The worldwide cloud computing infrastructure market had another strong quarter in Q4 2018, as spending grew 46 percent to nearly $23 billion. The total outlay on cloud infrastructure in 2018 exceeded $80 billion – that's up from $55 billion in 2017 according to that latest market study by Canalys.

This investment makes cloud computing services one of the most important sectors in the IT industry, not just by the rate of growth, but also due to its expanding size.

Cloud computing infrastructure market development

Amazon Web Services (AWS) remained the dominant cloud service provider in Q4 2018; its market share of customer spend unchanged at 32 percent. Microsoft Azure grew its share to 16 percent against 14 percent in the same period a year ago. Google Cloud reached 9 percent for the first time, while Alibaba Cloud maintained its 4 percent share.

IBM, Salesforce, Oracle, NTT Communications, Tencent Cloud and OVH rounded out the top 10 cloud service providers.

"Cloud infrastructure services provide the core components needed to support digital transformation initiatives around building new customer experiences, deploying IoT to transform processes, using big data and analytics for better insights, and embedding machine learning and AI for automation,” said Matthew Ball, principal analyst at Canalys.

Market dynamics have changed over the last 12 months, with more businesses opting for multi-cloud and hybrid IT environments to use the strengths of different cloud service providers and deployment models dependent on application and data requirements, compliance, cost and performance.

The role of channel partners in cloud services is growing in importance as a direct result of these trends. In particular, understanding customer requirements, recommending services, deployment and integration, as well as simplifying the billing and management of multiple cloud services.

According to the Canalys assessment, cloud service providers are placing greater emphasis on building channel programs to support the growing network of partners beyond the largest systems integrators, especially as they extend to mid-market and SMB customers.

Canalys expects the share of cloud business supported by or with channel partners to increase in 2019. Cloud service providers must therefore find new ways to improve their own differentiation to partners and raise the maturity of their channel models.

Outlook for cloud channel partner innovation

Canalys expects a greater focus on rewarding partners with specialist expertise around specific cloud deployments, such as SAP HANA, analytics or security; on partners developing unique services on top of cloud; and on those driving customer adoption of cloud services.

Cloud service providers should build trust with their channel partners and not implement initiatives or change terms and conditions that drive more direct sales, according to Canalys. Instead, they must offer superior marketing resources that enable channel partners to differentiate hybrid multi-cloud service capabilities in this very competitive marketplace.

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As more enterprise CIOs and CTOs embrace hybrid multi-cloud deployment strategies, business technology vendors and cloud service providers must continue to evolve their go-to-market approach – in recognition of the prevailing IT infrastructure investment trends.

Vendor revenue from sales of IT infrastructure products for cloud environments, including public and private cloud, grew 47.2 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2018 (3Q18), reaching $16.8 billion, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

Cloud IT infrastructure market development

IDC also raised its forecast for total spending (vendor revenue plus channel mark-up) on cloud IT infrastructure in 2018 to $65.2 billion, with year-over-year growth of 37.2 percent.

Quarterly spending on public cloud IT infrastructure has more than doubled in the past two years reaching $12.1 billion in 3Q18 and growing 56.1 percent year-over-year, while spending on private cloud infrastructure grew at half of this rate, 28.3 percent, reaching $4.7 billion.

Since 2013, when IDC started tracking IT infrastructure deployments in different environments, public cloud has represented the majority of spending on cloud IT infrastructure and IDC expects this share will peak at 68.8 percent with spending on public cloud infrastructure growing at an annual rate of 44.7 percent. Spending on private cloud will also grow 23.3 percent year-over-year in 2018.

In 3Q18, for the first time, quarterly vendor revenues from IT infrastructure product sales into cloud environments surpassed revenues from sales into traditional IT environments, accounting for 50.9 percent of the total worldwide IT infrastructure vendor revenues, up from 43.6 percent a year ago.

However, for the full year 2018, spending on cloud IT infrastructure will remain below the 50 percent mark at 47.4 percent. Spending on all three technology segments in cloud IT environments is forecast to deliver double-digit growth in 2018. Compute platforms will be the fastest growing at 59.1 percent, while spending on Ethernet switches and storage platforms will grow 18.5 percent and 20.4 percent, respectively.

The rate of growth for the traditional (non-cloud) IT infrastructure segment slowed down from the first half of the year to 14.8 percent, which is still exceptional for this market segment. For the full year, worldwide spending on traditional non-cloud IT infrastructure is expected to grow by 12.3 percent as the market goes through a technology refresh cycle, which will wind down by 2019.

By 2022, we expect that traditional non-cloud IT infrastructure will only represent 42.4 percent of total worldwide IT infrastructure spending (down from 52.6 percent in 2018). This share loss and the growing share of cloud environments in overall spending on IT infrastructure is common across all regions.

"The first three quarters of 2018 were exceptional for the IT Infrastructure market across all deployment environments and the increase in IT infrastructure investments by public cloud data centres was especially strong driven by the opening of new data centres and infrastructure refresh in existing data centres," said Natalya Yezhkova, research director at IDC.

All regions grew their cloud IT Infrastructure revenues by double digits in 3Q18. Revenue growth was the fastest in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ) at 62.6 percent year-over-year, with China growing at an even higher rate of 88.7 percent. Other regions among the fastest growing in 3Q18 included Japan (48.2 percent), USA (44.2 percent), and Canada (43.4 percent).

Outlook for cloud IT infrastructure investment growth

Long-term, IDC expects spending on cloud IT infrastructure to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.3 percent, reaching $88.6 billion in 2022 and accounting for 57.6 percent of total IT infrastructure spend.

Public cloud data centres will account for 66.3 percent of this amount, growing at a 13.6 percent CAGR. Spending on private cloud infrastructure will grow at a CAGR of 12.6 percent.

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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.

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The global market for server virtualization technologies has experienced relatively low growth as more CIOs and CTOs consider alternative approaches to support their developer's need for agile IT infrastructure deployment. While some early adopters are experimenting with 'serverless' solutions, the mainstream market is utilising software applications container solutions.

According to the latest worldwide study by 451 Research, the emerging applications container market will continue to expand and be worth more than $2.1 billion in 2019 and more than $4.3 billion by 2022 – that's a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30 percent.

Application container market development

When 451 Research first published a forecast on the container market two years ago, there were 125 companies identified in their market analysis. Included in the most recent forecast is an examination of 184 vendors, which represents about a 50 percent increase from the number of vendors in late 2016.

While the revenue contribution from containers for the vast majority of participating vendors is still relatively small, the widespread interest in application container technology remains a defining feature of this emergent market.

Growth in the containers market and ecosystem is being driven by increasing enterprise interest to help application developers move faster, manage infrastructure more efficiently and meet digital transformation goals. That being said, serverless technologies have a similar goal with a cloud computing functions-as-a-service (FaaS) model.

According to the 451 Research analyst's market assessment, about half of enterprise organizations are either using application containers today or planning to use them in the next two years.

"The promise of container technologies to increase developer speed, efficiency and portability across hybrid IT infrastructures, as well as microservices, are all driving growth," said Jay Lyman, principal analyst at  451 Research. "Broader and deeper vendor participation along with increasing enterprise use indicate this market will continue to grow and as that growth continues, consolidation in the market is likely."

The market study also indicates that both startup vendors and established leaders within the enterprise software industry are addressing a variety of container use cases — such as management and orchestration, monitoring, DevOps, IT security, networking and storage.

Outlook for application container innovation

This is not only indicative of the broad applicability of container-based technologies but also highlights how revenue is spread across a diverse vendor landscape. Moreover, the openness of this market may encourage a variety of additional vendors to enter the container market and fuel further growth.

"The industry is already seeing these mergers and acquisitions that include IBM’s recent acquisition of Red Hat and VMware's purchase of Heptio. These recent deals demonstrate how the container market is ripe for more consolidation as well as growth," added Lyman.

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As more CIOs and CTOs embrace hybrid IT infrastructure models, incorporating multicloud solutions, another key trend is gaining momentum. According to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), five large industry groups are expected to spend a total of $37.5 billion on industry cloud solutions in 2018.

The five industry groups are healthcare, public sector, finance, retail and wholesale, plus the manufacturing sector. Among them, manufacturing grew the most, while retail and wholesale were next to increase their investment.

Industry cloud market development

The overall market is expected to reach $45.4 billion in 2019 with three of the five groups growing above the market average of 21.5 percent. Healthcare provider and public sector spending are both forecast to grow below the market average, although their 2019 growth rates will be higher than those for 2018.

"IDC's latest forecast shows that industry cloud growth rates will continue to accelerate over the next three years, which is very unusual for multi-billion-dollar markets," said Frank Gens, senior vice president & chief analyst at IDC. "This growth is being driven by rapidly-digitising industries like healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing, where industry clouds are becoming the cornerstones for next-generation growth and innovation strategies."

From a geographic perspective, the United States market will make up close to three-quarters of the overall market in 2018. Most of the other regions will enjoy stronger than average market growth with Japan and China expected to grow the most year over year at 54 percent and 47 percent respectively.

These two countries are also forecast to grow at an even higher annual rate in 2019. The other regions, such as U.S., Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa, will also outperform their 2018 growth rates.

The healthcare provider market in the U.S. is expected to pass the $10 billion mark in 2018 for the first time while the Western Europe market for healthcare industry cloud is also forecast to hit a landmark in 2018 by crossing the $1 billion mark.

Relative to all other regions, Japan can be considered a late adopter to industry cloud deployment. Having said that, the region will fast track to pass the $1 billion mark by 2022. Meanwhile, China is expected to reach that landmark two years earlier.

Outlook for industry cloud application growth

According to the IDC assessment, the industry cloud market continues to accelerate as cloud users demand both vertically-specific capabilities in their solutions and industry expertise from their cloud service providers.

To capture this growth, cloud vendors have increasingly shifted their horizontal capabilities to form industry cloud solutions, while industry clouds themselves have created consortiums of collaboration to drive industry innovation.

Healthcare has led industries towards this trend, but the finance, manufacturing, and retail industries have internalised the successes and failures from horizontal platforms to form their own paths.

IDC believes the industry cloud market is among the largest vertical growth opportunities for both technology vendors and professional services firms through 2025.

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As CIOs and CTOs shift their focus to digital transformation projects and the launch of new digital business offerings, demand for traditional IT services has evolved. Worldwide revenues for IT services and business services totaled $506 billion in the first half of 2018 (1H18) – that's an increase of 4 percent year over year, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

During 1H18, it was a mixed picture for tier-one global outsourcers and systems integrators headquartered in developed countries. Most remained flat or declined slightly. But this was partially offset by stronger performances by two large global vendors, who returned to double-digit growth.

IT services market development

Indian IT services firms still outpace the U.S. and European counterparts, but their growth slowed from a year ago, continuing their 2H17 deceleration. While most large Indian vendors continued to grow at rates in the low single digits to high teens, it was offset by a few vendors' sharp slowdowns.

Project-oriented revenues grew by 5.2 percent in 1H18 to $191 billion, followed by 3.6 percent growth for managed services and 2.7 percent for support services. The above-the-market growth in project-oriented markets was mostly led by business consulting and application development markets with growth rates of 7.5 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively.

Most major management consulting firms still posted strong earnings in 2018, although growth rates cooled slightly: business consultants still extract more value in digital transformation. However, the market is now being driven by enterprise buyers who are executing their digital growth agenda.

In outsourcing, revenues grew 3.6 percent to $238 million in 1H18. Application-related managed services revenues (hosted and on-premise application management) outpaced infrastructure and business process outsourcing.

On the infrastructure side, while hosting infrastructure services revenue accelerated to 7.2 percent growth in 1H18, mostly due to cloud adoption, IT Outsourcing (ITO) – still almost twice as large a market and mostly big buyers and vendors – declined by 1.5 percent, largely chipped away by cloud cannibalization across all regions.

On a geographic basis, the United States grew by 4.3 percent, slightly higher than the market rate, while Western Europe grew only by 2.6 percent. IDC expects Western European services revenues to be stable but structurally weaker than North America. IDC forecasts the region to grow below 3 percent annually in the coming years.

In emerging markets, Latin America, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ), and Central & Eastern Europe led in growth. In Latin America, most major economies are turning the corner despite problems in Argentina and Venezuela.

In APeJ, Australia saw its growth scaled back slightly to 3.8 percent in 1H18, from 4.3 percent in 1H17. The largest market, China, trimmed its growth rate to just 7.2 percent, down from the 8 percent to 9 percent during the last two or three years.

Outlook for IT services in emerging markets

So far in 2018, the weaker growth in China and Australia was partially offset by faster growth from other emerging markets in APeJ. IDC expects this trend to continue. Governments will fund large digital transformation initiatives and a better investment outlook will also drive IT spending.

"Steady growth in the IT services market is being driven by continued demand for digital solutions across the regions," said Lisa Nagamine, research manager at IDC. "But during 2018, as well as most of 2017, it is really the Americas and cloud-related services that are having the largest impact on revenue worldwide."

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IDC unveiled its top information and communications technology (ICT) predictions for Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) region. IDC now predicts that many more organisations will be 'digitally determined' by 2020, transforming commercial markets and reimagining their future growth potential.

Digitally determined organisations demonstrate the ability to vision, plan, and operationalise their digital transformation (DX) through ambition, grit, discipline and commitment. Ultimately, all digital determined organisations aspire to become 'digital native enterprises'.

Digital business market development

"To be one of the digitally determined, Asia-Pacific organisations requires more than tenacity; it requires a blueprint that consists of a single enterprise strategy, resoluteness to make required organisational and cultural changes, a long investment strategy based on the principle that digital is inherently valuable to the business; and should have a single digital platform to scale technology innovations," said Sandra Ng, group vice president at IDC.

According to Ng, the top predictions that will impact the overall ICT industry — both technology buyers and their vendor suppliers — in the Asia-Pacific region during the next 36 months are:

Digital determination: By 2020, at least 55 percent of organisations will be digitally determined, transforming markets and reimagining the future through new business models and digitally enabled products and services.

Data monetisation: By 2020, 60 percent of large enterprises will create data management or monetisation capabilities, thus enhancing enterprise functions, strengthening competitiveness, and creating new sources of revenue.

Digital KPIs: By 2023, 80 percent of entities will have incorporated new digital KPI sets – focusing on product or service innovation rates, data capitalisation, and employee experience – to navigate the digital economy.

Digital twin: By 2020, 30 percent of leading companies will have implemented advanced digital twins of their operational processes which will enable flatter organisations and one third fewer knowledge workers.

Agile connectivity: By 2021, driven by LoB needs, 60 percent of CIOs will deliver agile connectivity via APIs and architectures that interconnect digital solutions from cloud vendors, system developers, startups, and others.

Blockchain-enabled DX platforms: By 2021, prominent in-industry value chains, enabled by blockchains, will have extended their digital platforms to their entire omni-experience ecosystems, thus reducing transaction costs by 35 percent.

BizOps: By 2021, 45 percent of CIOs will expand Agile or DevOps practices into the wider business to achieve the velocity necessary for innovation, execution, and transformative change.

AI-driven edge: By 2022, over 30 percent of organisations’ cloud deployments will include edge computing, and 25 percent of endpoint devices and systems will execute artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.

Digital trust: By 2020, 55 percent of CIOs will initiate a digital trust framework that goes beyond preventing cyber attacks and enables organisations to resiliently rebound from adverse situations, events, and effects.

AI-based IT operations: Compelled to curtail IT spending, improve enterprise IT agility, and accelerate innovation, 60 percent of CIOs will aggressively apply data and AI to IT operations, tools, and processed by 2021.

Outlook for future enterprise applications

Ng concludes, "AI is creating a new paradigm for individuals, businesses, industries, economies and governments. It is shaping the future of intelligence in organisations and in workers. To this end, IDC predicts that by 2025, 60 percent of frontline connected devices will be voice-enabled, with a smart assistant, and able to control 80 percent of devices deployed in consumer and enterprise settings."

According to the IDC assessment, voice is increasingly influencing the way we work, live, learn and play. The race to the future enterprise has begun. No one and no entity will be spared of the need to at least reset or reboot, if not reinvent. Digital reinvention is the future, and the new normal for IT.

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Cybersecurity solutions demand has remained strong during 2018, as more CIOs and CTOs need to ensure that their digital transformation projects have a high degree of digital trust built-in. Data privacy-related legislation has also fuelled the market for expert professional services that are skilled in IT security compliance.

According to the latest global market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), worldwide spending on security-related hardware, software, and services is forecast to reach $133.7 billion in 2022. Although spending growth is expected to gradually slow over the 2017-2022 forecast period, the market will still deliver a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.9 percent.

As a result, security spending in 2022 is anticipated to be 45 percent greater than the $92.1 billion forecast for 2018.

IT security market development

"Privacy has grabbed the attention of Boards of Directors as regions look to implement privacy regulation and compliance standards similar to GDPR. Frankly, privacy is the new buzzword and the potential impact is very real. The result is that demand to comply with such standards will continue to buoy security spending for the foreseeable future," said Frank Dickson, vice president at IDC.

According to the IDC assessment, security-related services will be both the largest ($40.2 billion in 2018) and the fastest growing (11.9 percent CAGR) category of worldwide security spending.

Managed security services will be the largest segment within the services category, delivering nearly 50 percent of the category total in 2022. Integration services and consulting services will be responsible for most of the remainder.

Security software is the second-largest category with spending expected to total $34.4 billion in 2018. Endpoint security software will be the largest software segment throughout the forecast period, followed by identity and access management software and security and vulnerability management software.

The latter category will be the fastest growing software segment with a CAGR of 10.7 percent. Hardware spending will likely be led by unified threat management solutions, followed by internet firewall and content management.

IDC analysts believe that banking will be the industry making the largest investment in security solutions, growing from $10.5 billion in 2018 to $16 billion in 2022. Security-related services, led by managed security services, will account for more than half of the industry's spend throughout the forecast period.

The second and third largest industries, discrete manufacturing and federal or central government ($8.9 billion and $7.8 billion in 2018, respectively), will follow a similar pattern with services representing roughly half of each industry's total IT security spending.

The industries that will see the fastest growth in IT security spending will be telecommunications (13.1 percent CAGR), state or local government (12.3 percent CAGR), and the resource industry (11.8 percent CAGR).

The United States will be the largest geographic market for security solutions with total spending of $39.3 billion in 2018. The United Kingdom will be the second largest geographic market in 2018 at $6.1 billion, followed by China ($5.6 billion), Japan ($5.1 billion), and Germany ($4.6 billion).

The leading industries for security spending in the U.S. will be discrete manufacturing and the federal or central government. In the UK, banking and discrete manufacturing will deliver the largest security spending while telecommunications and banking will be the leading industries in China.

China will see the strongest IT security spending growth with a five-year CAGR of 26.6 percent. Malaysia and Singapore will be the second and third fastest growing regions with CAGRs of 21.1 percent and 18.2 percent, respectively.

Outlook for IT security applications growth

From a company size perspective, large and very large businesses will be responsible for nearly two thirds of all security-related spending in 2018. Large and medium businesses will see the strongest spending growth over the forecast, with CAGRs of 11.8 percent and 10 percent respectively.

However, very large businesses will grow nearly as fast with a five-year CAGR of 10.1 percent. Small businesses will also experience solid growth (8.9 percent CAGR) with spending expected to be more than $8 billion in 2018.

In the past, machine vision was limited to highlight-controlled environments, costly sensor technology, and restrictive feature detection. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is set to change the market, creating new classes of applications and significant new opportunities.

Machine vision is in the process of transition and dramatic expansion. Deep learning (DL) techniques are taking machine vision systems to next level, driving the mass adoption in several industries – including the automotive, retail, consumer, industrial, and surveillance sectors.

Machine vision tech market development

DL-based machine vision marks a departure from other approaches used in the sector, which were more limited regarding their application. ABI Research now forecasts that machine vision technology will see a CAGR of 53 percent between 2018 and 2023 – with $193.8 billion of annual revenue generated from services and hardware by the end of the forecast period.

Machine vision vendors previously relied on hardcoded feature detection techniques, which meant they could only be applied in highly controlled environments – such as inspecting a single type of object on a production line.

DL-based machine vision systems are far more flexible. One system can recognise many object types and be deployed in a range of circumstances. Also, cashier-less stores – like Amazon Go — demonstrate where cameras can track the movement of both customers and items around the retail store.

Another example of innovation would be the machine vision systems being employed to support autonomous driving. These systems can make distinctions between multiple types of road users.

"It is these new DL-based applications, among others, that are set to drive growth in the machine vision space, which would have been impossible using traditional machine vision techniques," said Jack Vernon, analyst at ABI Research.

If we look at some of the applications increasing adoption of machine vision systems, we will see that it is the innovations in deep learning that are driving their growth. Take, for instance, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), which are a core technology in autonomous driving.

By 2023, 37 million vehicles shipped will contain between level 2 to 5 ADAS. Over half of the 34.446 million level 2 ADAS systems shipped in that year will use DL-based machine vision, while the remaining level 3-5 vehicles will all use the approach — this represents a massive growth in adoption of machine technology and will contribute enormously to the growth.

The same DL-based image recognition techniques used in machine vision are also being applied to sensors outside of traditional RGB (primary color) cameras, these will also have a transformative effect in those markets, and likely significantly increase adoption on those technologies.

For instance, the use of LiDAR systems will be incorporated into autonomous driving systems, on the back of the fact that deep learning enables machines to interpret LiDAR data in a more sophisticated way, allowing software to identify features of the landscape and other road users.

DL-based image recognition techniques are also going to change how many different sensor systems are going to be used. In the healthcare space, a number of startups and large research entities are building DL-based image recognition software that can identify health issues directly from MRI, radar, and X-ray data.

These examples demonstrate how DL-based machine vision techniques are transforming not only the growth of RGB camera systems, but also how many other different sensors will be used in future.

Outlook for machine vision applications

Few companies have fully settled on their favoured hardware and software technology for machine vision applications across different verticals, creating opportunities and competition for many vendors in both spaces.

Consequently, savvy vendors are competing aggressively across the technology stack as potential customers for their solutions chase the high-value applications – such as autonomous driving.

The scale of the opportunities have attracted significant investments in machine vision over the past four years. That's a trend that looks set to continue for another two years. As an example, in 2017, venture capitalists invested $2.7 billion in machine vision startups.

 Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their use-cases? Attend the co-located AI & Big Data Expo events with upcoming shows in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more. Co-located with the  IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo so you can explore the future of enterprise technology in one place.

Do you wonder, are there significant benefits for building a culture of digital trust? New research has uncovered a direct connection between the cause and effect of bad actors in organisations across the globe. Information technology has many uses, but business leaders must be mindful of compliance.

Twenty-nine percent of employees observed at least one compliance violation at work in 2016 or 2017, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. The survey, which sampled more than 5,000 employees at all levels, found that these workers are twice as likely to leave their organisation.

Fifty-nine percent of the sampled employees who observed a compliance violation were actively looking for a new job, compared with 29 percent who did not witness bad behavior.

The business case for compliance

"While attrition is not an obvious area of concern for compliance executives, it should be," said Brian Lee, compliance practice leader at Gartner. "Employee misconduct and the failure of compliance to address it plays a considerable role in motivating employees to leave their current organisation."

Mr. Lee said this sensation is particularly prevalent among employees whose exodus comes with the gravest impact. Those employees who are willing to report misconduct are those with high standards of personal integrity as well as those who exhibit the most discretionary effort.

In this Gartner survey, 67 percent of employees who exhibit superior discretionary effort and have witnessed noncompliance reported actively seeking a job with another company. This is compared with only 26 percent of employees who exhibit superior discretionary effort but have not witnessed noncompliance.

For compliance executives, the departure of employees – especially those who are among a company's most mission-critical – should be deemed as a warning of possible underlying compliance-related issues, not simply as a generic human capital ebb and flow or an HR issue with little relevance for compliance.

Employee attrition costs large organisations millions of dollars each year and the loss of a particularly conscientious employee can be debilitating, not just to culture and morale, but to employee productivity.

Creating a mandate for organisation integrity

This finding reinforces the mandate of leaders to create and promote a culture of integrity. Employees of organisations with low-integrity cultures are two to three times more likely than employees of organisations with high-integrity cultures to observe misconduct.

"Culture is contagious. If managers and executives demonstrate ethical behavior, employees see the importance of being compliant in their day-to-day workflow and their workplace as whole," said Mr. Lee. "When leaders set a model example, they can communicate to employees with similarly high standards that their organisation is in alignment with their ethical commitments."

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