Tag: prediction

Global IT spending will grow to $3.5 trillion this year

consultoracleOracles at Gartner have been shuffling their tarot cards and claim that new disruptive technology like the Internet of Things (IoT) will mean that worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.5 billion in 2017.

The projection is a 2.4 percent increase from 2016. After consulting the liver of a particularly fat ram, Big G predicted that the declining US dollar for the growth rate is up from the previous quarter’s forecast of 1.4 percent.

Gartner vice president and analyst at John-David Lovelock said that digital business is having a profound effect on the way business is done and how it is supported.

“The impact of digital business is giving rise to new categories. For example, the convergence of ‘software plus services plus intellectual property.”

Lovelock said impactful industry-specific disruptive technologies include IoT in manufacturing, blockchain in financial services and other industries, and smart machines in retail.

The worldwide enterprise software market is forecast to grow 7.6 percent in 2017, up from 5.3 percent growth in 2016.

Gartner explained that as software applications allow more firms to grab revenue from digital business channels, there will be a stronger need to automate and release applications.

The increased adoption of SaaS-based enterprise applications, will see an increase in acceptance of IT operations management tools that are also delivered from the cloud, Lovelock predicted.

“These cloud-based tools allow infrastructure and operations organisations to more rapidly add functionality and adopt newer technologies to help them manage faster application release cycles.”

Gartner found worldwide spending on devices — PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones — is projected to grow 3.8 per cent in 2017, to reach $654bn.

Microsoft used Cortina to predict the Oscars

motoring-graphics-g_844446aThis years’ Oscars were a reasonably successful test bed for Microsoft’s new predictive technology — Cortina.

Microsoft predicted 20 of the 24 Oscar winners which is not a bad average and follows its accurate prediction of almost all of the World Cup’s knockout matches – a little better than the octopus.

Cortina could not work out who would win the original screenplay, original score, animated feature and film editing categories. It got all the rest.

The software uses Bing-analysed historical data and Vole told us in advance who it thought would win.

Microsoft uses a prediction model for the Oscars that is managed by Microsoft researcher David Rothschild at the company’s New York City research lab. Rothschild correctly predicted 21 of 24 Oscar winners last year, and 19 of 24 winners in 2013.

In comparison, Vegas odds from the Wynn casino weren’t nearly as good. The Wynn predicted best picture, best actress, best actor, best supporting actress, best supporting actor, and best director, but only managed to guess four of six correctly. Microsoft predicted all six accurately.

Practically this goes beyond fortune telling for vacuous entertainment events. This is Microsoft’s chance to prove the company’s abilities to manipulate data sets is better than anyone else’s.
Its main goal is to show that Bing algorithms and data itself is pretty powerful. These things are an interesting way to show users that Bing has a lot of horsepower beyond just providing good search results, a spokesVole said.