Business and IT have fused, according to the sixth annual Deloitte Tech Trends report, which examines disruptive technologies that will impact all businesses over the next couple of years.

Based on extensive research spanning the globe, Tech Trends 2015 has particular relevance to Africa as many of the trends herald a fundamental shift in how technology is used within the organisation.

“Even though the existing challenges across the continent are significant, especially when it comes to adopting technology into traditional business practices, the cost of ignoring these trends could be significant,” says Kamal Ramsingh, technology leader at Deloitte Consulting Africa.

The eight trends, as identified by Deloitte Global CTO Mark White to the media and key South African stakeholders in Johannesburg, are:

  1. The CIO as Integration Officer: CIOs need to harness emerging disruprive technologies for the business while balancing future needs with today’s operational realities.
  2. Ambient Computing: This represents the backdrop of the sensors, devices, intelligence, and agents that can put the Internet of Things (IoT) to work – early stage experimentation is highly recommended.
  3. API economy: Application programming interface (API) allow the core assets of a company to be reused, shared, or resold extending the reach of existing services.
  4. Dimensional marketing: This will redefine relationships and the understanding of what the customer really wants, bringing with it new dimensions of customer engagement and insight that need to be embraced.
  5. Software-defined everything: With the entire operating environment – that includes network, storage, servers, and applications – able to be virtualised, automated, and orchestrated, infrastructure will become a competitive differentiator.
  6. Core renaissance: A lot of IT spend is focused on keeping the lights on, and part of this trend is to establish strategic partnerships and build from a heritage of standardised data and business processes.
  7. Amplified intelligence: The growth and reliance on data has seen analytics techniques increasing in complexity applying machine learning and predictive modelling to increasingly massive and complex data sets.
  8. IT worker of the future: With millennials entering the workforce, their expectations of employment and how technology is used within the organisation will mean human resources and company structures need to move beyond a legacy-based mentality.

“However, this does not mean decision-makers need to blindly start implementing technology to solve their business challenges. Many of these trends need to be experimented with,” concludes Ramsingh.

Fortunately, the barriers of adoption are slowly being whittled away. Even bandwidth is becoming more accessible in Africa and mobile data more affordable. This is now about embracing change and looking for the opportunities it presents.”

The research process identifying the trends included feedback from executives on current and future priorities, input from Deloitte industry and practice leaders, crowdsourced ideas from the global Deloitte network of practitioners, and perspectives from industry and academic luminaries.

View the full report here: http://www2.deloitte.com/za/en/pages/technology/articles/tech-trends-20150.html