Some interesting examples of how various industries will leverage new technologies

SYDNEY: From drones to intelligent personal assistants to artificial intelligence to big data and more, newer technologies will drive interesting trends through 2016.

Audrey William, Head, ICT Research, Australia & New Zealand, Frost & Sullivan, shares her insights for the five big technology trends for 2016.

Security: Driven by cloud, mobility and Internet of Things, security will be the biggest issue in 2016.

Take for instance the Ashley Madison incident in which hackers broke into the company's network and leaked customers' personal information. While the incident increased awareness of cyber security threats amongst organizations, cyber insurance will rise in the coming years.

“We will witness more insurance companies step in to offer cyber insurance policies that will offer more than just compensation and protection from liability in the event of a cyber-attack,” William said.

In the home environment, as smart home solutions witness greater adoption, users will use their mobile phones and tablets to control power, cooling, heating, lighting and security. By allowing one interface to control the various applications of the smart home, security challenges will be a big issue for the industry players to grapple with.

Targeted attacks on computer industrial control systems (ICS) attacks have the potential to bring down critical systems which can then lead to damaging a customer's brand and reputation. While all attacks in recent years on ICS have not been publicised, some best known instances include the Stuxnet attack on an Iranian nuclear plant and the Shamoon attack on Saudi Aramco.

“In 2016, we will witness vendors and service providers acquire specialist security vendors or grow their own practices internally to tackle the diverse issues in security impacting organisations,” she said.

The enterprise communications market will witness disruption from an emerging class of start-ups: Cloud and mobility are driving discussions around what the office of the future will look like. While it will still be compulsory or necessary for many organizations to have a desk phone, a few are eliminating the need for a desk phone. Microsoft's Skype for Business is set to disrupt the traditional communications market. Although the traditional vendors still dominate in the voice space, Microsoft has started taking market share and with the recent innovation to its Skype for Business platform, Frost & Sullivan expects them to be a greater disruptive force in the market place.

Besides, new start-ups such as Acano, Pexip and Slack are disrupting the traditional conferencing and collaboration space. Frost & Sullivan expects more start-ups to emerge in this space offering new ways of delivering voice, video, contact centre and collaboration capabilities to organisations by taking advantage of the cloud architecture and making the platforms more dynamic, collaborative and social in nature.

Increased use of sensors across various industries will lead to a tsunami of data driving massive developments in big data: Sensors are being embedded in physical objects ranging from medical devices, wearables, highways, cars, industrial machines to mobile phones and these are then linked to very high speed and powerful networks.

The volume of data generated will lead to a huge repository of data. In farming and agriculture for instance, sensors can help gather information about the condition of the crops and humidity, which will eventually assist in understanding water and fertilizer requirements.

In the healthcare segment, when doctors need to analyze the traces of a disease that could be arising within an individual, it could mean swallowing a pill that has a camera attached to the pill and these cameras through sensors can help doctors determine the cause of the disease or what should be done to prevent the condition from worsening.

In smart city initiatives such as Songdo in South Korea, nearly every device, building or road is equipped with wireless sensors or microchips. The data generated will help the government make smart decisions about lighting, traffic, waste and other segments of a smart city initiative. All these examples point to what the future of big data will mean for organizations.

Smart machines will disrupt the market place: Smart machines which include drones, driverless vehicles as well as robots are set to introduce efficient ways of delivering output.

As costs pressures rise in developed economies and emerging economies, smart machines will negate the need for staff in certain segments of the business.

For instance, Rio Tinto recently rolled out fully automated driverless trucks at two of its iron ore mines in the Pilbara in Western Australia. The company is said to also be trialing driverless trains and will be deploying other technologies to cut costs. Similarly, Wal-Mart Stores recently announced that it has applied to US regulators for permission to test drones for home delivery. Amazon was also trialling the use of drones for its online delivery business. The biggest challenge for the drone industry has been the ability for organizations to get approval from the respective aviation authorities.

Robots are starting to be used in several Asian markets in hotels and restaurants to eliminate the need to have front desk staff or waiters. Toyota recently announced that it would be investing $1 billion over the next five years to build Toyota Research Institute, a new company based in Silicon Valley focused on artificial intelligence and robotics. These recent developments point to a market ahead of us that will see how smart machines will be used widespread across various industries, but whilst it will drive efficiencies and help reduce costs, it will also start having a negative impact on jobs.

Cognitive computing and artificial intelligence platforms to become big across industries: The cognitive computing platform is mirrored closely to how the brain works. Expect more cognitive computing platforms to bring about a new way of delivering services.

For example, in healthcare Memorial Sloan Kettering clinicians are partnering with IBM to train Watson Oncology to interpret cancer patients' clinical information and identify individualised, evidence-based treatment options for its patients. In the contact center space, we are starting to see contact centres using various technologies to create efficiencies such as cloud computing, self-service applications, Web-based platforms and analytics.

IVR technology has been used for years by contact centers around the world and when you add artificial intelligence to that equation, it changes the face of how the contact centre of the future will look like. Last year IPsoft unveiled Amelia which is an AI contact center agent. Amelia is designed to think like a human and can help answer complex customer queries. Whilst artificial intelligence solutions will gain in adoption, it is worth noting that the human element is still important as not all services can be taken over by AI.

Intelligent personal assistants are also making its way in the market with Facebook's M and Baidu's Duer. The battleground for intelligent personal assistants will increase with nearly every large technology company investing in developing an intelligent personal assistant platform. Other popular solutions in this space vying for a share in this market include Siri, Cortana and Google Now. These platforms will offer a wide range of services which include booking a taxi, ordering food, groceries and other online goods.