2011 has seen a number of standout developments in the IT industry, set many precedents and paved the way for the future of the sector in all its diversity. The arrival of the tablet as a major addition to the computer lexicon, the entry of cloud computing into the mainstream, the proliferation of smartphones and mobility at large, the social networking boom and the death of IT icon Steve Jobs have all served to form the veneer of the year gone by.
As 2011 draws to a close, industry professionals take a retrospective look at the events that shook and shaped the IT world this year.
All hail consumerisation
The chair of the Government Information Technology Officers' Council, Julius Segole, says there is no doubt that consumerisation of IT was an overarching trend in 2011, with the growth of smartphones, tablets, multimedia devices and social media services.
“All these platforms have one thing in common, which is to bring services that the public finds useful and contribute to a significant quality of life or productive work practices.”
He says 2011 proved consumers were keen to spend money not only on devices and network services, but have downloaded millions of applications. Segole refers to a report by research2guidance, which estimates the smartphone application download market will grow from $1.94 billion in 2009 to $15.65 billion by 2013.
Gartner VP and research fellow Steve Prentice agrees that the continuing consumerisation of IT was a dominant trend this year, with the catalyst for the recent interest being the explosive growth of media tablets, the iPad in particular.
“This specific case is a subset of the broader move towards mobile access and is making CIOs and IT leaders rethink issues of access to corporate resources and the provisioning of devices.”
Vice-president of sales for T-Systems SA, Gert Schoonbee, says consumerisation was probably the most identifiable trend in SA and notes that “Apple was highly successful in the enterprise through not focusing on the enterprise, while corporate solutions (e.g. from HP etc) have been less successful to date and seen declining market share.
“Furthermore, the links to consumerisation have seen tablets and smartphones predominantly based on Android and Apple, and not the traditional Windows layer.”
Mobile generation
Business unit leader of Africa ICT at Frost & Sullivan, Birgitta Cederstrom, says, despite spending power in 2011 being down, it is clear consumers and enterprises prioritise connectivity with mobility services. “This follows the global trend, so it's not only in SA.”
She adds that value-added services have shown themselves to be indispensable in most people's lives. “Our children live on MXit, we travel using GPS, we do banking through m-wallet and m-money, get food and travel tips, play games and listen to music.”
CTO of Altech, Dr Willie Oosthuysen, also cites mobile devices as a bastion this year. He says one consequence is that smartphones will have an impact on the income of mobile operators, as communications migrate towards low-cost data services. At this rate, “communication will eventually cost the consumer nothing,” he notes, as consumers pay for the services they consume, rather than for the transport of it.
Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys says 2011 saw data use through smartphones burgeon at 10 times the rate of dongles. Vodacom has 4.1 million smartphones on its network and data use on average leapt from 70MB in the first quarter of the year, to 100MB currently. Data use through dongles saw a marginal increment, up to 515MB from the 500MB that was being used on average six months ago.
The personal systems group country manager at HP SA, Thibault Dousson, notes 2011 trends in three sectors, namely retail, corporate and product. Dousson says this year saw comparatively strong growth in personal computing products, allowing access to technology to a much larger group of the population, in turn creating a new market for retailers.
In the corporate world, he says, managing the consumerisation trend has put pressure on CIOs to accommodate consumer devices and allow more accessibility of the Web and their internal storage facilities. “Cloud computing is still a very big trend that supports that transformation.”
In terms of product, 2011 was undeniably the year of the tablet and the applications that came with it, notes Dousson.
Gijima CTO Emson Moyo concurs and says the year gone by was marked by mobility, which “captured the minds and hearts of consumers”.
Moyo adds that social networking has come of age this year, permeating corporate boundaries in many companies.
“At the start of the year the general mood was to shut these services out, but as we approached the end of the year there was increasing acceptance and opening of these channels by corporates.
“Many companies have a presence in social media networking platforms and we are beginning to see integration of these into core business activities and applications such as marketing, sales and CRM.”
CEO of Standard Bank's innovation arm Beyond Payments, Herman Singh, says 2011 was marked by growth in the ubiquity of the mobile device beyond voice applications and cites mobile money as a case in point.
“The rapid adoption of simple mobile money transfer solutions hit sales of over R1 billion per month based on prepaid money vouchers [and] Android app downloads reached 10 billion, demonstrating the attraction of open systems.”
Digital domination
Intel fellow and director of interaction and experience research Genevieve Bell says “digital DIY” was an omnipresent element in 2011. “Over the last few years, new technology has encouraged people to passively consume content. More people are downloading content than those who are creating it.”
Bell says that, for every YouTube video uploaded, 99 videos are watched. “On Twitter, far fewer people are tweeting compared to those who are simply following conversations.”
According to Intel's head of marketing Ntombezinhle Modiselle, of the 1.1 million South Africans registered on Twitter, just over 400 000 users are actively tweeting from the country's large cities such as Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town.
She also notes that women put in an increased appearance in the technology world this year.
“Women are emerging as dominant users of technology. For example, European women spend more time on social networks than men, send more text messages and use more location-based services on phones.”
Driving this trend, says Bell, are falling prices and new devices that help women perform multiple roles.
Indelible episodes
While many christen 2011 the year the IT giant died, with Steve Jobs' death in the beginning of October, a number of other memorable events and incidents also make their way onto the 'It IT event' list.
Prentice says Jobs' death was the biggest incident in the IT industry for him. “One man does not make a company, but he probably went closer than most CEOs ever will, and his untimely death will not mean the demise of Apple in the short (or even medium) term, but his impact on the industry over the past three decades is unparalleled.”
MD of World Wide Worx Arthur Goldstuck says there is no question that the IT year was overshadowed by Jobs' death.
“On one hand it provided a clear perspective on the massive impact he has had on the evolution of personal technology, and in turn on the consumerisation of IT. On the other hand, it raised questions about the role of bold innovation - and lack thereof - in the rest of the IT industry. It was a mark of [his] legacy that his death was in itself not as important as the debates it sparked.”
The BlackBerry blackout just a couple of months ago was the most significant event, according to Segole. “As the world takes to a highly connected and consumerised reliance for their day-to-day activities, both the consumer and business increasingly face risks if they do not safeguard their assets and services.”
IT sector business manager at BMI TechKnowledge, Clinton Jacobs, says a few IT episodes stood out this year for him, including the turmoil at HP, in which Leo Apotheker was replaced by Meg Whitman as CEO; and high profile security breaches: “[For example] Sony, RSA. As we become more connected and do more in the cloud, the market needs to be assured that their information is secure.”
Oosthuysen recalls the Paris meeting of world leaders to talk about regulation of the Internet as 2011's biggest IT event. “The meeting was the first step to involving all players in formulating a way forward in terms of how and where the Internet should be regulated, while still retaining fundamental human freedoms.”
Closer to home, he says erstwhile communications minister Roy Padayachie's assembling of the Captains of Industry Round Table Forum made an impression. Padayachie met with the top 30 leaders of the ICT industry to establish a vision for the sector and get government and major players on the same page in terms of catalysing economic growth through ICT development.
Oosthuysen says this was a highly productive engagement, which led to further engagements with government.
“We trust that greater public-private participation will continue under the DOC's new leadership in order to achieve goals such as broadband proliferation and prioritise issues such as local loop unbundling and the allocation of radio spectrum.”
T-Systems' Schoonbee lists a few other potential takers for 'top IT event 2011', including high profile hacking incidents by, for example, virtual vigilante group Anonymous, the role of social media and mobile devices in civil commotion and liberation movements, and the Japanese earthquake in March that resulted in shortages of components for automotive and IT.
Look out for part two of ITWeb's year-end trend roundup tomorrow, as IT players give a glimpse into their outlook for the year ahead.
Related feature:
2011 and 2012: Retrograde glimpses and forward-looking peeks: Part 2
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