It’s that time of year again, with every analyst firm falling over themselves to predict what will happen in IT during the next 12 months.

IDC is no different, issuing the first of its 2014 predictions earlier this week with a straightforward claim: all the big players will make increased investment in cloud, mobile and big data because of the huge emergence of the “third platform” for IT management.

The term ‘third platform’ relates to the technology built on the pillars of cloud, mobile, big data and analytics – and the net result means a 5% growth in global IT spending year on year, to $2.1tn.

IDC has been banging this drum for several years, predicting last year that acceleration to the third platform will “shift into high gear”. Now, IDC claims that any major vendor not adopting this strategy will be at a competitive disadvantage.

Digging deeper into …