Tracking technology trends that will change the future of the industry. Fostering innovation. Megatrends and transitions are occurring in months rather than years. From mobility and video to cloud and network programmability, there is no end in sight. The implications of this are amazing. Faster rates of new product introduction. Increasing product complex- ity. And a highly volatile technology landscape, where disruption occurs more easily. To continue advancing the technological frontier, and encouraging global economic growth, we need a comprehensive vision of where the IT industry is heading. Cisco Technology Radar meets this need. It is the foundation of Cisco internal and external innovation strategy. The Corporate Technology Group coordinates the radar for the Cisco Chief Technology and Strategy Office. The program builds on Cisco employees’ passion for technology combined with data-driven inputs from the latest trends in academic research, patenting activity, and venture capital funding.
Megatrends and transitions are occurring in months rather than years. From mobility and video to cloud and network programmability, there is no end in sight.
The implications of this are amazing. Faster rates of new product introduction. Increasing product complexity. And a highly volatile technology landscape, where disruption occurs more easily.
Innovation within the industry is a pivotal source of growth. IT innovation is overflowing into distant domains, expanding other sectors’ technological frontiers.
Consider, for example, Internet protocols like IPv6. Since its introduction, IPv6 has accelerated innovation across a wide range of industries, including the medical sector with e-health and the automotive industry with connected cars.
Device mobility, security, and configuration aspects have been considered in the design of the protocol.
Many factors contribute to this sustained progression and widening impact, including:
• Increased research and development (R&D) spending: The information and communications technology (ICT) industry invested $139 billion in 2013 and is the largest private-sector R&D investor in the United States. This investment translates yearly into thousands of patents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
• Access to venture capital funding: This has allowed for the creation of new ventures and sustained the development of small startups. Venture capitalists have invested considerable funding in the ICT industry, ranging from software to mobility. And, more recently, to the Internet of Things (IoT).
• Talent development: Since the year 2000, the top 250 ICT companies have employed 4 percent of the entire business sector in the United States. The industry consistently attracts and feeds new talent.
Quarterly process based on industry best practices for Technology Intelligence, including work in Deutsche Telekom by Rohrbeck
Cisco-wide collaboration
400+ submissions from 150+ technology scouts across Cisco
Data-driven inputs from VC/patents/academic activities
40+ panelists (FE/DEs, VP/CTOs)
180 published technology profiles
9 technology trends
~1000 unique visitors & 100+ prints quarterly
Internal Radar version with individual technologies: techradar.cisco.com
Internal Radar version with trends: techradar.cisco.com
External Radar with trends: cisco.com/go/techradar
M&A Intucell: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac49/ac0/ac1/ac259/intucell.html
From Tech Radar trend to Open Innovation Grand Challenge
The importance of securing the IoT identified early as trend
Launched Open Innovation Grand Challenge to embark ecosystem. Announced Winners.
From Tech Radar technology to ecosystem partnership
Tracked TTEthernet (Deterministic Ethernet) for 2 years on our internal Radar
Launched partnership with industry leader through openBerlin Innovation Center
From Tech Radar technology to academic funding
Identified and tracked RPKI on the Radar, pioneering implementation in a country and funding related academic research
From Tech Radar technology to internal research funding
Autonomic Networking (key to Network Simplification trend) tracked for 2 years, funded internally by Tech Fund, just won Cisco Pioneer Award
Cisco Video Networking Index estimates that sensors connections will match the world population by 2018 (7.3 billions), representing 35% of the 20 billion connected devices globally in 2018.
Key sensor devices are home automation controllers, grid meters, wearable health, performance monitors, and industrial Controllers in connected vehicles, connected oilrigs and connected manufacturing.
We understand why top concerns in IoT are Privacy Protection, Threat Defense and Mobile Device Management.
They represent more than 50% of the top technology conversations covered by the media in 2014
It is exciting to see from our patent analysis also confirm that the industry is coming together to resolve these security challenges. Privacy protection and threat defense are top inventive areas. And patent filings in application, cyber-physical, and cloud security have doubled in the last 5 years.
(North America and Europe continue to be hotspots for innovation.
In the areas of cyber-physical security, privacy protection, and application security, however, innovation is occurring on a global scale—from Asia Pacific to Latin America and the Arab States.)
While large companies and startups lead the innovation effort, the world of academia—and even individual inventors—also play an important role. The Cisco IoT Security Grand Challenge also highlights this trend:
• 29 percent of submissions came from universities and public institutions
• 21 percent came from individuals
In the next two to five years, IT security will extend to OT.
There will be brand new use cases, such as connected vehicles.
The industry is moving from a preventative approach to a “before, during and after” approach.
With this billions of connected devices, traditional data management technologies aren't keeping up with today's large volumes of data in motion, which is flowing at an unprecedented speed. The answer to ths is Real-Time Analytics.
It's a set of technologies that analyses large and unstructured data or resources within seconds or minutes.
Our News Analysis highlights a few of these key technologies like:
Big Data Platforms (Hadoop and Spark)
In-memory Data Grid -- an approach to querying data when it resides in random access memory (RAM), as opposed to querying data that is stored on physical disks.
Scale-out Databases and Data warehouse appliances
In-memory Processing and Massively parallel programming (MPP)
Our analysis shows also business applications where Real-Time Analytics is key:
CRM (customer relations management), Business Intelligence and Busibness Operations represent 40% of the conversations around RT Analytics last year.
Indeed in CRM or BI applications, RT analytics can provide up-to-the-minute information about an enterprise's customers so that better and quicker business decisions can be made -- perhaps even within the time span of a customer interaction.
Real-time analytics can support instant refreshes to corporate dashboards to reflect business changes throughout the day.
Another key application is for Complext Event Processing such as the tracking of a hurricane's path, intensity, and wind field, with the intent of predicting these parameters hours or days in advance.
RT analytics applications are also embedded in networking gear to track operations, capture events, monitor performance, detect anomalies, or optimize configurations in real time.
Since last 10 years, innovations in the domain of RT analytics have multiplied. The proof is more than 7000 patented inventions filed so far worldwide — with much of the focus on the development of Business Intelligence and Mining analytical tools.
The majority of total patented inventions originates from small startups. Clearly, there is considerable excitement and energy in this field.
And the market is listening. VC funding is on the rise, with early stage investments driving the wave and running the gamut from Gaming applications to Cybersecurity and Oil field real-time analytics.
Looking forward, real-time analytics are set to be a game changer for Business Productivity across industries.
Today, we can access tons of data anywhere, at any time, from any device. But the amount of data is so huge that it has become overwhelming — and not always particularly useful. Predictive context-aware computing, addresses this problem.
Our news analysis here shows that Big Data Analytics, Customer Experience and Wearables represent most of the conversations published around ths topic.
Indeed, mobile and wearable devices such as Google Glass, Facebook Oculus or Microsoft Hololens are driving this trend.
Because of the limited size of their display, they can present very limited information and require highly contextual based on current user activity and location.
Latest conversation about top companies Predictive Context:
Google Glass Failure ?
IBM Watson
Apple Siri
Microsoft Cortana, Hololens (just announced)
Samsung S Voice
Intel ?
Facebook
Twitter
Our patent analysis shows that
Predictive context-aware services are still in the early stages of development, but are gathering momentum very quickly. Real-time analytics innovations, a key technical building block, are fueling these services. Location analytics are a particularly critical component. And we are seeing more focused research on location awareness and activity recognition.
User activity and location are the main sources for context. So it makes sense that most innovations today target transportation and consumer goods, including retail. Energy and utility companies are also prime candidates for predictive context-aware computing. By relying on environmental sensor data, for example, energy utilities can better predict peak demand and organize their supply accordingly. This could help lower energy utility rates. One invention in this area is the smart thermostat.
In the future, context-aware services will become available across a wide range of industries.
Innovation is happening at a faster pace and are spreading in distant domains.
That’s the reason why we have developed this technology intelligence to capture emerging technologies and trends and defend Cisco against the coming threats.