If you want to appreciate the full extent of the cloud computing phenomena, then you need to comprehend the ongoing impact to the IT ecosystem. It's been fueled by a disruptive series of innovations that have enabled software developers to accelerate the speed of digital transformation.

The cloud delivery and consumption model has revolutionized the entire IT industry. But the cloud opportunity extends well beyond the public cloud – which makes up less than half of all cloud-related spending today – and includes private and hybrid clouds, as well as managed cloud services, cloud-related professional services, and hardware and software infrastructure for building clouds.

Cloud computing market development

In its first forecast of the 'whole cloud' opportunity, International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that worldwide whole cloud revenues will reach $554 billion in 2021 – that's more than double those of 2016.

"The most obvious takeaway from this forecast is that the shift to the cloud consumption model – in all its forms – is a mass movement, and will continue to be such over the forecast period," said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC.

The past few years have produced a steady stream of innovative new services introduced by the major public cloud service providers, including blockchain services, IoT back-end data services, encryption services, serverless computing services, and even new computing hardware services.

IDC expects the pace of innovation on public clouds to continue and, more likely, to accelerate. Similarly, IDC expects to see a steady expansion of enterprise workloads on the cloud as cloud service providers and their partners focus on new deployment scenarios for these workloads.

Despite lingering concerns about security, vendor and technology lock-in, and interoperability, IDC believes that cloud computing will continue to dominate and transform enterprise computing for years to come.

Key highlights from the IDC forecast include:

In 2016, public cloud services accounted for 41 percent of all cloud-related spending. By 2021, this figure will increase to 48 percent. And, when spending on hardware and software that enables public cloud services, and managed and professional services around the cloud are included, these figures rise to 65 percent and 68 percent, respectively.

Spending on managed and professional services around cloud adoption are, collectively, the second largest opportunity in the whole cloud market, accounting for 31 percent of all cloud-related spending in 2016 and 2021.

The hyperscale datacenters operated by cloud service providers are dramatically altering the market for infrastructure hardware and software. By 2021, cloud service providers will account for 76 percent of cloud-related infrastructure hardware and software spending.

IT vendor revenue in the worldwide server market increased 19.9 percent year-over-year to reach $17 billion in the third quarter of 2017 (3Q17), According to the lattest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

While demand from cloud computing service providers has driven overall market performance in the past, other areas of the server market are beginning to show growth. Worldwide server shipments increased 11.1 percent year over year to 2.67 million units in 3Q17.

Server systems market development

Volume server revenue increased by 19.3 percent to $14.2 billion, while midrange server revenue grew 26.9 percent to $1.4 billion.

High-end systems grew 19.4 percent to $1.3 billion, benefiting from the IBM z14 launch this quarter. That said, IDC expects continued long-term secular declines in high-end system revenue, with short periods of growth related to major platform refreshes.

"Hyperscalers continued driving volume demand in the third quarter, with Amazon again leading the charge, as Google and Facebook also began ramping up their server deployments again," said Kuba Stolarski, research director at IDC.

While original design manufacturers (ODMs) have largely been the beneficiaries of hyperscaler server demand, some OEMs have now begun to experience significant growth related to the enterprise segment.

Dell grew its server business by 37.9 percent, relying on the strong synergy between its server team and the storage team incorporated from the EMC acquisition. HPE has been pivoting away from hyperscaler business and focusing on the enterprise, hurting year-over-year comparisons in the short term, but showing strength in the enterprise.

China has become a strong market for enterprise growth, as evidenced by Dell growing 42.3 percent year-over-year to $433 million, and HPE/New H3C Group growing 49.6 percent to $421 million. In addition, IBM has demonstrated that the enterprise still has space for non-x86 systems, growing the newly refreshed system z business by 63.8 percent year-over-year to $673 million.

HPE/New H3C Group remained first in the worldwide server market with 19.5 percent market share in 3Q17, as revenue decreased 1.1 percent year-over-year to $3.3 billion. HPE's share and year-over-year growth rate includes revenues from the H3C joint venture in China that began in May of 2016; thus, the reported HPE/New H3C Group combines server revenue for both companies globally.

Dell maintained the second position in the worldwide server market with 18.1 percent of vendor revenue for the quarter and 37.9 percent year-over-year growth to $3.1 billion. IBM and Cisco were statistically tied for the third market position.

IBM had 6.4 percent share, with revenue growing 26.5 percent year-over-year to $1.1 billion. Cisco had 5.8 percent share, with revenue increasing 6.9 percent to $992 million.

Lenovo was ranked fifth with 5.1 percent share and revenue declining 12.6 percent to $861 million. The ODM Direct group of vendors grew revenue by 45.3 percent to $4.1 billion. HPE and Dell were in a statistical tie for first place in unit share, each with 18.8 percent.

Digital technologies have altered how people and businesses interact. The potential for dislocation from ongoing digital transformation has created unprecedented levels of C-suite discussion. The decisive market leaders have heeded the warnings and taken bold actions.

That said, if you’re one of those chief technology officers (CTO) that previously responded to this scenario by making small incremental adjustments to your IT agenda, then you’re potentially at risk. Any relief from those prior tweaks tend to be short lived. The same issues will likely resurface.

An introduction to digital reinvention

Back in 2013, the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) introduced the concept of ‘Digital Reinvention’. Why is that concept noteworthy? Markets had evolved from organizational centricity, in which manufacturers and service providers defined a predictable state, into a radically different environment described as the everyone-to-everyone (E2E) economy.

The E2E economy has four distinct characteristics, which are now more important since the original IBM study was published. E2E is orchestrated, and based on open ecosystems which are collaborative and inclusive. Orchestration reflects coordination, arrangement and management of complex commercial environments.

E2E is symbiotic, where everyone and everything are mutually interdependent. Meaning, collaborative partners engage in co-design, co-creation, co-production, co-marketing, co-distribution and sometimes co-funding. Moreover, the E2E economy is cognitive, characterized by data-enabled learning and predictive capabilities.

Customer experience-based innovation

Emerging technologies are expanding customer influence. A new generation of tech savvy customers demand more sophisticated and tailored experiences. According to a recent global survey of executives focusing on emerging business ecosystems, 54 percent believe customer buying behavior is shifting from a products- and/or services-based to an experience-based approach.

Seventy-one percent of global CEOs are now intent on treating customers as individuals rather than market segments – that’s a 29 percent growth in only two years. And, 81 percent of global CEOs say they want to apply technology to develop stronger customer relationships.

What’s changed? Digital reinvention rethinks customer and partner relationships from a need-, use- or aspiration-first perspective. Digital reinvention helps organizations create unique, compelling experiences for their customers, partners, employees and other stakeholders.

These benefits arise even if fulfillment of the experience involves direct provision of products and services, or orchestration of products or services from partner organizations by way of a business ecosystem. The most successful digitally reinvented businesses establish a platform of engagement for their customers – acting as enabler, conduit and partner.

Pathway to digital reinvention

According to the IBM IBV assessment, to succeed in this disruptive environment, organizations must offer compelling new experiences, establish new focus, build new expertise, devise new ways of working and embrace the digital drivers.

Pursue a new focus: Leading businesses will develop new ways of realizing and monetizing value and spawn new business models, new forms of financing and better, more holistic ways of conducting risk assessments. Leaders will also engage the market in deeper, more compelling ways. They will create strategies and execution plans to deliver deep, contextual, compelling experiences, and find new ways to monetize customer Interactions.

Build new expertise: Leading businesses will digitize products, services and processes that help them redefine the customer experience. They will augment these steps by applying predictive analytics, cognitive computing, the Internet of Things and automation to create a fully integrated, flexible and agile operational environment necessary to support and enable deep experiences.

Establish new ways of working: Leading businesses identify, retain and build the right talent needed to create and sustain a digital organization. The most successful among these take measures to create and perpetuate an innovation-infused culture incorporating design thinking, agile working and fearless experimentation.

Leaders contextualize organizational priorities within business ecosystems, seeking new forms of partnering and new ways to build value within overall systems of engagement. They think deeply and strategically about how customer priorities might evolve, seeking opportunities to create engagement platforms to the benefit of their customers, their partners and themselves.

Embrace digital drivers: Leading businesses combine open innovations to create organizations that can build the deep, compelling experiences customers desire. Rather than incrementalism, digital reinvention provides a path for visionary organizations to adopt an experience-first approach to planning, employing the strengths of ecosystem partners to create experiences that are truly unique.

Study conclusion: Reinventing the future

Digital technologies have redefined how people live, work and play. Pervasive technology is already changing traditional industry structures and economics and is reinterpreting what it means to be a customer and a citizen within the Global Networked Economy.

To thrive in a rapidly changing business environment, the most successful organizations will offer compelling new experiences, establish new focus, build new expertise and devise new ways of working – all based upon a foundation of the latest digital drivers.

The fearless market leaders advance this process by embracing digital reinvention. They envision possibilities, create pilots, deepen capabilities and orchestrate new ecosystems.

The ongoing shift to cloud computing continues across the globe. The worldwide public cloud services market grew 28.6 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2017 (1H17) with revenues totaling $63.2 billion, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

"Public cloud adoption is accelerating in large part as enterprises recognize that the cloud has become the launchpad for virtually every new IT innovation in the last 24 months — including AI, blockchain, quantum computing and more," said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC.

Public cloud market development

While stronger than expected growth was seen across all regions, Asia-Pacific saw the highest regional growth at 38.9 percent and this market now represents 11.5 percent of all public cloud services revenues. Strong public cloud spending in China, which saw 55.6 percent year-over-year growth in the first half of 2017, is a key driver.

Among the three primary segments of public cloud services (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS), the SaaS segment, which holds 68.7 percent of overall market share, was the slowest growing segment with a 22.9 percent year-over-year growth rate.

More CIOs and CTOs now think 'cloud first' when it comes to their IT strategy and software footprint, since the benefits of cloud have been demonstrated in most industries. Many companies have picked the low-hanging fruit, in terms of apps that could be easily moved to the cloud, and are now evaluating the potential migration of their next set of larger strategic systems to a SaaS model.

That said, the smallest segment overall was PaaS, with 13.6 percent of the public cloud services market. However, the PaaS market continues to deliver stronger growth than the other two segments at 50.2 percent year-over-year in 1H17.

According to the IDC assessment, the rapid adoption of container technology in the PaaS segment has given developers additional tools to accelerate application development and deployment that is important in the typical enterprise digital transformation journey.

Outlook for private cloud applications

The IaaS segment represented 17.8 percent of the public cloud services market in 1H17, and continues to exhibit strong year-over-year growth at 38.1 percent. Growing interest from enterprises and continued investments by cloud service providers has resulted in enhancements in the IaaS segment across multiple dimensions.

The recent introduction of on-premises offerings into the market also enable easier hybrid IT models, and reduce the barrier to more cloud service adoption for enterprises. Cumulatively, these are paving the way for the next wave of enterprise application deployments on cloud computing IaaS.

Read more: IDC says global public cloud revenues hit $63 billion – with PaaS quickest growing segment

Become the disruptor of your industry's status quo, or face the consequences. To succeed, CEOs need to know the answer to a key question in 2018 and beyond. Does our CIO and/or CTO have what it takes to contribute to a meaningful and substantive digital transformation agenda?

As digitally-fuelled disruptors reshape industries, the clear mandate for every enterprise is to re-imagine itself to compete in the increasingly digital economy that's platform-powered and ecosystem-enabled.

To help CIOs and CTOs through this period of multiplied innovation, International Data Corporation (IDC) published its Worldwide CIO Agenda 2018 Predictions.

Top 10 strategic IT planning changes

They outline IDC's vision for the ten most important shifts that will happen in IT organizations over the next 36 months, and will guide IT executives in the formation of their three-year strategic IT plan.

According to the IDC assessment, lines are being drawn that separate industry laggards from "digital-native enterprises" that can harness the power of technology to accelerate their business development.

In the context of continuous emergence, IDC asserts today's business technology environments must adapt at an accelerated pace to the scale, scope, and speed of progressive digital transformation.

"For CIOs and senior IT executives, the challenge is to think and operate like a digital-native enterprise in the face of the emergence of platforms, innovation accelerators, machine learning, augmented skills, micro-personalization, new partnerships, and new relationships," said Serge Findling, vice president at IDC.

The IDC predictions for the Worldwide CIO Agenda are:

• By 2018, 75 percent of CIOs will put experiential engagement, data monetisation, or digital business at scale at the top of their agenda.
• Through 2019, dragged down by conflicting digital transformation imperatives, ineffective technology innovation, cloud infrastructure transition, and underfunded end of life core systems, 75% of CIOs and their enterprises will fail to meet all of their digital objectives.
• By 2020, 60% of the CIOs who have crossed the digital divide will prevail in C-suite turmoil and competition to become digital business leaders for their enterprises.
• By 2019, 60% of CIOs will complete infrastructure and application replatforming using cloud, mobile, and DevOps, clearing the deck for accelerated enterprise digital transformation.
• By 2019, 60% of IT organisations will deploy DX platforms supporting new customer- and ecosystem-facing business models.
• By 2019, 75% of CIOs will refocus cybersecurity around authentication and trust to manage business risks, initiating the retirement of systems that cannot ensure data protection.
• By 2020, 40% of CIOs will leverage vision- and mission-driven leadership to inspire and empower their organisations to create digital transformation capabilities.
• Recognising the failure of existing IT governance and the need for a shared digital transformation vision; by 2020, 40% of CIOs will adopt new digital governance models to accelerate innovation and speed.
• By 2018, 70% of CIOs will take agility to the next level, gearing up to a product model using design thinking and DevOps.
• By 2020, 60% of CIOs will implement an IT business model and culture that shifts focus from IT projects to digitally-oriented products.

"As the new digital economy emerges from disruption, CIOs are seeing their last opportunity to cross the digital divide and earn their right to play in the next phase," concluded Findling.

Research in quantum computing is closely tied to the discipline of information theory, a mathematical concept concerned with communication, coding, and encryption. Various applications of quantum information theory were developed in the last 50 years.

As a result, quantum computing has been high on the research agenda of governments and technology organisations worldwide. In a quantum computing model, the basic unit of information is called the quantum bit (qubit), which can be represented by photons.

Using qubits and quantum gates, the development of a quantum circuit model of computation has been made possible, enabling the use of algorithms to theoretically solve highly complex mathematical problems in a much shorter time frame than is currently possible.

Quantum computing market development

Most experts now agree that the creation of a quantum computer is simply a matter of engineering, and that the theoretical application will happen. Optimistic estimates for commercialisation by the private sector vary between 5 and 15 years, while more conservative estimates by academics put it at 15-25 years.

The drive to create the first quantum computer has been viewed as the new arms race. The milestone to reach is that of quantum supremacy, essentially the performance of computation that goes beyond the capability of the latest and best supercomputers in existence today. But this drive is underpinning another, more pressing race: quantum cybersecurity.

ABI Research forecasts that the first attack-capable quantum machines will make their market debut by 2030.  "When they do, even the latest and best in class cybersecurity technologies will be vulnerable," said Michela Menting, research director at ABI Research.

The race to quantum supremacy is real: governmental R&D is accelerating the crystallisation of the quantum computer, with more than $1.6 billion already invested globally. The potentially drastic repercussions on cybersecurity is equally real and has led to the focus on quantum-safe cryptography.

Also known as post quantum cryptography, such research looks to the development of new cryptographic algorithms that could withstand breaking by quantum computers, ideally before such computers become commercially available.

Outlook for quantum computing technologies

Beyond and ahead of quantum computers, the use of the theory has also aided in developing new cryptographic techniques, notably quantum key distribution (QKD). Considered as a type of quantum-safe cryptography, QKD will likely be commercialised before the advent of quantum computers, because it is achievable using current technologies such as lasers and fiber optics. In that sense, QKD is one of the first quantum theories to find real-world applications.

Heavy private sector investment is going into quantum R&D. Since 2012, venture capital funds have pumped over $334 million into companies specializing in the space. Clearly, this is an early-stage market development opportunity with lots of upside growth potential.

More CIOs are investing in business technology that improves their organisation's resilience to cyber threats. Worldwide spending on IT security-related hardware, software, and services is forecast to reach $119.9 billion in 2021, according to the latest global market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

With nearly every industry investing in IT security solutions, enterprise spending will achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.6 percent over the 2016-2021 forecast period. Worldwide spending on security products and services will total $83.5 billion in 2017, an increase of 10.3 percent over 2016.

IT security market development

"Three overarching trends are driving security spending: a dynamic threat landscape, increasing regulatory pressures, and architectural changes spurred by digital transformation initiatives," said Sean Pike, vice president at IDC. "While IDC expects spending to continue growing, organisations are actively searching for product and service efficiencies that maximise spend in order to fully address such complex challenges."

IDC expects security spending to be somewhat evenly spread across four industry sectors in 2017: distribution and services ($19.7 billion), public sector ($18.6 billion), manufacturing and resources ($16.4 billion), and financial ($16.3 billion).

By 2021, however, the financial sector is forecast to move ahead of manufacturing and resources due to a 2016-2021 CAGR of 10.2 percent. Similarly, public sector security spending will nearly pull even with distribution and services by 2021 with a CAGR of 10.3 percent. The fastest growing sector over the five-year forecast period will be infrastructure with a CAGR of 11.8 percent.

On a global basis, banks, discrete manufacturers, and federal or central government agencies will spend the most on security products and services throughout the forecast period. Combined, these three industries will contribute to 30 percent of the worldwide total spending in 2017.

In addition to being among the industries spending the most on security solutions in 2017, federal or central government and banking will be two of the industries that will see the fastest growth in security spending over the five-year forecast, with CAGRs of 10.9 and 10.7 percent, respectively.

The industry that will see the fastest growth is telecommunications, with a CAGR of 12.6 percent. This growth will enable telecommunications to become the fourth largest industry in terms of total security spend in 2021, moving ahead of the process manufacturing and professional services industries.

More than 80 percent of security spending in 2017 will go to services and software. Services spending will be led by two of the largest technology categories – managed security services ($15.25 billion) and integration services ($12.5 billion).

Software spending will be focused on three categories – endpoint security, identity and access management, and security and vulnerability management – that will make up more than 75 percent of the software total this year.

Hardware spending will be significantly smaller throughout the forecast, dominated by network security solutions ($13.7 billion in 2017). In addition to being the two largest technology categories, managed security services and network security will also be the fastest growing categories during the 2016-2021 forecast with CAGRs of 14.3 and 11.4 percent, respectively.

Outlook for IT security market growth

The largest market for security products and services on a geographic basis will be North America with total spending of $37.8 billion this year. The second largest geographic market will be Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at $26.2 billion followed by Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) at $11.5 billion.

APeJ will see the fastest growth in security spending over the forecast period with a five-year CAGR of 19.9 percent. Within the region, China and Malaysia will see particularly strong growth with five-year CAGRs of 25.3 and 20.1 percent, respectively. Latin America is also expected to outperform the overall market with a CAGR of 10.4 percent.

As more CIOs and CTOs prepare for the data deluge that’s driving demand for enterprise storage solutions, savvy IT infrastructure vendors are already offering next-generation systems that meet the evolving requirements of their customers’ digital transformation projects.

Software-defined storage (SDS) is one of several new technologies that are rapidly penetrating the IT infrastructure of enterprises and cloud service providers. SDS is gaining traction because it meets the demands of the next-generation data center much better than legacy storage infrastructure.

As a result, International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts the worldwide SDS market will see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.5 percent over the 2017-2021 forecast period, with revenues of nearly $16.2 billion in 2021.

Enterprise storage market development

Enterprise storage spending has already begun to move away from hardware-defined, dual-controller array designs toward SDS and from traditional on-premises IT infrastructure toward cloud environments (both public and private) based on commodity Web-scale infrastructure.

SDS solutions run on commodity, off-the-shelf hardware, delivering all the key storage functionality in software. Relative to legacy storage architectures, SDS products deliver improved agility — including faster, easier storage provisioning – when compared to traditional storage system constraints.

“For IT organizations undergoing digital transformation, SDS provides a good match for the capabilities needed — flexible IT agility; easier, more intuitive administration driven by the characteristics of autonomous storage management; and lower capital costs due to the use of commodity and off-the-shelf hardware,” said Eric Burgener, research director at IDC.

According to the IDC assessment, as these features appear more on CIOs and CTOs list of purchase criteria, enterprise storage revenue will continue to transition to software-defined storage solutions.

Within the SDS market, the expansion of three key sub-segments – file, object, and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) – is being strongly driven forward by next-generation data center requirements.

Outlook for enterprise SDS solutions

Of these sub-segments, HCI is both the fastest growing with a five-year CAGR of 26.6 percent and the largest overall with revenues approaching $7.15 billion in 2021. Object-based storage will experience a CAGR of 10.3 percent over the forecast period while file-based storage and block-based storage will trail with CAGRs of 6.3 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively.

Because hyperconverged systems typically replace legacy SAN- and NAS-based storage systems, all the major enterprise storage systems providers have committed to the HCI market in a major way over the past 18 months.

This has made the HCI sub-segment one of the most active merger and acquisition markets, as these vendors prepare to capture anticipated SAN and NAS revenue losses to HCI due to enterprises shifting toward more cost-effective SDS solutions.

The rush to move IT applications from on-premises enterprise data centers to public cloud service providers, primarily on the basis of the promise of a low-cost, has once again been challenged by recent market research findings.

In fact, savvy CIOs and CTOs are seeking comprehensive solutions that meet all their expectations, rather than merely a limited subset. Even if it costs more to achieve that goal, the demand for superior hybrid cloud services is gaining momentum across the globe.

As an example, seventy-five percent of respondents to the latest worldwide market study by 451 Research indicate that enterprise IT leaders are willing to pay a premium for enhancements to their server hosting and cloud services.

Cloud services market development

The most desired improvements are guarantees of security (48.7 percent of respondents) and service performance (43.3 percent) with less interest in paying service providers to take on the operational management burden (27.9 percent).

Despite customers citing cost savings as a driver of cloud adoption and using value for money as a metric for evaluating cloud services, 451 Research finds customers are willing to pay extra for cloud and hosting service enhancements. The average premium businesses are willing to pay is around 30 percent.

The highest premium is for enhanced customer service and support (33.3 percent) and the lowest is for the service provider handling operational management (27.9 percent).

Although 451 Research believes higher levels of service will attract those customers willing to pay higher rates, organizations surveyed say that their providers are failing to meet their expectations for service levels in several categories.

As an example, 58.1 percent of survey respondents say that managed services or security services bundled with the infrastructure or application service is an important capability for them. However only 38.8 percent of these respondents say their current vendors meet this expectation.

The largest such gap is the ability to migrate workloads and data from the customer’s data center to the provider’s or another data center, including public cloud. Moreover, 42.9 percent indicate this is important, but only 19.5 percent of these respondents say their current vendors meet this expectation.

Outlook for cloud computing enhancements

“We frequently talk about pricing competition in cloud infrastructure and applications, which leaves many service providers wondering how they can differentiate themselves,” said Liam Eagle, research manager at 451 Research.

According to the 451 Research assessment, the good news is that many hybrid cloud service customers tell the analyst that they’re evaluating vendors on total value, rather than cost. That value can reside in services like guaranteed levels of performance, security and support.

“We’ve found that customers still see shortcomings when it comes to service providers helping them strategize and execute around hosting and cloud,” added Eagle. “Service providers focused on adding value should regard these gaps as opportunities they can capture by improving the quality of their own service in specific areas.”

Many organisations are now actively considering blockchain deployments, and a significant proportion are already anticipating integration of blockchain into their IT systems within the next 18 months, according the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research.

The Juniper survey found that among the largest companies (those with 20,000 of more employees) that were considering deploying or were in the process of deploying blockchain, 54 percent had reached the PoC (Proof of Concept) stage, with a further 16 percent involved in trial deployments.

Among all companies that have reached the PoC stage, 66 percent expected blockchain to be integrated into their systems by the end of 2018. Integration was expected to take longer as companies got larger among the smaller companies surveyed (i.e. those with less than 1,000 employees), 81 percent expecting integration to be completed by the end of 2018 – compared with 57 percent of companies with over 20,000 employees.

IBM leads blockchain market development

That being said, IBM is regarded by survey respondents as having the most proven credentials within the emerging blockchain sector, well ahead of all competitors. That’s based upon almost 400 company founders, senior executives, managers and IT leaders that responded to Juniper’s survey.

Among enterprises either actively considering, or in the process of deploying blockchain technology, 43 percent of the survey respondents ranked IBM first – that’s more than twice the proportion selecting second-placed Microsoft (20 percent).

According to the study, this reflected IBM’s high-profile R&D engagement with initiatives such as the Hyperledger project, and its extensive list of blockchain clients across an array of key verticals and use cases – including banking, asset tracking and the music industry.

Among respondents who were prepared to state their levels of investment in blockchain, 67 percent stated they had already invested more than $100,000 by the end of 2016, while 91 percent of these companies confirmed that they would be spending at least this amount in 2017.

The study findings stated that this suggested most initial investments had delivered results that were sufficiently encouraging for companies to pursue more extensive trials and/or integrations.

Outlook for blockchain application growth

When challenges are measured against the scale of the upside market opportunity, automotive, financial settlement and land registry emerge as particularly interesting growth prospects.

However, Juniper analysts urge interested companies and other organizations to focus on private blockchains for commercial deployments, rather than attempt to utilise public chains – such as Bitcoin.

It also argued that most corporate applications would require the capability to restrict access to permissioned users, while companies would also need to have a degree of control over the development of the blockchain on which their systems have become dependent.

“Even if companies conduct initial testing using a public blockchain, in most cases the shortcomings of these chains should disqualify them from many use cases,” said Dr Windsor Holden, head of forecasting & consultancy at Juniper Research.

Editor’s note: Read more about blockchain technologies at our sister publication, The Block.