Promising outlook for IT in 2016

Many will admit that 2015 was a pretty tough year for business. However recent data released by Gartner forecast that in the IT industry 2016 is looking promising.

According to this report Information and Communications Technology (ICT) spending in South Africa will grow by 2,6% year-on-year to R26,6bn in 2016.

Some of the IT trends to look out for in the year to come includes:

Device Mesh
The number of devices that included technology is growing. Mobile devices, wearable, consumer and home electronic devices, automotive devices, and ‘Internet of Things’ sensors will all grow in importance to consumers. However more significantly they are likely to start talking to each other and working in unison instead of functioning in isolation.

Security
Security in the tech space is changing all the time, but it looks set to become even more adaptive. A majority of CIOs list security as their top priority, especially with an increased number of companies that have experienced breaches. Historical norms have been to play defense, but Gartner predicts that more tools will be available to go on the offensive, leveraging predictive modeling, for example, allowing apps to protect themselves. Gartner emphasizes that companies must build security into all business processes, end-to-end. Having it as an afterthought is equivalent to inviting issues.

Big Date
This little buzzword just won’t go away. Everything surrounding us is producing, using, and communicating with virtually unmeasurable amounts of information. This just keeps on growing. The challenge however for organizations is to identify what information provides strategic value, how to access data from different sources, and how this can be used effectively to fuel new business designs.

Mobile
Last year saw the emergence of forces promising a definite transformation of the mobile app development industry in 2016. One of the big conversation points in the mobile space focused on the problem that apps are fast and mobile websites are slow. This led to the emergence of progressive web apps. Progressive Web Apps are experiences that combine the best of the web and the best of apps. The short explanation: a web application that has a responsive layout, works offline, and can be installed on the home screen of a device. Is this a turning point for mobile? Time will tell.

Skills Gap
As the industry and consumers evolve social, mobile, analytics and cloud, generates a wide skills gap versus traditional IT skills. On the one hand, organizations are facing competitive pressure to modernize their operational systems. These systems need to be run more economically, and they need to be more agile. On the other hand, today’s connected consumers are demanding innovative front-office applications that are both cloud-based and mobile. It’s a challenge for an organization to keep up and ahead of the competition and attracting the right skills to your organization becomes more and more important.

In addition, this demand for the transformation of systems brings with it a substantial reskilling across all IT skills, development, operations, and procurement. Gone are the days when it was enough for IT staff to just run and maintain highly stable systems. In today’s consumer-driven business environment, apps are updated frequently and are contextual, not static. That, in turn, requires IT staff to develop new skills, new levels of agility, and new mindsets.

Do you require skilled IT staff to help your company grow? Communicate Recruitment represents a range of exclusive, tech-savvy candidates in the IT industry.  Contact us today for all your staffing needs.