Open Innovation have continued to champion it and have developed ‘good practice’ on how to define the future and lead change, including, for example, ‘innovation champions’.

A good deal of this change is towards a better approach to global long-term partnerships with, for example, universities, something which has been developed by many companies over decades. However, there is evidence that new business models and players are appearing, including innovation brokers and companies that facilitate patent challenge by crowd sourcing.

There is also evidence that Open Innovation thinking in service companies can be improved by a ‘business technology’ model. The ‘millennium model’ provides a useful framework for the management of IPR issues, even in sectors such as IT where protection has traditionally been less strong, which can in principle be satisfactorily resolved. IT tools to support Open Innovation are becoming more available and adoption is continuing to increase, although some fundamental challenges remain.

Whilst Open Innovation is not a panacea; it is becoming a mainstream approach due to the twin pressures of internal cost and rapid external technology development. New business models are emerging and new companies are setting up to support

ImpactOrganizations may need to evaluate potential new locations to ensure that their objectives for offshoring are still being met and that they are maximizing its benefits.

In addition to increased skills, there have recently been some big changes in legislation that have given offshore workers more rights. This is driving up costs on the one hand, but is being balanced by products and services that have a higher degree of social responsibility, something that Western consumers are becoming more aware of and are more likely to base at least some of their purchasing decisions around. The collapse of a large building containing many garment workers in Bangladesh caused calls to boycott goods made in poor conditions.

The degree of change can be seen with some outsourcing services companies in India now offshoring to other parts of the globe.

There is an emerging trend reported with companies including Ford, GE, NCR and Caterpillar bringing some production back onshore. Issues driving this include the increase in costs and salaries outside the USA in recent years, whereas in the USA they have remained fairly flat or actually decreased.

The trend previously has been to use culturally close and politically stable regions first. These may be partially exhausted and companies will have to consider options including reshoring (see offshoring section) or becoming more adventurous and taking more risks over time to maintain profit. There is a need for local agents/fixers and hedging against geo-political instability will become increasing important.

By offshoring nearer to home, many of the frustrations caused by language barriers and/or cultural misunderstandings can be

eliminated. This enables better discussions and understanding around project issues such as requirements and pitfalls.

Open InnovationConceptInnovation is increasingly high on the corporate agenda because of the pressure to do more with less faster. Open Innovation addresses this problem with an innovation model that is not restricted to the boundaries of an organization.

Open Innovation encourages organizations to seek inspiration from a wider ecosystem that includes partners, suppliers, customers, competitors, universities, consumers, and the many sources of knowledge in today’s widely connected world.

With an Open Innovation mindset, organizations understand that they don’t have to invent something themselves to get value from it plus they benefit from external commercialization of no longer wanted internal ideas.

The term ‘Open Innovation’ was first formalized by Professor Henry Chesbrough at University California, Berkley in 2003. In the truest sense, Open Innovation is ‘the ecosystem of everything’.

ImpactThe motivation for Open Innovation is similar to that of closed innovation, namely the pursuit of larger profit, reduced risk, and faster time to both existing and new markets.

If holes are metaphorically drilled in the closed innovation funnel, providing for controlled ingress and egress of ideas, there is much greater potential in the innovation cycle.


them, providing a maturing ecosystem. IP problems can largely be solved by appropriate forethought, and Web 2.0, enterprise social networking and multimedia are likely to be key enablers.

ServitisationConceptServices are increasingly being employed as profitable and stable revenue streams to enhance commoditizing product businesses.

Some leading firms are adopting a ‘solutions’ business model, offering customized solutions to clients, where manufacturing no longer is a differentiating process.

This process, where services make up a larger part of a product company, is known as servitization.

An early example was the change in the aircraft engine industry when manufacturers such as Rolls-Royce, who coined the term ‘power-by-the-hour’, started to sell air power as a service rather than engines, maintenance and spares.

A highly visible example of selling goods by the amount of functionality that they are able to deliver often on a timeframe basis is Software as a Service (SaaS).

ImpactBecause the services can be best developed, sold and delivered by the product supplier, there is a lock-in effect resulting in relatively high profit margins. And because services are related to the (large) installed base they suffer less from cyclical economic cycles than the core product business.

The phenomenon servitization will transform entire product industries from ‘technology-push and product’ oriented to ‘customer-pull and service’ oriented. The transformation

is organization-wide on all transformation dimensions: business model, key performance indicators, organization and governance, processes and services, people and culture, and information management.

TrajectoryMany product companies (B2B and B2C alike) are developing services as a way to grow their commoditizing business. Services are broadly seen as attractive business:

`` Services provide additional revenues on top of the product business.

`` Services represent (when well organized) a high margin business.

`` Services represent a relatively stable business, which can act as a damper against volatile product business.

Developing a product business towards a service business typically involves four maturity stages:

`` Product manufacturer: sell products and charge for basic break-fix services.

`` Value added manufacturer: sell products and service to enhance the product performance.

`` Full service provider: replace products by (managed) services and enhance customers’ operational performance.

`` Integrated solution provider: take over (parts of) customers operations.

Smart MobilityConceptSmart Mobility is a powerful concept that will result in major changes to our everyday lives, driven by people no longer being chained to desks. It turns context sensitive information on a mobile device--such as where people are, when they are there, what they are doing there and who they are (and who they connect with)--into direct and sustainable business advantage.

Organizations must exploit these four context streams in new ways that will enable people to behave in a way they have never behaved before—in a way that will generate direct and sustainable revenue for Smart Mobility service providers.

ImpactSmart Mobility services enabled by context-aware computing will anticipate and react to the needs of the user, providing relevant and useful information that will inform decision-making. By gathering, in real time, contextual information associated with an individual’s actual situation, Smart Mobility is already providing innovative solutions for connected patients, connected consumers, connected buildings, mobile banking and many other markets.

In all Smart Mobility scenarios, organizations increase revenues and efficiency by monetizing user-experience through delivering value--not simply by selling apps. Successful services will see more people spending more money on more products and services as a result of the Smart Mobility context.

TrajectorySmart Mobility services will supersede existing smartphone applications and revolutionize how providers interact with consumers, organizations with employees, governments with employees and people with their social networks.

Existing internet business models will have to evolve to keep pace with this new wave of intelligent services–or may even need to be replaced. As with any new business paradigm, there will be winners and losers; the ‘me-too’ players may well find the market moving too fast for them to react, with more commercially innovative competitors taking their market share.


an important part of the company. It enables the organization to work not just along formal lines, but also along the cross boundary and informal lines, which are essential to delivering the agility needed to meet geographic, product and market changes.

At the same time, this enables the extended enterprise by facilitating collaboration with customers and partners. Development of innovative products for customers and improved customer service are two of the main claimed benefits by early adopters.

Other benefits to organizations are cited as: higher employee engagement, resulting in both improved organizational performance and lower churn and costs of replacement; higher personal effectiveness and a potential increase in sales.

As the learning from Enterprise Content Management and previous collaboration tools shows, the adoption of these more powerful and intuitive tools still requires major change of behavior and culture throughout the organization, and those who will get maximum benefit are those who are able to lead and manage such a significant transition.

SustainabilityConceptOn March 20, 1987 the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

Sustainability is now taking center stage in political, social and economic arenas.

It demands new thinking about how organizations can ensure that their business operations thrive rather than just survive in a world of limited growth and increasingly limited resources.

Increasingly ‘Smart Mobility’ is coming to mean ‘Enterprise Mobility for Employees’ and ‘Contextual Mobility for Customers, Citizens and Patients’.

SoLoMoConceptThe acronym stands for Social, Local, Mobile, and is now sometimes written as SoCloMo with C standing for Cloud.

It started as a strong trend in the Silicon Valley and spread fast.

Venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers coined the acronym SoLoMo to sum up this convergence of three major powers and acknowledges they are affecting all aspects of business faster than most managers have realized:

`` Social: leverage social behaviors to expand the reach and popularity of your service or application and to collect content (crowdsourcing).

`` Local: leverage location information (using GPS, Wi-Fi or Cell-ID) to increase proximity and relevance of the content to the user.

`` Mobile: use mobile as the primary vector of your service (mobile internet, native app referenced in app stores), enabling instant contribution and use.

In a technical sense, search engines and applications can focus more on local services using GPS or IP addresses. Good quality infomation about local businesses is needed. In browsers the concept can present some problems, but on mobile devices using apps the effectiveness has increased dramatically.

From the marketing point of view, SoLoMo allows targeting of customers who are close by, are in the correct target group and are prepared to make a buying decision. It has replaced direct mail, focused on post codes and segmented customer information, and more importantly there is an easy ‘buy’ button

as opposed to a complex process of sending off money and posting it.

ImpactUsually requires a complete revisit of the strategy. It’s not merely squashing a website into a mobile, nor is it copy/paste of all features of the website into a native app.

It will enable smaller companies to set up with viable business models in niche business, greatly increasing the ability of new starts (not necessarily located in the same area or country) to focus on a local profitable area. An African company can target a niche area in New York.

Social businessConceptSocial business includes all the social computing trends of the last decade and delivers an integrated vision on how to use social technology to leverage the enterprise ecosystem by making use of web technologies on any device for two way communication and collaboration.

It connects people (communication and knowledge) inside and outside of the organization to drive business benefits thereby creating a layer of transparency to encourage effective collaboration between employees and with clients and partners.

Beside the Web technology to support the communication and collaboration within the ecosystem, a whole new area of web analytics has emerged to analyze the social interaction within and without the business ecosystem.

ImpactThe tools will be especially valuable in organizations with a high intensity of knowledge workers who have non-standard processes and virtual teams: it eases their job, give them more flexibility and makes them feel


Sustainable working is often seen as a burden rather than a benefit, bringing costs and carbon taxes, waste compliance and carbon reporting. The wider impacts and returns on investment are often missed completely.

Also, a reputation for being eco-unfriendly or unethical can be difficult to reverse.

ImpactNon sustainable behavior results in increased costs of:

`` Energy consumption

`` Raw materials

`` Waste disposal

`` Recycling

Companies who are able to quantify these costs are discovering that this approach can reduce their overall costs.

TrajectorySustainability must move beyond environmental impact thinking to embrace the entire ecosystem of resources and players that contribute to an organization’s operation.

Enterprises will need to assess both the short- and long-term impact of actions and adjust strategies as appropriate.

Traceability and visibilityConceptAs workers become more mobile, and customers want to ensure the safety and origin of products, traceability will be key for products (from constituents to consumer) and for personnel movements and behaviors.

For example the recent ‘horse meat’ scandal in the UK and other European countries, in which some supermarkets withdrew ‘beef’ products because of significant horse meat content, caused a measurable rise in the demand for non-processed meat products.

ImpactBeing able to effectively and efficiently recall a product will benefit both the consumer, by ensuring that any potential safety issues are dealt with swiftly and the manufacturer and by ensuring that necessary batches are recalled. Consumer confidence will be higher with any manufacturer who is able to act swiftly in the event of an emergency.

Even competitors may work together to prevent counterfeit goods, using RFID parts identification.

Organizations will need to know where their mobile workers are in order to ensure that they are doing their job efficiently and also so that they can ensure that they are safe in the event of an emergency.

VideoConcept Video will become the de facto means of communication, collaboration and knowledge dissemination. This is causing a major change in ways of working and will have a similarly big impact on the need for companies to have a strategy its use, storage and management. There are now 8 billion hits a day on YouTube, with 48 hours being uploaded every minute.

For an enterprise, there will be the challenges and opportunities of both managing and distributing stored content and using live video based tools such as conferencing, telepresence and collaboration.

ImpactVideo will have a major impact on the workplace.

More of the content that workers see in a day will be dominated by pictures, video or audio, with usage expected to grow at 50 percent per annum.

Companies will have to have a strategy for video content management delivery and communications.

Video will increasingly become part of office collaboration systems.

More high-quality interactions will be possible without physical travel, potentially reducing the demand for long distance air and flight services.

It will become increasingly important for organizations to store, index, search and retrieve video.

Video skills will become more generally important in the workforce.

There will be increased demand on enterprise bandwidth and storage capacity.

IPR is important for distribution of video and tends to be based on geography and distribution channels. Digital Rights Management is used to protect rights over copyrighted content and to facilitate the collection of revenues.

Technologies such as audio to text, facial recognition, pattern recognition, image comparisons and semantic search will progressively impact on the problem of searching for and retrieving the right video.

The use of video in the workplace is likely to even further drive a distributed workforce and globalization.

TrajectoryInternet video is projected to surpass 50 percent of consumer internet traffic in a few years’ time.

Video on demand traffic is expected to triple over the next couple of years.


Emerging

Adolescent

Early adoption

Mainstream


AI Enhanced Robots

Context BrokerMachine-to-Machine

Next Generation Wireless Communication

Internet of Things


Semantic WebSemantic Search Engines

Augmented Reality

Plastics Transistors

Natural Language Avatars

Open Source Hardware

3D Location-Analytics


Big Data Processing


Software Defined Networks

Business ProcessManagement Systems

IPv6

Semantic Data IntegrationSerious Gaming

Mobile Payments

Multi-Touch

Biometrics

3D Printing

NoSQL

NFC

Machine Learning

Mesh Networks Distributed Social Networks

ComplexData Visualization

Cloud Orchestration

3D Displays

Nanocomputers

Miniaturized Power

Wireless Power

Fabric Based Computing

Holographic Data Storage

Computer Vision

Virtual Retinal Displays

Universal Translators

Physical Unclonable Functions


2014+ Enabling Information Technologies Radar in Detail



3D displayConcept`` Any display device that creates the perception of depth to the viewer can be described as a 3D display.

`` 3D perception can be brought about by rendering a real volume in the air with light dots (volumetric display).

`` It can also be artificially created by using optical interferences (holographic display) or by using the principle of stereopsis: each eye sees the image of an object from a slightly different angle. The viewer either wears glasses (stereoscopic display) or not (autostereoscopic display). This latter 3D display is the most common today.

Applications`` Entertainment: the movie industry has massively invested in stereoscopic display in the past years. TV set manufacturers are also in the race as 3D content starts to appear (sports, concerts and movies, for instance). Right now, there are also handheld game devices (e.g. Nintendo 3DS).

`` Health: 3D displays have been used for years by surgeons and radiologist. This natural rendering can ease remote operations.

`` Maintenance: whether it is cars or washing machines, 3D displays can help technicians in their diagnosis by providing a natural feeling of the object.

`` Marketing: the demonstrative effect of the technology makes it a must have for marketers.

`` GUI: 3D displays are affordable now, allowing developers of applications and websites to take 3D content a step further, creating more immersive experiences.

Issues`` (Auto)stereoscopic displays are not yet mass market. Holographic and volumetric displays are still very costly.

`` Glasses, compulsory for most 3D TVs and in movie theatres, are not much appreciated by viewers. For example gaming devices take advantage of the fact that the distance between the screen and the viewer’s eyes doesn’t vary much between players.

`` Because of the physiological effect of faking 3D (despite the natural feeling, eyes cannot change focus), many people suffer from headache after a movie.

3D Location-AnalyticsConcept`` Geographical information systems (GIS) are systems capable of capturing, storing, analyzing and displaying information referenced according to its geographical location, the next generation also taking the third dimension into account.

`` 3D location-analytics takes advantage of a user’s or an object’s exact geographical position to deliver contextualized information and services.

`` Taken separately, traditional location technologies do not yet provide a sufficient level of accuracy on the third dimension, but their combination with 3D models (with a city or building, for example) can bring significant value to the end-user.

Benefits`` 3D representation enables much more realistic representation of the world.

`` There are any new kinds of applications that were difficult, or not possible, with 2D maps only: studying sound propagation, lighting (shades) or rain flow and managing dense pipe networks, for instance.

Issues`` Standard GPS reception within buildings is limited, however this can be compensated in many areas using additional information e.g. from WLAN and mobile phone triangulation.

`` It is heavy on computing resources.

3D printingConcept`` 3D printing is a manufacturing technology that is used to build 3D objects.

`` It can be used to materialize objects that have been designed using CAD systems.

`` It superposes layers of material, originally a melted polymer, with each layer being built using techniques similar to inkjet printing. As an example of non-polymer productions, there is an amazing example of using tissue from calf cells and silver nanoparticles in a hydrogel to create an ‘ear’ as a bio-sensor.


Trajectory`` This technology was first dedicated to prototyping for the manufacturing industry in the early stages of a product development process.

`` The drop in price of 3D printers, the apparition of open hardware initiatives and the general ‘Do It Yourself’ movement have popularized this technology and spread it in the open source communities.

`` CAD object design libraries are starting to appear, allowing people to share and print their own objects at home.

`` Research in new materials with high mechanical properties, such as steel or titanium, are enhancing the possibility of using these manufacturing technologies in new sectors, such as aerospace and healthcare and also allowing printing of objects using multiple materials.

`` Additionally, progress is being made in the printing of bio-materials, printers for large items, and high-volume printing

`` The complimentary 3D scanning technology, which collects data on shape and size of objects, is making it easier to bring initial designs for editing and using in 3D printing.

Benefits`` Can be used by individuals to create and share physical objects in the same way they share contents within the Creative Commons movement or software pieces in the open source movement.

`` Lowers the investment barrier for people aiming at manufacturing small series of objects.

`` Increases customization, reduces material waste and reduces lead time.

Impact`` Still an emerging trend, but gaining attention amongst the (DIY) community.

`` Accompanying the open source hardware and software movement.

`` Once mature, may have the same impact as factories at the beginning of the industrial era.

`` May significantly alter the value chain of product related services, such as after sales maintenance, by making replacements immediately available.

`` May spawn a new wave of manufacturing relocation across the globe, as bill of materials are more easily completed anywhere with the aid of 3D manufacturing

`` Could make countries’ international trade strategies for goods as difficult to enforce as the services trade by making it more difficult to identify usage of 3D raw materials in specific value chains, spreading the impact of decentralized manufacturing across different industries.

Issues`` While the price of 3D printers has dropped, they are still only usable by skilled specialists.

`` 3D printing is limited to relatively small objects.

`` Problems may appear related to the intellectual property of models and CAD designs may appear.

`` Nowadays this technology is only useful for short series.

AI enhanced robotsConcept`` Coupled with robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables the creation of realistic autonomic simulations of physical systems.

`` The underlying technology is built around advanced machine learning algorithms, including artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms and agent systems.

`` To date a number of ‘intelligent’ robots have been made for a diverse array of applications.

`` AI enhanced robots are not necessarily humanoid. Most of them look like machines.

Impact`` This is a rapidly developing technology, allowing facilitation and automation of innumerable business processes.

`` Smart machines will use private and public clouds as a backbone for sharing data with their robotic fellows and for accessing information or services, with growing impact on the Cloud business.

Applications`` Already employed in a diverse range of tasks across all industry sectors including surveillance; fire prevention (detecting and extinguishing); industrial inspection (such as for repair of networked systems); cleaning, sorting and delivery (for example of mail); ‘robotic doctors’ (allowing doctors to diagnose, and even operate on, patients from a remote location); care of elderly people in an aging population; planetary navigation; sheep-shearing and more.

`` The United States research agency, DARPA, has had research in Autonomous Land Vehicles (ALV) since the 1980’s.


Benefits`` Replace workers for dangerous activities, such as fires or nuclear power plant accidents.

`` Increased efficiency: AI systems operate by recognizing, learning and optimizing otherwise imperceptible mathematical patterns in their respective tasks, ensuring maximum efficiency for minimum cost.

`` Increased productivity: robots do not tire and can, therefore, maintain a consistent level of performance indefinitely. Costs are the initial purchase price and subsequent maintenance.

`` Customizability and flexibility: they can rapidly adapt to deal with a variety of constantly changing work environments and can have a form factor suited to the job.

Issues`` Staff resistance: the role could move from facilitating human labor to supplanting it, with the consequence of staff redundancy.

`` Over-hyped mythology: the media portrayal of ‘robots’ often presents a distorted view of the truth.

`` Extreme scenario: the fear that robots may self-reprogram to dangerous consequence is obviously exaggerated, but dysfunctions of badly designed smart machines may be harmful.

Augmented RealityConcept`` A user’s perception of the world is supplemented with relevant information via a device (headset or display). The superimposed information usually includes graphics, but could also be audio or other sensory information such as smell.

`` The user can interact with the information displayed, for example, to trigger an action or access additional details.

Trajectory`` In the typical set-up, text and/or graphics are superimposed on the user’s view using specially-made glass. The Google Glass project has created a lot of interest, although not always positive: it has been prohibited in some places even before existing.

`` Simpler set-ups also exist based, for instance, on smartphones. The camera is used to capture a visual scene and the screen displays this view with supplemental information computed or retrieved by the augmented reality engine. The engine can use artificial vision techniques to analyze the scene and take advantage of on-board sensors such as GPS, compass and accelerometer to collect additional input on the context.

Applications`` Maintenance and repair: technical documentation, reference material and measurement.

`` Health: where scan results and models of internal organs can be overlaid on patients.

`` Driving: navigation information, highlighted obstacles or dangers.

`` Consumer location-based services, gaming, social interaction.

`` Tourist information.

`` Military.

Benefits`` Hands-free and real-time access to context-based information.

`` Information highly tailored to the user’s perspective, particularly in that it will be able to track the user’s visual image.

`` Continuous refresh as the user moves.

Big Data processingConcept`` The Internet has given rise to global companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter. They manage data on a massive scale and find ways to use it beyond its original means. Strong open source foundations have enabled them to create and improve on solutions, such as NoSQL, to manage and process ‘Big Data’.

`` The most widely used frameworks for Big Data processing are MapReduce, developed by Google, and its open source implementation from Yahoo, Hadoop. Based on Java, it offers a complete ‘infrastructure’ for reliable, scalable and distributed computing.

`` In the MapReduce framework, a computing task can be executing on an arbitrarily large set of nodes, as long as it has been expressed as a sequence of Maps (independent computations on subsets of the input data) and Reduce (merge of Map results).

`` The MapReduce framework allows also efficient querying of massive datasets through specialized, high-level querying languages, which are compiled into MapReduce processes.

Trajectory`` The MapReduce framework has aligned High Performance Computing (HPC) with the processing of massive datasets. The popularity of its most famous implementation, Hadoop, is driving the emergence of a full ecosystem, which includes query tools, such as Pig and Hive, Zookeeper control libraries, Sqoop data loader, log management (Flume, Scribe) and integration with other NoSQL databases, such as Cassandra.


`` MapReduce implementations basically work in batch mode. Real-time processing of datasets is, at best, a makeshift job. Initiatives, such as Google’s Percolator or Yahoo’s S4 Distributed Steam Computer Platform, are alternatives towards a real time approach. Their evolution, and possible convergence with the evolution of Hadoop, should be followed closely as they will form the basic platform for advanced real-time data intensive solutions.

`` Real-time Big Data: ‘streaming solutions’ such as Storm and HStreaming will evolve to provide Distributed Complex Event Processing.

`` Big vendors offer ‘Big Data Appliances’ that, although not based on classical Big Data technology (Hadoop and Map Reduce), solve some of the storage management problems having large amounts of data. Oracle (Exadata), IBM (Netteza), HP (Vertica) and EMC (Greenplum) are entering the Big Data arena in this field.

Applications`` Science and research.

`` Manufacturing: predictive maintenance for connected operational equipment.

`` Anomaly detection, forecasting based on complex and large data sets, and other algorithmic analysis.

`` Retail and consumer purchase analysis.

Issues`` Expressing computations as MapReduce processes requires a new way of thinking about computational-intensive algorithms for developers, with a steep learning curve. Even for standard data sets, MapReduce only works if a problem can be divided into independent parts.

`` MapReduce is not suitable for real-time computation and open-source real-time alternatives to Hadoop are still immature.

`` Large amounts of non-standard data such as raw text and video, are also a key component of Big Data, which lacks the processing tools available in the MapReduce ecosystem.

BiometricsConcept`` Automated use of unique and easy to measure characteristics of a person to determine and verify identity.

`` Can be physiological (such as fingerprints, iris or veins) or behavioral (such as typing rhythm or voice).

Trajectory`` Multimodal biometrics combines several recognizers to improve the reliability of the system.

`` Biometric systems are characterized by their false acceptation rate (FAR) and their false rejection rate (FRR). Typically, when the FAR is reduced, the FRR increases, and conversely.

`` Adaptive systems will be able to take progressive evolution (voice or morphology changes, for instance) into account.

Benefits`` Enabler of strong authentication through its uniqueness and difficulty to reproduce by other means.

`` Enhances access control and security systems.

`` Unlike a password, does not require any memorization.

`` Keen interest in the government and defense sectors.

Issues`` Requires the deployment of appropriate equipment to capture the biometric characteristics.

`` Performance on large populations makes it relevant only as a complement of conventional authentication methods.

`` A small proportion of users face recurrent difficulties with biometrics systems.

`` Possible user acceptance or regulatory issues because of privacy concerns.

Business process management systemsConcept`` Enterprises increasingly look for business agility, transparency and business process control.

`` Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) enable management of all the stages of business process lifecycle: design, modeling, execution, monitoring and optimization. As such, they bring a next step in business process automation: dealing with current demands for business agility, cost reduction and cost flexibility.

`` BPMS are tightly related to Business Process Modeling (BPM), for the design and modeling of business process, and to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), as architectural patterns and principles used to build the system.

`` Enterprise Decision Management and Business Rules technology and methodology are enablers for Business Process Management and include: 1) decision and rule governance (using natural language) and 2) implementation and BPMS technology.


Trajectory`` BPMS can be seen as the next step after ERP. They can handle complex processes: modeling them, changing them, then executing them as designed.

`` An increased ability to model, manage and execute business rules will bring more flexibility.

`` Cloud concepts such as cloud orchestration and additional smart cloud-based messaging systems are making building complex, distributed applications possible.

Applications`` Optimization and automation of complex business processes with a high information density or a repetitive character.

`` Reaching significantly higher levels of straight through processing (STP).

`` Cost reduction, by increasing the benefits of a Lean implementation, for example.

Benefits`` Business agility.

`` Flexibility.

`` Cost reduction and flexibility.

`` Process transparency, with regard to governance, risk management and compliance (GRC), for example.

`` High quality process outputs.

Impact`` Replacement of legacy applications in information intense processes.

`` More direct influence of business workers on how IT applications will work (model-to-execution).

`` Introduction of BPMS’s may have a massive impact on both the number of resources needed to run a business process and on the number of IT resources required to maintain the legacy applications.

Issues`` Implementing a BPMS using traditional approaches for IT implementations may bring fewer benefits than expected. A change of mindset is required.

Cloud orchestrationConcept`` Cloud orchestration relates to the connectivity of IT and business process levels between cloud environments.

`` As cloud emerges as a competitive sourcing strategy (in comparison to having your own or outsourced IT environment), a demand is clearly arising for the integration of cloud environments to create an end-to-end managed landscape of cloud-based functions.

Trajectory`` Expected to follow directly after the adoption of Cloud Computing for business functions.

`` This is foreseen as in the next two years.

Applications`` From simple API capabilities now available from Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and others, it will evolve into a service-based architecture on a global scale in which services are available to other services.

`` It solves the problem of non-connected and non-integrated functional pillars and in that way supports business process that typically traverse IT domains.

Benefits`` Ability to create a best of breed service-based environment in which a change of provider does not break the business process.

`` It also allows shopping for the best service (for example the cheapest or best email provider) and, as such, it is fundamental to the concept of cloud brokering.

Impact`` Orchestration needs between clouds will force cloud providers to collaborate on open standard for communication across and integration within cloud environments.

`` Current providers are creating a lock-in model which inhibits large cloud acceptance (this is not the only inhibitor). Open standards that simplify changing clouds and integrate cloud functions across many clouds will speed the adoption of Cloud Computing dramatically.

`` It is similar to the standardization of the Windows programming model.

Issues`` There is mistrust between cloud providers and most orchestration attempts look at supporting the multitude of API’s from different providers.

`` Additionally, large investments are needed from IT integrators, who are at the same time see current cloud providers as their future competition.

Complex data visualizationConcept`` Business Intelligence (BI) tools, as well as spreadsheets, feature traditional data visualization capabilities, such as the ability to generate curves, histograms or scatterplot from vectorial data; next generation data visualization covers much more complex Big Data problems.

`` Data is often structured as a graph (typically, social networks). Complex data visualization enables graphs to represent multi-variate Big Data sources and navigate both raw data and analytics results efficiently.

`` Specialized, sophisticated data tools aim to give answers to advanced data visualization problems, such as visualization of text and of data spaces with many dimensions.


Trajectory`` Some BI products include advanced data visualization capabilities, and Big Data is only increasing the need for intuitive, visual ways of traversing content.

`` Open source data visualization tools are progressing quickly, but are often low level and much less user-friendly.

`` The field could evolve significantly with other advances in human-computer interfaces. For example, immersive systems, which could include advanced 3D graphics, are already being employed in the astronomy and health science fields, and also for the analysis of complex economic data, such as the stock market.

Benefits`` A key tool for understanding by providing understandable information to decision makers rather than simply raw data.

`` Can be used by data analysts as an extension of their data analysis tools.

Issues`` Visualization of massive datasets, typically stored in NoSQL databases or distributed file systems, requires advanced Big Data processing toolsets and know-how.

`` There are currently few specialists who have the additional statistical background needed to become data scientists--who create the input to be visualized.

Computer VisionConcept`` Computer systems that are able to gather information from images and become artificial vision systems implemented in software and/or hardware.

Trajectory`` This field is relatively young from an industrial point of view, but its academic background is broad and strong.

`` There are, however, some more mainstream applications available where computer vision is being applied to resolve specific problems, with solutions available from niche suppliers.

Applications`` Robots or autonomous vehicles used for industrial process control, space exploration or military purposes.

`` Surveillance systems counting people or detecting events.

`` Indexing of image databases or organization of image sequences.

`` Inspection of industrial assets, analysis of medical images, modeling of surfaces or shapes.

`` Input device to a computer system.

`` Obstacle warning system in cars.

`` Autonomous aircraft landing or car driving.

Context BrokerConcept`` Context brokers collect and store data, deduce context and trigger actions based on that context.

`` They are critical to the delivery of context-enriched services, which use information about a person or object to proactively anticipate the user’s need and serve up the most appropriate content, product or service.

Trajectory`` Context brokers are expected to hold a key position in the future mobile landscape. They will provide needed capabilities for enterprises looking to enter the mobility space; in particular, they will be an answer to the complexity of sourcing and federating context information.

Applications`` Acquiring context-related information from many sources, for example your mobile phone, your connected car, objects in your home and office.

`` Actions according to the reasoning. For example if you have bought an electric car then asking for gas stations could present the ones that support electric cars first even if they are farther than the ones does not.

`` Storing information and enable queries on it.

`` Context analysis: reasoning about events and stored information.

`` Administrative functions, such as privacy and user preference management.

`` Business support: transaction, metering and payment, for instance.

Benefits`` Unleashed potential of context-enriched services: exploitation of opportunities to suggest action, activation of potential value connections, monetization of actions and contribution to cumulative and timely Business Intelligence.

`` Mobile application designers can focus on managing communications, applications and user experience.


`` Revenue generation or enhanced user experience: subscriptions, advertising and increased customer loyalty. The border between technology and business is crossed as the technology companies start to think about IT-enabling business models (for instance the economy of internet applications)

Impact`` The introduction of context-enriched services, notably in mobility where information push must be favored versus pull, is the next frontier. The ability to automate the processing of context information will serve users by increasing the agility, relevance and precision of IT services.

Issues`` User context determination: users may have different needs in a similar situation according to their state of mind.

`` User acceptance, in particular with push.

`` Difficulty in associating potentially correlated events.

`` Real time aggregation and filtering.

`` Data formatting, structuring and adaptation.

Distributed social networksConcept`` Social network initiatives are developing social networking platforms that could be operated in a federated and distributed mode. Many projects are federated under the ‘federated social web’ banner.

`` There is a stronger emphasis on privacy and control of personal data than typical existing social networks.

`` Open standards and protocols are emerging to ensure several critical functions of social networks: personal information sharing, messaging, relationship management and content sharing. These emerging technologies are evolutions

of established standards that exist in the digital identity, instant messaging, telecommunications and web worlds.

Trajectory`` There is a basic conflict between distributed social networks and the desire to attract as many users as possible to gain network effects.

`` There is a basic conflict between a user’s desire for controlled access to their personal information and how existing social networks monetize the information of their users.

`` Might disrupt integrated social network actors, such as Facebook. In the meantime standard approaches for social networking are gaining maturity.

`` Recently gained popularity because of the Facebook privacy model debate and the popularity of the Diaspora initiative.

Benefits`` Allows enterprises and individuals to avoid being locked into an integrated solution.

`` Better control on the data exposed through social networks.

`` Better management of data security and privacy.

`` May push established actors towards data exchange and interconnection initiatives.

Impact`` Emerging standards may have the same impact as the standardization of email platforms in the late 1990s.

Issues`` Lots of initiatives are popping out, with no clear leader.

`` Distributed social networking platform still lack maturity and standards are still heavily inspired by the background they come from.

`` Integrated social network players have attracted large communities; migrating from those networks to distributed platforms may be a long process.

`` Aside from technical issues, because of the conflict in social network providers monetary interests, legislation about consumer privacy might be the actual driver for social networks adjusting their attitude.

Enterprise decision management and rulesConcept`` EDM and rules spans enterprise governance of business decisions and business rules, up to implementation of business decisions and business rules supporting flexible business processes. It is key to business agility, permanent cost reduction (operational and IT) and sustainable compliance.

`` Gartner sees rules as the primary driver for business control in processes. The business rules that handle matters such as tax and accounting, regulatory compliance or underwriting, decision-making rules, have the best fit for business rules management (as against other types of rules such as system, presentation and event correlation). These are true business rules; they drive business decisions and should be managed alongside the business decisions themselves.

`` Decision management and rules applies analytical and rule-based systems that automate and deploy operational decisions. It governs the business rules underlying business decisions, preferably in natural language that is accessible to business matter experts and users.


`` It is tightly related to Business Process Modeling (BPM), for the design and modeling of business decision and rules, and to business information analysis, for methods and approach of analyzing business policies, contracts, law and regulations. The aim is to create operational rules from it to permanently govern and maintain business decisions and business rules, thus keenly following any changes in the business environment.

`` EDM and rules is particularly applicable in environments where policies and regulations change a lot, where there are large numbers of policies or regulations (compliancy), or where rules change quickly or frequently.

Trajectory `` The increased ability to swiftly react to a changing business environment is a valuable and discerning competitive business asset.

`` Enterprises are increasingly looking for business agility, transparency and cost reduction; they want to build systems capable of easily accommodating change.

`` Enterprise decision management (EDM) emerged from the need to facilitate high-volume enterprise decisions.

`` EDM and rules can be seen as the next step to realization of sustainable business agility and at the same time permanently reducing costs of running business and IT.

Applications `` Any knowledge intensive environment where high volumes of decisions and/or complex decisions are to be automated

`` Dynamic case management

`` Fraud detection (insurances, cell phone companies)

`` Taxation

`` Customer management and customer intimacy (identity, merging, matching)

`` Eligibility (such as membership or insurance)

`` Target marketing (patterns of behavior)

`` Regulatory compliancy (interpretation to operation, legislation, policies, contracts and agreements)

`` Reverse engineering (mining rules, legacy transformation, legacy modernization)

`` Product configuration (insurance, telecom, banking)

Benefits `` Decision transparency: with regard to governance, risk management and compliance (GRC); transparency through clear sight on business vocabulary and business rules.

`` Control: by having permanent grip on business vocabulary and business rules (governed).

`` Flexibility and shortened implementation (FAST): by being able to adapt accurate (first-time-right). Ability to change business applications in weeks instead of months.

`` Sustainable compliancy: by being able to justify at each desired moment.

`` Permanent cost cuts: by permanent rule management and the near disappearance of application maintenance.

`` Efficiency (LEAN): by having the possibility to highly automate decisions and rules.

`` High-quality decision outputs.

`` Realizing significantly higher levels of straight through processing (STP), without implying extreme maintenance costs for changes.

Impact `` Direct influence from business workers on the way IT applications will work (model-to-execution).

`` Introduction may have a massively reduce the business resources needed to run business processes and the IT resources required to maintain conventional and legacy applications.

`` Replacement of conventional and legacy applications in knowledge-intense business processes.

Issues `` A change of mindset is required.

Fabric-based computingConcept`` Fabric-based computing aims to provide scalable and cheap IT resources to many different users and applications (as opposed to grid computing, which is a highly scalable compute resource pool that is provided for a ‘specific purpose’).

`` The fabric is defined as a physical fully meshed network of IT resources (CPU, memory, storage and network) on which datacenter services are defined by means of software (software-defined datacenter).

`` It uses virtualization on both compute and network resources.

`` It requires a fairly radical architectural change to how datacenter networks are shaped: highest switching speed on the physical level as well as the requirement to define the datacenter network by software. Protocol convergence is one of the drivers of this change.


Benefits`` Fully meshed resource network reduces the number of physical changes by onsite personnel to a minimum and decouples them from service provisioning. As a consequence, deployments and configuration changes take just seconds.

`` Datacenter infrastructure management (DCIM) layers, and potentially applications, could talk to the datacenter services provisioning layer and negotiate resource requirements dynamically. This offers huge potential for power consumption and performance optimization.

`` The aggregation of many individual resource pool ‘islands’ in a datacenter will increase the overall utilization to over 80 percent on average.

Holographic data storageConcept`` Holography records data through the full 3D volume of thick photosensitive storage medium.

`` In addition, holography allows a million bits of data to be written and read in parallel with a single flash of light, rather than one bit at a time. This enables significantly higher transfer rates than current optical storage devices.

Applications`` Combining high storage densities and fast transfer rates with durable, reliable, low-cost media, holography is poised to become a compelling choice for next-generation storage and content distribution needs. The ‘write once, read many’ (WORM) aspect, coupled to a better longevity compared to usual techniques, could be useful for safe data archiving.

`` The flexibility of the technology allows for the development of a wide variety of holographic storage products that range from hand-held devices for consumers to enterprise storage products.

`` Current storage capacities are seen to be around 30 GB on a credit card or 1 TB on a disk--with a vision of 10 TB or more per disk in the future.

Internet of Things (IoT)Concept`` The next revolution following the World Wide Web; it will provide new bridges between real life and the virtual world. The Internet will no longer be merely a network of ‘human brain’, but will integrate real-life objects, sensors and physical activities.

`` Networks of spatially distributed sensors will be able to detect and monitor events; each sensor has a transceiver and a controller for communicating within a networked environment.

`` Networks can be self-managing and ad-hoc auto-reroutable (for example ZigBee wireless protocol). Sensor networks are technical tools to implement the IoT, and sensors may include further capabilities, such as GPS, RFID, WiFi or internet access, or be part of mobile devices, smartphones or vehicle on-board units.

Applications`` Advanced control of operational equipment in industry.

`` Monitoring machine health/wear.

`` Vehicle traffic monitoring.

`` Detection of environmental changes (such as pressure/temperature) or movement, for instance.

`` Surveillance and security.

`` In the military context, detection and acquisition of information about enemy movements and terrain parameters.

Benefits`` Can be embedded into many different objects in many different environments. Sensors vary in size, with some available on a microscopic scale.

`` Inexpensive, but vary in price according to their capabilities; prices are dropping.

`` Deployable in adverse environments: especially useful where they are required to be deployed outside.

`` Self-managing and able to automatically reroute data in the event of a node failure.

`` Can provide large amounts of data for analysis, enabling businesses to make better informed decisions.

`` Great potential for providing an early warning system in a wide variety of scenarios.

`` Some are even capable of detecting the approximate location of an individual node, based on the route a message takes, the signal strength or packet timing.

IPv6Concept`` IPv6 was designed in the 1990s to address several deficiencies of IPv4 including address space, improved security and privacy, and multicasting.

Trajectory`` The main reason for IPv6 development was the expected exhaustion of the IPv4 address space (encoded on 32 bits, thus limited to a few billion addresses).

`` This exhaustion is now a reality; the last IPv4 address blocks were assigned by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to regional internet registries in February 2011.

`` Several tunneling mechanisms or gateways have been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in order to bypass IPv4 limitations. Until now, they allowed to deal with the IP address shortage.


`` Migration to IPv6 has started in many different areas, mainly on central infrastructures. The uptake of pure IPv6 is taking longer than expected, and the transition period using various methods of IP tunneling and IPv4 to IPv6 translation will last for quite some time.

Benefits`` Address space is much larger than IPv4, going up to 2128 or approximately 3.4×1038 addresses (or about 4×1028 addresses for each person on the planet.)

`` Includes adjacent features, such as address assignment, network renumbering and auto configuration.

`` Addresses some remarkable issues of IPv4: support of multicast, need for embedded security and efficient management of mobile data traffic.

`` Major enabler for the increase of the number of peers connected to the Internet; mobile internet and the Internet of Things will also benefit from this, if not only because of the need for additional addresses.

Issues`` Migration from IPv4 to IPv6 is just starting, even with the exhaustion of the IPv4 address space. As of mid-2011, less than 1 percent of the Internet uses IPv6.

`` Although the support for IPv6 in major operating systems facilitates this transition, many legacy devices cannot be updated to support IPv6 and will not be replaced overnight.

Machine learningConcept`` Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence concerned with the conception and design of algorithms that allow computer systems to ‘learn’ (to acquire abilities and improve with experience) without being explicitly programmed.

`` The experience from which the system is learning is usually given as a set of observations or as a feedback from its environment using sensors.

`` The main concept behind machine learning systems is generalization: the ability to infer general principles from specific observations.

`` Practically, machine learning systems are designed to solve one specific problem and trained on a set of examples. For example, a character recognition system will be designed to associate the correct image with the corresponding character and trained from this set of image/character pairs. A wide range of algorithms are used, including Bayesian algorithms, decision tree learners, neural networks and support vector machines.

`` Attempts to eliminate the need for human intuition in data analysis, while other approaches adopt a collaborative approach between human and machine. It is used to extract the relationship that is hidden among large masses of data (data mining) and can be used for on-the-job improvement of existing machine designs.

Benefits`` Aims at eliminating the need for human intuition in data analysis while other approaches adopt a collaborative approach between human and machine.

`` Used to solve artificial intelligence tasks or tasks for which humans naturally outperform computers.

Applications`` On-the-job improvement of existing machine designs.

`` Pattern recognition: automatic reading, biometric systems and voice recognition.

`` Natural language processing: automatic translator, question answering and conversational agents.

`` Robotics: computer vision, map-building and self-learning walking bots.

`` Automatic diagnosis: medical and system failure diagnosis.

`` Text classification: spam filtering and automatic text database organization.

`` Data mining: extraction of knowledge hidden among large masses of data, in domains such as Business Intelligence or Customer Relationship Management.

`` Specific applications, such as astronomical data analysis, market segmentation, search engines, bioinformatics, chemical informatics, brain-machine interfaces, detecting credit card fraud, stock market analysis, classifying DNA sequences, social network analysis and game playing.

Machine-to-MachineConcept`` Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technologies link machines to an information system, generally to automate existing humanly-performed operations (such as meter reading) or to enable new services based on remote connected devices (for instance e-health).

`` Network (wired, wireless or mobile) and middleware aspects of such a system are managed by a M2M platform.


Trajectory`` Billions of objects, such as smart meters or automotive on-board units, are expected to be connected within the next decade.

`` The market is composed of verticals relying on the M2M platform: to ensure communications with machines (in terms of QoS, cost and security) and to be the foundation of specific applications by abstracting the communications and management of the machines.

Applications`` Optimization of operations by automating operations previously done by humans.

`` M2M is enabler by linking devices directly to each other, or also be enriching the information in between.

`` Utilities, retail, industries, telecoms companies, health and transportation, for example smart metering, connected vehicles, connected devices.

Benefits`` The limited capabilities of connected devices are compensated by the flexibility and sophistication of the M2M platform.

`` Manageability, asset tracking, billing and network cost optimization.

`` Lower environmental impact.

`` Improved services for end-users: accurate billing, information and tools to optimize use and new usages (such as e-health).

Issues`` Fragmentation of the market.

`` Lack of standardization.

`` Especially for personal devices, the need for security and privacy is unsolved.

Mesh networksConcept`` Mesh networks are decentralized, local area networks, formed by meshes of peer nodes. Full-mesh has each node connected to every other node, while partial-mesh has each node connected only to some nodes.

`` A mobile mesh uses wireless technology to connect the nodes.

`` It can be static, with devices always plugged in, or dynamic, with devices free to attach to, detach from and move around the network. In the later situation, mesh networks can be referred to as ad hoc networks.

Benefits`` A decentralized and robust model where each node has possibly a different owner.

`` Ad hoc routing increases stability in the event of node failure or changing conditions.

`` Mobile mesh networks are relatively cheap to set up and maintain.

`` Channel reuse allows for higher capacity.

`` Since only the nearest node needs to be reached, the power requirement may be lower.

Applications`` General applications: low-cost and zero management networking and resilient networking.

`` Mobile-static applications: internet access for disadvantaged communities, metropolitan meshed Wi-Fi coverage, building automation, low-cost industrial sensing and networking.

`` Mobile-dynamic applications: military sensing, emergency networking, product tagging, driver warning systems and mobile networks in public places connectible by any device.

`` Mobile-with-VoIP applications: flexible, low-cost telephony.

Issues`` The weakest link in a mesh network can prevent it from being fully connected.

`` Adoption of meshed networks could be harnessed by traditional network incumbents who have been disrupted by this new approach.

Miniaturized powerConcept`` Nanogenerators are energy-harvesting devices based on highly miniaturized structures capable of converting ambient energy, such as kinetic energy, into electric energy.

`` Kinetic energy harvesting is usually based on piezoelectric material, such as zinc-oxide nanowires.

`` Kinetic energy can be taken from muscles (heartbeat, respiration, shoulder move) or any periodic movement.

`` The power output being still small (microwatts), it must be seen as a complement to a battery.

`` Other energy-harvesting devices such as photovoltaic cells can also be used.

`` Thin film batteries are lithium-ion batteries composed of thin materials, allowing the battery to be just millimeters thick.

`` 3D batteries are a kind of lithium-ion batteries that exploit 3D nanowire structures to ensure high energy and power densities.

Applications`` Self-powered devices.

`` Smart wearable systems.

`` Body-implantable devices.


Mobile paymentsConcept`` Payments for products or services between two parties, with a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, to facilitate the act of paying.

`` Fully personal, carrying user’s data, always accessible and connected to the Cloud, the mobile can drastically improve the payment process, bringing more simplicity, cost reduction and contextual services, for both buyers and merchants.

Trajectory`` Mobile payments have been a topic of interest for some time now. However, over the last three years there has been another boost in investigation and development in this area, driven by some new market trends:

`– Firstly, and back to basics, payments, mobile banking and retail are the sectors in the driving seat. Banks search to confirm their leadership in payments, to secure funds on bank accounts.

`– A second trend is the mass roll-out of mobile smartphones over the last few years. These devices are capable of offering enhanced services with additional security around payment transactions leading to a much higher user acceptance; furthermore, the moderate, price range of these new devices is allowing the device manufacturer to integrate the required mobile payment technologies, such as NFC (Near Field Communication).

`– Thirdly, there are an increasing number of requirements from the retail (to increase the speed of the payment-only process in their shops), transport (public transportation, taxis, public parking) and entertainment (cinemas, restaurants) markets. In particular, alternatives to cash-based payments could reduce the payment cycle considerably; furthermore, it would reduce both fraud risk and merchants’ cash handling costs.

Applications`` The existing payment business is mostly card based, but with the introduction of powerful mobile devices it is possible to improve the user experience and the efficiency of the payment process; thus, payments could move from the card-based approach to a device-based one.

Benefits`` A new shopping experience brings a new value proposition (for example, sitting in a fast-food, choosing your meal and paying on your mobile).

`` A secured container (for instance, the secure element of a NFC-enabled phone) for one or several dematerialized payment cards: the mobile acts as a contactless card and the buyer merely swipes it to pay.

`` A new way of accessing a cloud-based payment solution with simple and secured authentication. This opens new opportunities, as the payment can be done anywhere and various payment means can be used.

`` Easy access to contextual information on the payment, enabling better fraud detection.

`` An opportunity for additional services, taking advantage of the interactive capabilities of the device, such as optional insurance, linked offers, loyalty, credit and self-care functionalities.

`` For the merchant: faster payment processing, less processing costs for cash payments and new customer segments.

`` For mobile network operators: incremental revenue owing to additional value-added services offered to the customer base across the different markets.

`` For payment service providers: new customer segments and new business partners (new merchants). They also can share some profit from the included acquiring business.

Impact`` Smartphones, which are the main enabler for mobile payments, are quickly penetrating the market with worldwide quarterly sales around 100 million units and a double-digit growth of sales volumes.

Issues`` Additional technology, such as NFC and secure elements, is required to ensure comfortable and secured transactions; this technology must also be deployed on the merchant side, on point of sale terminals.

`` Trusted service management is required to deal with the complexity of deploying and managing secure applications and credentials on diverse devices and across various networks.

Multi-touch user interfaceConcept`` Multi-touch user interfaces (MTUI) can recognize many gestures from multiple places on a device simultaneously, allowing several users to interact with an application at the same time or one user to interact at different points with multiple inputs.

Trajectory`` Multi-touch screens have been widely popularized by smartphones and tablets.

`` Most interfaces are using capacitive effect to detect fingers close to the surface of the screen. Some interfaces can also recognize differences in touch, for example, with heat or pressure.

Impact`` Drives user interface changes, which in turn will enable new usages and needs: for example for face-to-face-plus-computer interactions.


Benefits`` Multi-touch user interfaces provide users with richer, more immediate interaction, including swiping, pinching and rotations.

Applications`` Now commonplace on devices such as smartphones and tablets. It is also being included in the Microsoft Surface product group and other interactive terminals.

`` Usable in multimedia collaboration tools such as interactive whiteboards.

Issues`` Most multi-touch screens are based on capacitive technology, which is less accurate than its resistive counterpart.

NanocomputersConcept`` Literally, denotes computing hardware with fundamental components that measure in the realm of nanometers.

`` Nanocomputers involve nanodevices that can be combined to create nanocircuits, which are the base of extended nanosystems, including nanoprocessors and nanomemories.

Trajectory`` Future nanocomputers could be evolutionary, scaled-down versions of today’s computers or they may be revolutionary, based on some new device or molecular structure not yet developed.

Benefits`` Massive increases in memory capacity and processing power, leading to the cost of computing hardware being significantly reduced.

`` Each function would require less power, increasing battery life and reducing cooling needs.

`` Unlimited possibilities for networking swarms of cheap nanocomputers to create massively networked architectures that are far more powerful than anything available today.

`` Nanoagents.

`` Building block of ubiquitous computing.

Natural language avatarsConcept`` Avatars and virtual assistants are the electronic equivalents of real-world reception desk staff, designed to help users on administrative tasks and to locate and browse information in a friendly, yet effective, way. Currently Apple’s Siri is the most well-known example.

`` Avatars simplify human-machine communication in electronic media through the extensive and coordinated exploitation of natural-language processing, but are able to communicate bi-directionally for advanced interaction.

Benefits`` Simpler, more natural and appealing human-machine interactions.

`` Use by customer service desks can decrease cost yet increase efficiency and customer satisfaction.

`` Unified corporate image, available on different channels.

`` Enhances application usability by providing interactive assistance and improving information access tasks.

Issues`` Natural language interaction is still limited.

`` Additional data is required, such as user profile for personalization, usage context and, of course, business knowledge elements.

Natural-language processingConcept`` Natural-language processing (NLP) is the automatic ability to understand text or audio speech data and extract valuable information from it.

`` There are different research lines inside this wide field: information extraction, spoken language recognition, automatic summarization, question answering and machine translation.

Trajectory`` Progressed quite slowly compared to its initial promises.

`` Early adopters are nevertheless finding significant productivity improvements in concrete solutions: mostly in healthcare sector, where these technologies have being used over the last 20 years.

Applications`` Many applications follow from NLP: from automatic summarization to text analysis, including question answering or sentiment analysis.

`` NLP is now widely used to allow dialogue between users and interactive voice response (IVR) systems.

`` Command and control for human-machine interactions.

`` Websites are increasingly using conversational agents (chatterbots) to dialog with users. These agents are using NLP to understand user queries and answer in natural languages.


`` With a much lower ambition, ‘pseudo-natural language processing’ is using a classifier to determine what a natural-language query is about and direct the user towards the relevant person or service.

Issues`` True understanding of human languages would require human level artificial intelligence; therefore, performances of NLP are necessarily limited to restricted cases and fields.

Near Field CommunicationConcept`` Near Field Communication (NFC) allows devices such as mobile phones to communicate wirelessly over a very short distance and perform tag or card reading, card emulation and device-to-device data exchange.

`` Smartphones significantly increase the potential of NFC by enabling easy development of mobile applications using NFC whilst leveraging interactive capabilities and network access of the phone.

Trajectory`` Although hundreds of trials have been conducted, industrial roll-out is not yet here because of a ‘chicken-and-egg’ problem between devices, infrastructure and services.

`` Major influencers of the smartphone market, such as Apple or Google, have or are known to have strong interest in NFC.

`` Samsung Nexus S, the first Android NFC smartphone, was released in 2011, pushing other actors for a wider adoption of NFC.

Applications`` Tag reader: the phone reads a NFC tag to trigger an action. Access control, couponing, ticketing: the phone acts as a (wireless) badge, a coupon or a ticket.

`` Payment and micro-payment: simply swipe to pay.

Benefits`` A natural and intuitive way of interacting with objects from the real world.

`` Dematerialization of tickets, coupons, badges and cards into the mobile phone; no longer a need to carry a bulging wallet.

`` NFC tags can be attached to many kinds of objects or places. Reading them can trigger new kinds of interaction, such as providing related information, triggering an update on social media or initiating a transaction.

`` Could enhance privacy in the future scenario of smartphone applications: users physically control if they want to be identified as being in a specific place, or interacting with a specific infrastructure, and not only automatically as would be through a 3G/4G + GPS.

Issues`` Secure functions, such as card emulation or access control, require an additional component, called secure element, which can be built-in into the phone or located on a SIM card or in part of a specific memory card.

`` Trusted service management (TSM) is needed to properly manage secure elements in a complex ecosystem (such as telecoms companies, banks, transport, government and cities).

Next generation wireless communicationConcept`` LTE and fifth-generation communications system (5G) are the next step in wireless communications. LTE is able to provide a comprehensive IP solution where voice, data and streamed multimedia give users an ‘anytime, anywhere’ basis with higher data rates than previous generations.

`` It is a fully IP-based, integrated system capable of providing high speeds indoors and outdoors, with premium quality and high security.

Benefits`` Data rates are able to support smooth video transmission with peak transmission rates of 100 Mbps (wide area) and 1 Gbps (fixed/low mobility).

`` Globally mobile and full-service portability.

`` Full scalability of mobile networks.

`` Tight network security, all network elements being digital.

`` IP transport for voice, video, multimedia and data services, as well as call control/signaling.

`` First generation of mobile data networks to support IPv6.

`` Next level of being always connected; an important milestone for the Internet of Things.

Applications`` TV and video streaming to mobile devices.

`` Video conferencing.

`` Next-gen wireless gives users the ability to be ‘always online’ with high-speed digital connections, which in turn supports use of cloud and SaaS as the primary source of complex applications by smart devices and tablets.


NoSQLConcept`` NoSQL, which stands for Not Only SQL, refers to a trend in the field of database management systems that aims to give up the classical relational model.

`` Data stores are typically key-value stores, allowing basic, low-level data access.

Trajectory`` Introduced by major web players facing growth in their data storage needs that the performance growth of their relational databases could not handle. They internally developed their own NoSQL solutions: Big Table for Google, Cassandra for Facebook, Project Voldemore for LinkedIn and Dynamo for Amazon.

`` Until recently, only a handful of players had performance requirements that relational database could not meet. However, with the raise of Web 2.0, and possibly the Internet of Things and context-aware computing in a near future, the requirement for massive data storage is evolving and will involve a growing number of companies and organizations.

Applications`` Highly distributed, fault tolerant, highly available data storage systems that can run on arbitrarily large number of nodes and manage massive amount of data, typically terabytes or petabytes.

Issues`` Data stores do not feature most SQL capabilities and therefore require new skills and additional effort from the application developers and databases administrators.

`` NoSQL is still a young and immature field and the choice between the existing solutions is still a tricky problem. However, some major solutions, typically HBase (an open source Big Table clone), are currently emerging.

Open source hardwareConcept`` Open source hardware (OSH) tries to extend the ideas and methodologies popularized in open source software development to hardware development.

`` In this model, documentation, such as schematics, diagrams, list of parts and related specifications, are published with open source licenses so other teams can modify and improve them, based on specific needs.

`` Sometimes they are combined with more traditional open source software, such as operating systems, firmware or development tools.

Applications`` Arduino is a good example of open source hardware. This very customizable small microcontroller board has generated a lot of evolutionary descendants, in various form factors and with various uses, such as wearable computing. Other evolutions bring extensibility capabilities, such as wireless network connectivity over Wi-Fi or ZigBee.

`` Arduino is supported by a grassroots community of hobbyists that tinker with the platform for innovative uses from art installations to electrical metering solutions, including internet-connected devices. Recently, it started to get support from big companies, such as Google and Telefonica.

`` The field of OSH is expanding over very different industries: processors (OpenSPARC, OpenCores), servers (Facebook’s Open Compute), 3D printing and prototyping (RepRap), Ambient Information Devices (the chumby), mobile phones (Openmoko), notebooks (VIA OpenBook) and robotics (OpenRAVE), for instance.

`` OSH can be a useful platform for prototyping of new devices, such as internet-connected sensor devices. Combined with 3D printing devices, it forms the basis for the popularization of the distributed fab lab model proposed by MIT.

`` In some scenarios, OSH is closely related to more traditional open source software. For example, both Linux and Android operating systems are being used in embedded devices, replacing custom, proprietary real-time operating systems more each day.

Impact`` Although it needs to mature, OSH can have a high impact in several scenarios: for example, custom-connected devices for sensor networks can be based in extensible OSH platforms, such as Arduino.

`` OSH is an innovation tool, enabling rapid-prototyping of custom solutions, even more so when combined with 3D printers.

`` Some OSH projects are looking for low-cost devices that could be adopted by emergent economies. One example is the Global Village Construction set of farm machines from Open Source Ecology

`` Support by big companies, such as Google, Facebook and Telefonica, could accelerate adoption by enterprises.

Issues`` For many uses, the hardware needs a quite demanding certification processes: for security or radio electric interference, for instance. This is usually out of reach of the small communities that support an OSH project.

`` Projects are small and fabrication nowadays is in small batches, so cost-efficiency is low for now.


`` Some project communities are very technical and sometimes a little ‘underground’, so they clash with more business-oriented companies.

`` As with open source software, intellectual property issues could block some developments: OSH licenses are not as established as software licenses.

Physical unclonable functions (PUF)Concept`` Physically unclonable functions (PUF) can be seen as ‘hardware biometrics’ or a way to produce a ‘fingerprint’ of a physical object.

`` Authentication of a PUF-equipped device is performed using a challenge-response protocol. The server sends challenges, which are processed through the PUF to generate responses. Responses are checked against the device’s profile, previously recorded during an enrollment phase. The device is authenticated if its answers match its profile.

Trajectory`` The initial idea was to use physical material in which some properties can be easily extracted but hard to characterize and reproduce, such as bubbles in a plastic film. However, such early kinds of PUF required a huge amount of effort to be integrated into a traditional information system.

`` Other kinds of PUF were studied, based on the behavior of electronic components: for example, a standard static random-access memory (SRAM) can behave like a PUF.

Applications`` Security.

Benefits`` PUF-equipped devices have an intrinsic, unclonable signature.

`` With the PUF you have a unique identifier for tracking and access control.

Impact`` Any device with a SRAM (for example, smartphones) could take advantage of it to address security issues.

Issues`` To ensure a strong level of security, tamper-resistant techniques should be used.

Plastic transistorsConcept`` Manufacturing technologies now allow us to create polymer-based transistors.

`` Latest advances allow semiconductors to be printed on various substrates.

`` Computer processors and memories have now been built on top of flexible plastic.

Applications`` Flexible displays.

`` Printable computer circuits.

`` Transparent circuits.

`` Wearable computing.

`` Smart bandage

`` RFID tags.

`` Plastic solar cells.

Privacy-enhancing technologiesConcept`` The career and personal life of internet users could be severely impacted if they are not cautious enough with the personal data they (or relatives) make available through posts, multimedia content sharing, for instance.

`` Privacy-enhancing technologies (PET) aim to address this concern by controlling the disclosure of data.

Trajectory`` Early work started in the mid-1970s, with concepts of anonymity and unlinkability.

`` Recent business focus has been on mechanisms for digital identity management with privacy respect.

`` End-user awareness is growing, mainly because of personal data leaks related to social media; at the same time, attitudes are changing and there is a decreasing level of privacy concern, illustrated by a generational comparison between ‘parents’ and ‘transparents’.

`` Now it is moving to the concept of ‘personal data economy’. But will this be the correct, final approach?

Applications`` Identity management: service providers cannot gather more information than required on users from identity providers.

`` Electronic cash: electronic coins ensuring user anonymity, unless duplicated (counterfeit).

`` Social media: privacy by design.

Impact`` Loss of privacy can be considered the most important emerging risk for future IT systems. User privacy is an asset to protect within a given system or community and becomes a protection goal in itself.

`` Trust-building measures, including non-technical mechanisms such as legal norms, insurances and trust supporting institutions such as Data Protection Acts, can help to reduce the risk level on all risk layers.


Issues`` PET is being focused on data leaks during transactions; other measures are required to ensure usage control and transparent processing policy compliance.

Semantic data integrationConcept`` In environments where data plays significant role, there is a strong movement from software-oriented to data-oriented architectures. Moreover data itself is turning to be more complex: going beyond RDBMS table-like structures and becoming more interconnected and heterogeneous, coming from multiple sources and not always following fixed schemas.

`` Semantic data integration is an umbrella term for combining heterogeneous data using open standards and semantic technologies: employing triplestores and graph-like data representation (RDF), following linked data approach and using expressive SPARQL language for data retrieving.

`` Existing and legacy SQL-based solutions are already being turned into a semantic data cloud and numerous methods are under development. Standardization efforts for such transformations (RDB2RDF) are enabling the retrieval of more valuable information out of the existing data maze by combining it with other data sources.

Applications`` All fields where integration of diverse data sources facilitates better decision making and enhance analyses processes, such as: finance (fraud detection, financial market analyses), intelligence (market intelligence and statistics), health and pharmacology, genetics and the geospatial domain.

Impact`` The Open Linked Data initiative proved the linked data approach to be viable for publishing government public data in a most interoperable manner. Technological solutions supporting this approach are becoming mature, not only as research tools but also for business applications, with many companies already providing commercial support for semantic solutions (triplestores, reasoners) as well as using them in production.

`` These solutions bring enterprise data integration to the next level by integrating heterogeneous sources and augmenting corporate data with publicly available databases.

Issues`` Semantic integration is facilitated by the definition of vocabularies, often ontologies. When different sources use different concept definitions, correspondences between vocabularies must be established. Automating this process is still an open challenge.

Semantic search enginesConcept`` Semantic search is based on the notion of improving search engines by making the system aware of the meaning (semantics) of both the searcher query and the content of the searchable data.

`` Two distinct technology fields exist: semantic annotations and natural language processing (NLP).

`` Semantic annotations consist of information associated to data, describing their semantics in a formalized way. When semantically enriched data is available, such as in the Semantic Web initiative, a semantic search engine can directly make queries into this data to provide meaningful answers to the searcher.

`` When no semantic information is available, NLP techniques allow extraction of semantic information from a raw, humanly readable text.

Benefits`` Aims to provide the searcher with an answer to the question he actually asked, instead of retrieving a set of documents in which the answer is likely to be available.

Trajectory`` Many enterprise search engines advertise themselves as semantic search engines. The use of semantics to improve search efficiency, mainly through NLP techniques, is a clear trend in the field.

`` Some companies are providing, to a limited extent, semantic search engines on the Web. These engines are also heavily based on NLP.

Issues`` The Semantic Web is still a vision and will not exist in the near future at the global web scale; therefore semantic search is currently limited in its use of publicly available semantic information.

`` NLP-based extraction of semantic information may not be reliable.

Semantic WebConcept`` The Semantic Web is an extension of the Web that aims to be directly processed by machines.

`` Unrelated to any kind of semantic analysis or natural language processing, it is based on the idea that semantic information is explicitly provided and not inferred in any way: Semantic Web content must include machine-readable metadata associated to humanly readable content and specifying its semantics (i.e. meaning).


`` Ontologies are used to formalize and standardized the Semantic Web. An ontology is a formal representation of the concepts associated to a given domain, expressed as the graph of relationships between them. Once an ontology for a given domain is built and recognized as a standard, semantic information about this domain can be exposed, shared, queried and processed.

`` The most important standards developed by the W3C for the Semantic Web are RDF (to store semantic meta-data), OWL (to define ontologies) and the SPARQL query language.

Trajectory`` Today, the Semantic Web at a global scale is still a dream. However, related ideas, concepts, standards and technologies are used on smaller scale to provide semantically-enriched services.

Applications`` Exposing machine-interpretable information enables automation of many tasks. Currently, designing a program to fetch specific information, such as the price of a given product, the weather forecast, what is on TV the next evening or the time of the next train to a given city, is always specific and often complex and unreliable: all the more, with non-obvious queries, such as ‘the best price of product X when sold in packs of two with a two-month return policy’ or ‘the list of films in which actors X and Y played together’. With the Semantic Web, it would be as easy as querying a database.

Issues`` Ontologies are hard to design and their relevance can always be debated. Consensus around the same standards is difficult to obtain, even in very specific fields.

`` Discarding spurious information is difficult.

`` Data providers may not have interest in providing semantically-enriched information since they usually generate revenue from advertisements that have to be seen by human beings.

Serious gamingConcept`` Any games that do not have entertainment, enjoyment or fun as their primary purpose.

`` For example: a role game teaching vendors how to behave through different situations; a game that illustrating the philosophy of a brand or a company; a game where the riddles can be solved only by learning something.

`` Serious gaming builds on simulation (to train by practice) and gamification.

Applications`` Training: serious games are in use by surgeons to make their movements perfect, by soldiers to lower fear in combat and by pilots to make them face the unexpected, by children to learn to read.

`` Communication (advergaming, contraction of advertisement and gaming): games are developed to promote goods such as cars.

`` Human Resources: increasing use of serious games to recruit and for training.

Issues`` Development requires a specific methodology to merge the best of game development with more classical applications or services.

`` Creating a serious game can be expensive.

Software defined networks and Network IntelligenceConcept`` Network Intelligence aims at addressing the need for information visibility and for understanding real-time traffic.

`` It uses source, content and context of data crossing a network to correlate, interpret, analyze and report the traffic exchanged.

`` Software defined networks take advantage of virtualization concepts, allowing low-level network separation and fast reconfiguring based on software rules and not hardware ‘replugging’.

Trajectory`` The explosion in volume of data exchanged on IP networks is threatening their technical and economical balance.

`` While IP network traffic was usually treated as a single data flow, with few to no understanding of what is exchanged, discriminating data flows becomes critical.

`` Network Intelligence provides context to the recognized traffic by extracting metadata (who/what/where/when) in real-time.

Applications`` Sophisticated (for example application-dependent) tracking, charging and billing of traffic.

`` Cyber security and lawful interception.

`` Service assurance (QoS and QoE), traffic and infrastructure optimization.

`` Market research.


Benefits`` Clearer view on the data traffic flowing in the network, enabling the improvement of operations, expansion of services and tracking of rogue activities.

`` Security controls, applicable not only to users’ access to networks, but also while networks are being used.

Impact`` Network Intelligence will help telecom operators to move from the ‘dumb pipe’ model to the ‘smart pipe’ model.

`` Billing and CRM systems will need to be upgraded as a consequence.

Issues`` Implementation of deep packet inspection (DPI), an essential layer of Network Intelligence.

`` Categorization of the metadata of the content captured.

`` The need for constant updates of the solutions as new applications and protocols continuously appear in the market.

`` Debates around ‘network neutrality’.

Universal translatorsConcept`` Speech recognition, machine translation and voice synthesis have significantly progressed and can be combined to deliver universal translators capable of transforming text or speech in a language to text or speech in another one.

Trajectory`` Although far from perfect, current universal translators are already delivering promising results.

`` Statistical methods, based on huge multi lingual corpora and continuously enriched by user feedback, have driven machine translators to reasonably good results on not too challenging cases.

`` Results are usually better when the domain is specialized.

Applications`` Automatically translated interlingual oral or written exchanges.

`` Multilingual call centers.

Impact`` Will lower the language barrier.

Issues`` Dominance of some players having access to the databases and feedback data enabling the translation quality.

`` Still a lot of weaknesses that make it unsuitable when high quality translation is mandatory.

Virtual retinal displayConcept`` Virtual retinal display (VRD) entails broadcasting images directly onto the retina of the human eye.

`` Lasers and LEDs are used to project the image, with horizontal and vertical scanners behaving in much the same way as in televisions to selectively allow colors through.

`` To the user, images and information will appear as if floating in front of the eye. So far it has successfully been tested in standard definition; high definition (HD) now seems within reach.

Benefits`` Requires only a tiny amount of power when compared to a mini LCD screen.

`` Reduces reading time (including for some vision-impaired users) and can act as always present guides for many industries and tasks.

`` Can be projected onto the retina of just one eye, enabling the display to effectively augment the real world with augmented reality. If used on both eyes, can simulate 3D scenes.

`` Has been used in the health research sector to allow patients with retinal damage to identify blind spots; it may also be possible to compensate for blind spots by projecting onto areas of the retina through which the patient can see.

`` Now impacting in defense.

`` This could be a revolution combined with wearable computers.

Issues`` Cost is currently impeding the technology in most industries, excluding the military. However, work on miniaturization and energy efficiency, aimed at lowering the threshold for mass market production, is in progress.

`` In a similar way to which head up displays are becoming commonplace in cars, we may soon see VRD enter our daily life.

Web-based peer-to-peerConcept`` Peer-to-peer (P2P) network technology involves creating overlays on top of established networks. Overlays follow alternative metrics and addressing schemes to adapt the search for shared resources among the connected peers.


`` Popularized by file sharing for music and video, it enables a wide range of applications, including real-time multimedia communication, as with Skype.

`` Latest versions of Adobe Flash, as well as HTML5, are bringing direct connectivity between peers in the form of a web application, greatly easing the development and deployment of P2P clients.

Trajectory`` Few applications already take advantage of the direct communication capabilities in the browser as many web application developers are not familiar with the concept of P2P communications. However, the use of these technologies is expected to grow significantly in a near future.

Applications`` Web peer-to-peer can apply to most traffic-intensive services, such as video distribution and streaming or real-time communication.

`` In some cases, it can be used as an alternative to content delivery networks (CDN).

`` It is particularly useful in cases when few data is sent to a large number of peers.

Benefits`` Wide deployment of web-based real-time multimedia communication services, either from person to person or within larger groups.

`` Reduces the load on some central servers in traffic intensive services, such as live video streaming, while keeping a grip on who accesses the service or content from the Web.

Impact`` Although the impact may not be dramatic in general, changes could be very important on some specific uses.

`` Communication and collaboration services accessible via the Web will be impacted first.

`` Some impact is also expected on traffic-intensive content distribution platforms.

Issues`` As with many person-to-person technologies, web peer-to-peer is facing issues related to the variety of network environments encountered. Most of these issues are addressable using NAT/firewall traversal technologies or by falling back on a central server acting as a relay between peers when direct connection is not possible.

Wireless powerConcept`` Wireless power aims at transferring electric energy to devices without the use of electric cords.

`` While most of the focus has been on creating better batteries, some devices, such as electric toothbrushes, smartphones and computer mice, can already be powered wirelessly.

`` RFID tags are usually powered by the reader’s electromagnetic field.

Trajectory`` Induction is currently the most used method; it is most effective over short ranges.

`` Far field power beaming, based on radio, microwaves or laser, allows much longer range, possibly over several kilometers.

Benefits`` Lifestyle changing technology, not unlike Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, if adapters and chargers can be eliminated.

`` May apply to all the devices we use in our daily life that need to be moved around, from vacuum cleaners to mobile phones.

`` Getting rid of batteries would solve the major environmental concern related to their disposal.

`` Not having to factor in heavy or bulky batteries would also impact industrial design and portability of electric devices.

Issues`` Medical issues and the mistrust of the public may strongly interfere with the adoption of this technology.

`` Efficiency of the energy transfer is usually significantly lower than with cords.


Acknowledgements


`` Paul Albada Jelgersma`` Jesús Alonso`` Almudena Alonso Fernández`` Frank Amedick`` Sandra Ariza Molina`` Olaf Badstübner`` Arvind Bajaj`` Jean-Claude Barbezange`` Luc Barbier`` Didier Barré`` Carl Bate`` James Bayley`` Didier Beau `` Jon Beaumont `` Mark Becker `` Christophe Bele`` Duncan Bell`` Luca Benporath`` Raymond Bierens`` Agustí Blasi`` Graham Bodman`` Wilco Bothof`` Michael Brachtl `` Susan Breedijk`` John Breedijk`` Jasper Bremer`` Jérôme Brun `` Christophe Brunet`` Gregory Brysbaert`` Phil Buisson`` Ricardo Cabello Castillo`` Thierry Caminel`` Julien Carme`` Jaime Carrillo Aguilera`` Lucy Carson`` Stéphane Cauchie

`` Catherine Charbonnier`` Michael Chicheportiche`` Kuldip Chiheru`` Michèle Claverie – Belghit`` Pierre Collette`` Thomas Collins`` Miguel Corral Hernández`` Benoit Couchon`` Davide Criscione`` Pascal Croisy`` Jordi Cuartero Esbri`` François-Regis D’Anselme`` Spyros Damaskos `` Thomas Daubigny`` Hans de Bruin`` Klaus-Dieter de Marne`` Maarten de Vos`` Francisco De-araujo-roso Pinheiro`` Nuria De-Lama Sánchez`` Francis Delacourt`` Fernando Demattio De O Simoes`` Vanessa Desi Damblemont`` Marc-Henri Desportes`` Johannes Diebig`` Erwin Dijkstra`` Yipeng Ding`` Jean-Marc Djian`` Adam Dolman`` Steve Dunkley`` Mauricio Elgue`` Simon Elliot`` Franck Emsallem`` José Esteban Lauzan`` Mark Evans`` Bruno Fabre`` Denis Faivre

`` Raoul Fleming`` Sylvain Fourny`` Ignacio Franco Copado`` Antoine Fressancourt`` Markus Fuchslocher`` Francisco García Menor`` Nathalie Garcin`` Laurent Gervais`` Silvia Glas Espinel`` Robert Gögele`` Ana Isabel González Fernández`` Hermann Gouverneur `` Anne-Laurence Gruau`` Celestino Guemes Seoane`` Ewoud Guldemond`` Rajeev Gupta`` John Hall`` Matthias Henneberger`` Adrian Hepworth `` Colombe Herault`` Jeffery Hoffman `` Andre Hohner`` Kay Hooghoudt`` Guillaume Huard `` Will Hyams`` Jean-Francois James`` Jordan Janeczko`` Louise Jones`` Ingo Juraske`` Gerhard Käfer`` Christian Kaiser`` Peter Kalmijn`` Gavin Kenny`` Oliver Kleinhenz`` Bärbel Koch-Häbel`` Jan-Egbert Koekkoek

Acknowledgements

Ascent Look Out combines the knowledge and insight from subject matter experts across all corners of Atos -- our countries, services lines, market groups, global functions and Scientific Community. This collaborative creation project is led by an International Editorial Board, who gratefully acknowledge all contributors for their inspiration, experience and passion:


`` Jan Krans`` Fernando Kraus`` Bernhard Kües`` Tom Kuipers`` Veronique Lacassin`` Tony Lacy`` Tim Lau`` Christine Laut Rouzé `` Minh Le`` Yann Thomas Le Corre`` Laurent Legrand`` Annick Lemaylleux`` Lionel Boulo`` Jean-Charles Longuet`` Francisco López Camacho`` Manuel Machado`` Alexander Maglock`` Gijs Manders`` Eric Mariette`` Pierre Marlard`` Ana Martínez`` Sergi Martínez`` Régis Massicard`` Fernando Mediavilla Basabe`` Jean-Michel Menant`` Rainer Mewaldt`` Marc Meyer`` Sebastien Michel`` Ljiljana Mitic`` Daniele Monzani`` Paul Moore Olmstead `` Roland Neuhuber`` Remco Neuteboom`` Steve Nimmons`` Stéphanie Nogues`` Russ Norton`` Teresa Núñez Pastor`` Vicky Oakham`` Joan Vicent Orenga

`` Ralph Ort`` Aljosa Pasic`` Hervé Payan`` Luis Peláez-Campomanes Jiménez`` Victor Pernias`` Martin Pfeil`` Diana Pottecher`` Rob Price`` Peter Pruijssers`` Eric Ptak`` Ingo Puzik `` Alejandro Rametta`` Essia Rammah`` Mylene Reiners`` Dominique Rerat`` Philippe Reynaud`` William Rice`` Alexa Ringler`` Santi Ristol Jorba`` Cécile Robet`` François Robin`` Manuel Rodríguez López`` Michael Rogue`` Oswald Romainczyk`` Francisco José Ruiz Jiménez`` Piers Rundle Goodwin`` Jordi Safont Guillen`` María Angeles Sanguino González`` Cristina Santana`` Boris Scharinger`` Carsten Schmelz`` Thomas Schöftner `` Gerhard Schwyrz`` Udo Sebald`` Hans-Jörg Seeburger`` Pierre-Louis Seguin`` Dominique Seguineau`` Grégoire Seneclauze`` Albert Seubers

`` Abbas Shahim `` Chris Shano`` Mike Smith`` Hans-Joachim Spiegelhalder`` Thomas Standhartinger `` Mauro Starinieri`` Thilo Stieber`` Nicolas Stiegler`` Colin Stonelake`` Juan Pablo Taboada Corraliza`` Chee Tan`` Hubert Tardieu`` Clara Tejero Royes`` Nigel Thorley `` Wolfgang Thronicke`` Markus Tilgner`` Robert Unrau`` Albert Urbea`` Patricia Urbez Sanz`` Bruno Vaffier`` Johan van de Gronden`` Marcel van de Pol`` Leander van Delden`` Ruud van der Loo`` Michel van der Waaij`` Henk van Gestel`` Frans van Leuven`` Gerard van Zijp`` Jos Vanhommerig`` Willem Vlasblom`` Wolfgang Weissmann`` Johan Welsch`` Reiner Wergen`` Martin Wibbe`` Peter Wijngaard`` Rachel Wilkinson`` Philippe Wilms`` Mark Young`` Stefan Zimmermann


A special thanks to the Ascent Look Out International Editorial Board and its executive sponsors:

International Editorial BoardChris ShanoEditor-in-ChiefAtos Consulting The [email protected]

Francisco Pinheiro Director Strategic Innovation [email protected]

Luc BarbierHead of Group Strategy & Industry Analyst RelationGIBSAtos [email protected]

Teresa Nuñez PastorPartnerAtos [email protected]

Johannes DiebigGlobal Head of Marketing [email protected]

Denis FaivreDirector of Innovation Atos [email protected]

Mark Young Principal ConsultantMember of Atos Scientific CommunityAtos ConsultingUnited [email protected]

Jordan JaneczkoStrategistMember of Atos Scientific CommunityGlobal Systems [email protected]

Stéphanie NoguèsGlobal Head of Systems Integration MarketingMember Atos Scientific Community [email protected]

Markus TilgnerConsultant ManagerAtos [email protected]

Daniele MonzaniBusiness PartnerGlobal Communication [email protected]

Lucy CarsonMarketing ManagerGlobal Marketing [email protected]

Executive Sponsors

Marc Meyer EVP Talents & CommunicationAtos [email protected]

Bruno VaffierSVP Global Innovation Business Development & [email protected]

Hervé PayanEVP Sales & Marketing SupportAtos [email protected]


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Atos SE (Societas europaea) is an international information technology services company with annual 2012 revenue of EUR 8.8 billion and 77,000 employees in 47 countries. Serving a global client base, it delivers IT services in 3 domains, Consulting & Technology Services, Systems Integration and Managed Services & BPO, and transactional services through Worldline. With its deep technology expertise and industry knowledge, it works with clients across the following market sectors: Manufacturing, Retail & Services; Public sector, Healthcare & Transports; Financial Services; Telecoms, Media & Technology; Energy & Utilities. Atos is focused on business technology that powers progress and helps organizations to create their firm of the future. It is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic and Paralympic Games and is quoted on the NYSE Euronext Paris market. Atos operates under the brands Atos, Atos Consulting & Technology Services, Worldline and Atos Worldgrid.

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