Ixia's IT Predictions for 2017

By Murali Ramalingam

Ixia Technologies recently announced its industry forecasts for the next one year, keeping in mind that worldwide IT transformation will prompt substantial changes for several industries in the upcoming year.

Second Generation cloud adoption will continue to emerge
Cloud computing has helped transform the enterprises over the past five years, and Ixia experts believe that the market is preparing for the second wave of cloud adoption. Public, private, and hybrid cloud deployments have become a crucial tool for organizations of all shapes and sizes, and this will continue to allow them to enjoy elastic scalability and flexibility while reducing costs in 2017 and beyond. The second wave of cloud computing will focus on analytics and security, giving rise to new players and an increasing willingness by enterprises to "bet their business" on cloud.

 More emphasis will be placed on network visibility
Organizations are moving to a cloud-based environment and they must prepare for the security and control risks associated with the cloud. According to the State of Virtualization for Visibility Architectures, 67% of respondents deploy business-critical applications on the public cloud. Organization’s operations are dependent on an environment with a huge visibility gap, and they are now realizing that this has to change to keep their data secure. Throughout 2017 we will see an increased emphasis on network visibility, and by 2018 approximately 60 percent of the enterprises implementing the appropriate network visibility will experience a third fewer security failures.

Artificial Intelligence will change the face of cyber security
There will be a significant increase in artificial intelligence investments in 2017 compared to 2016.  In fact, Forrester predicts investment in Artificial Intelligence will grow 300% in 2017. AI will provide business users access to powerful insights and will drive faster business decisions in marketing, ecommerce, product management and other areas of the business by helping close the gap from insights to action. Application of artificial intelligence in security is expected to gain momentum as the next logical step, underpinning systems that can identify, analyze, learn, anticipate and adjust to cyber security threats.

Sophisticated IoT cyber-attacks will rise
IoT offers an expanding horizon of opportunity that shouldn’t be ignored due to security concerns. With foresight into these current trends, practical planning, and persistence implementation, you can move your organization vision for IoT forward with confidence in your security practices. There is also a concern regarding the human element of big data analytics, regarding the integrity of the data and its storage. Data analytics is needed for IoT devices to be useful.

Edwin the malicious rubber ducky will lead the botnet army of 2017
Botnet armies are bigger, more active, and more heavily armed than ever before. Over the past few months, we have seen  internet infrastructure come to a grinding halt multiple times due to distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS). We expect to see hackers continue to exploit IoT device vulnerabilities to launch attacks.

The Uberization of Technology
Disruption will continue to take place in more and more verticals – beyond transport, housing and F&B– we will see more changes especially in the technology scene.

Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are some existing examples of how ‘traditional’ technologies have been displaced or regarded as laggards with VR and AI jumping on-board the disruptive technologies bandwagon. We will see more verticals face or be affected by the Uberization of Things and when this happens, technology will either save or break the economy.

A Year to Remember?

Given the tumultuous events of this year so far, in 30 years’ time, the answer to any question starting “In which year did …” is likely to be “2016.”

Let’s hope that in 2017, some of the bleaker cybersecurity predictions do NOT come true, and that for once, we have fewer attacks and less disruption to business and personal lives.

In 2017, predicting the future will be big business. With the advancements in IoT and data analysis, we'll no longer have to rely on crystal balls and tarot cards to plan our next business moves.

In 2017, technology will continue to replace physical, manual and, increasingly, intellectual processes.

Murali Ramalingam, Country Manager-Sales, Ixia

Murali Ramalingam, Country Manager-Sales, Ixia