• 82% of enterprises are prioritising analytics and BI as part of their budgets for new technologies and cloud-based services.
• 54% say AI, machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) are also a high investment priority.
• 50% of enterprises say their stronger focus on metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) company-wide are a major driver of new investment in analytics and BI.
• 43%  plan to both build and buy AI and machine learning applications and platforms.
• 42% are seeking to improve user experiences by automating discovery of data insights and 26% are using AI to provide user recommendations.

These and many other fascinating insights are from the recent TDWI Best Practices Report, BI and Analytics in the Age of AI and Big Data. An executive summary of the study is available online here. The entire study is available for download here (39 PP., PDF, free, opt-in). The study found that enterprises are placing a high priority on augmenting existing systems and replacing older technologies and data platforms with new cloud-based BI and predictive analytics ones. Transforming Data with Intelligence (TDWI) is a global community of AI, analytics, data science and machine learning professionals interested in staying current in these and more technology areas as part of their professional development. Please see page 3 of the study for specifics regarding the methodology.

Key takeaways from the study include the following:

82% of enterprises are prioritising analytics and BI applications and platforms as part of their budgets for new technologies and cloud-based services

78% of enterprises are prioritising advanced analytics, and 76% data preparation. 54% say AI, machine learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) are also a high investment priority. The following graphic ranks enterprises’ investment priorities for acquiring or subscribing to new technologies and cloud-based services by analytics and BI initiatives or strategies. Please click on the graphic to expand for easier reading.

Data warehouse or mart in the cloud (41%), data lake in the cloud (39%) and BI platform in the cloud (38%) are the top three types of technologies enterprises are planning to use

Based on this finding and others in the study, cloud platforms are the new normal in enterprises’ analytics and BI strategies going into 2019. Cloud data storage (object, file, or block) and data virtualisation or federation (both 32%) are the next-most planned for technologies by enterprises when it comes to investing in the analytics and BI initiatives. Please click on the graphic to expand for easier reading.

The three most important factors in delivering a positive user experience include good query performance (61%), creating and editing visualisations (60%), and personalising dashboards and reports (also 60%)

The three activities that lead to the least amount of satisfaction are using predictive analytics and forecasting tools (27% dissatisfied), “What if” analysis and deriving new data (25%) and searching across data and reports (24%). Please click on the graphic to expand for easier reading.

82% of enterprises are looking to broaden the base of analytics and BI platforms they rely on for insights and intelligence, not just stay with the solutions they have in place today

Just 18% of enterprises plan to add more instances of existing platforms and systems. Cloud-native platforms (38%), a new analytics platform (35%) and cloud-based data lakes (31%) are the top three system areas enterprises are planning to augment or replace existing BI, analytics, and data warehousing systems in. Please click on the graphic to expand for easier reading.

The majority of enterprises plan to both build and buy artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions so that they can customise them to their specific needs

43% of enterprises surveyed plan to both build and buy AI and ML applications and platforms, a figure higher than any other recent survey on this aspect of enterprise AI adoption. 13% of responding enterprises say they will exclusively build their own AI and ML applications.

Capitalising on machine learning’s innate strengths of applying algorithms to large volumes of data to find actionable new insights (54%) is what’s most important to the majority of enterprises

47% of enterprises look to AI and machine learning to improve the accuracy and quality of information. And 42% are configuring AI and machine learning applications and platforms to augment user decision making by giving recommendations. Please click on the graphic to expand for easier reading.

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.

Pharmaceutical giant Walgreens Boots Alliance is making Microsoft its strategic cloud provider, focusing on connecting Walgreens stores and health information systems with a sprinkling of artificial intelligence (AI) on top.

The companies have signed a seven-year agreement with various strands. On the practical side, Walgreens will roll out Microsoft 365, the latter’s enterprise suite, to more than 380,000 employees and stores, while the ‘majority’ of Walgreens’ infrastructure will move to Azure.

On the conceptual side, plans include collaborating with healthcare providers and baking in the ‘fundamental design principles’ of data privacy and security, a multi-year research and development investment, as well as providing more personalised healthcare services.

Among the more intriguing concrete details was the planned launch of 12 in-store ‘digital health corners’ where retailers could target select healthcare-related hardware and devices.

The agreement represents the first major cloudy move Microsoft has made in 2019, and in terms of scope can be assessed alongside the company’s snaring of Walmart in a five-year strategic cloud deal announced in July. That move however came with a back story, with reports intimating that Walmart and Amazon’s retail rivalry had wider repercussions. Walmart had previously told vendors that if they ran applications on Amazon Web Services, they would lose business with the retailer.

More generally, given Amazon’s positioning in that space retail customers have been seen as a growth area for both Microsoft and Google. Speaking at an event in October, now-departed Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene explained how the company was using its AI capability in retail to predict inventory allocations. French hypermarket retailer Carrefour was also unveiled as a Google customer, while a study in October argued retail, along with advertising and marketing, were the most mature industries in terms of hybrid cloud adoption.

Walgreens said the move represented the company’s “strong commitment to creating integrated, next-generation, digitally enabled healthcare delivery solutions,” while Microsoft endeavoured to “put people at the centre of their health and wellness, combining the power of the Azure cloud and AI technology and Microsoft 365 with Walgreens’ deep expertise and commitment.”

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.

Adoption of mobile internet access, combined with the development of innovative cloud services and wearable devices, has created a multitude of new consumer and business use cases that will drive demand, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

Global shipments of wearable devices are forecast to reach 125.3 million units in 2018 — that's up 8.5 percent from 2017. The growing popularity of smartwatches and greater wearables adoption in emerging markets will combine to produce a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11 percent with shipments jumping to 189.9 million units in 2022.

Wearables market development

"The transition from basic wearables to smart wearables will continue over the next five years as the two approach parity in terms of market share by 2022," said Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst at IDC. "The rise of smart wearables will not just be in mature markets, but also from emerging markets in Asia-Pacific and elsewhere. Japan will play an equally important role as they consume more than one third of all smart wearables."

Among the smart wearable operating systems, Apple WatchOS will remain in the lead although its share will decline from 44.4 percent in 2018 to 35.8 percent in 2022 as other platforms gain traction. The second largest OS is expected to be Google Android with 22.4 percent share in 2022.

Android should not be confused with WearOS, as the open-source platform offers vendors an opportunity to customize the wearables' experience while creating differentiation. With Google's service being banned from China, many local brands have adopted this strategy and IDC anticipates the proliferation of these devices to continue in many neighboring countries as well.

Behind WatchOS and Android, WearOS will capture 19.8 percent share in 2022 as additional vendors begin to offer products and as the platform catches up to competitors in terms of features.

The remainder of the smart wearables landscape will be comprised of smaller platforms and vendors although IDC anticipates Samsung, Fitbit, and Garmin to dominate with their proprietary platforms.

According to the IDC assessment, we should expect further new developments focusing on healthcare, with the smartwatch playing a critical role in tracking our health goals and detecting potential ailments.

Outlook for wearables application growth

Watches are forecast to reach 72.8 million units in 2018 with smartwatches accounting for roughly two thirds of the total volume. Total watch shipments are expected to reach 120.2 million by 2022 with a CAGR of 13.3 percent.

Growth for the Wristband category will remain muted with a 0.3 percent CAGR from 2018 to 2022. However, it's important to note that this category will still account for 24.7 percent of the total market by 2022 with the total volume reaching 47 million.

Earwear, accounting for less than 2 percent of the market in 2018, is on track to capture a 6.8 percent share in 2022. Growth in this category is largely attributed to the disappearance of the traditional headphone jack on modern computing devices. Additionally, an increasing number of vendors are including biometric tracking into wireless headphones which will further help this category.

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.

Clare Hopping

Clare Hopping

Cloud-Native thinking and Serverless Computing are now the norm in financial services, manufacturing, telco, healthcare, transportation, energy, media, entertainment, retail and other consumer industries, as well as the public sector.

The widespread success of cloud computing is driving the DevOps revolution in enterprise IT. Now as never before, development teams must communicate and collaborate in a dynamic, 24/7/365 environment. There is no time to wait for long development cycles that produce software that is obsolete at launch. DevOps may be disruptive, but it is essential.

DevOpsSUMMIT at CloudEXPO expands the DevOps community, enable a wide sharing of knowledge, and educate delegates and technology providers alike.

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Financial enterprises in New York City, London, Singapore, and other world financial capitals are embracing a new generation of smart, automated FinTech that eliminates many cumbersome, slow, and expensive intermediate processes from their businesses. Accordingly, attendees at the upcoming 23rd CloudEXPO, June 24-26, 2019 at Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA will find fresh new content in full new FinTech & Enterprise Blockchain track.

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The data centre market saw an uptick in terms of the number of M&A deals in 2018 – but the total value has dipped, according to the latest note from Synergy Research.

The analyst firm found that while the number of acquisitions and transactions last year grew to 68, their value slipped to approximately $16 billion, shaving almost $5bn off last year’s total.

In terms of the largest deals in 2018, a 25% stake in Global Switch was sold to Asian investors for around $2.8 billion (£2.1bn), while four other deals – acquisitions by Digital Realty, Iron Mountain, GRR and Brookfield Infrastructure Partners – totalled more than $1bn.

Synergy noted that Equinix and Digital Realty, the two largest players in the space, continue to dominate investments. According to figures published by the analysts in May, Equinix extended its lead as the primary vendor with the help of two acquisitions; Australian data centre provider Metronode and a data centre from Infomart in Dallas for $800 million.

2017 could be seen as something of an anomaly in the market therefore. That year saw Equinix purchase Verizon data centres, as well as the blockbuster acquisition of DuPont Fabros by Digital Realty.

Yet the trend for services rather than infrastructure at the corporate side will continue. “There is a clear trend towards enterprises not wanting to own or operate their own data centres, as CIOs focus more on features and services that they can provide to their internal clients and less on the complexities of running data centres,” said John Dinsdale, Synergy chief analyst and research director.

“As enterprises increasingly look to various outsourcing options, this is driving specialist data centre operators to increase both the scale and reach of their data centre footprint,” added Dinsdale. “This bulking up is often best accomplished, or speeded up, by acquiring other data centre operators.

“We expect to see a lot more data centre M&A over the next five years.”

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.

Alan Hase is Vice President of Engineering and Chief Development Officer at Big Switch. Alan has more than 20 years of experience in the networking industry and leading global engineering teams which have delivered industry leading innovation in high end routing, security, fabric and wireless technologies. Alan joined Big Switch from Extreme Networks where he was responsible for product strategy for its secure campus switching, intelligent mobility and campus orchestration products. Prior to Extreme Networks, Alan was the Vice President of Avaya’s Intelligent Edge engineering and product management teams. Alan spent 15 years at Cisco where he held various leadership roles. Alan joined Cisco in 1996 to lead its High-End Router software engineering team. In 2001, Alan became a Director of Engineering, responsible for Cisco’s IPsec VPN product development and strategic direction. In 2006, Alan became the Vice President of Engineering for its Wireless Networking Business Unit where he led a global engineering team that delivered innovative, industry leading, award winning products and technologies. Alan has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Missouri and an M.B.A from Santa Clara University.

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Connor Jones