1.Mobility of communication and computing power is dramatically improving connectedness and opening new market opportunities in developing economies, where the falling costs of mobile telephony have accelerated adoption in low-income areas. Mobile technology will open up a huge range of business opportunities and applications. The location-aware services will have the greatest potential impact over the next five years, and will be moving advertising sales promotion and entertainment to the mobile platform. Mobility will also drive new types of embedded machine-to-machine technology and sensor-based networks. SIM-enabled sensors, RFID technologies and smart codes will become common. And smart networks will trigger innovation across many industries—smart grid networks in energy and transportation.
2.Faced with tightening budgets and growing competition from new global players, companies will need access to more powerful software tools than they can afford under traditional annual software licenses. In the cloud, companies can pay for services as needed—whether it is for several months or only a few hours. The flexibility of the cloud enables companies to enter new markets quickly while slashing overhead costs.
3.In the new normal economy, data underpins nearly every aspect of business operations, from supply chains to marketing strategies to risk management. To succeed under these new dynamics, in which speed to market is critical, global companies must move closer to operating in real time. As such, the ability to analyze information rapidly to inform decision-making will be essential. Emerging developments such as in-memory analytics, in which summary data is stored in RAM rather than databases, may help in this effort.
4.Businesses can embrace collaborative tools to encourage innovation, anticipate market needs, and connect far-flung colleagues who can join together virtually to solve problems.