2017 and the top trends in the data economy
by Matt Lovell, CTO at Pulsant
On day 2 of Data Economy’s special end-of-year blogroll, Matt Lovell, CTO of Pulsant blogs about the top trends in the data economy for 2017.
As the digital transformation continues to accelerate, all parts of our lives are being influenced by rising levels of automation, analytics and augmentation.
Many organisations are realising more value from insights and understanding, which in turn is enabling services to evolve by leveraging new technologies.
We are gathering increasing amounts of data, in new ways and integrating this together, bridging previous boundaries of geography, culture and processes. It is what we do with it that matters.
So the first trend to highlight in most organisations is data capture and collation. We are capturing more and more data through internet-enabled devices and the Internet of Things (IoT).
This data is now converging in larger repositories, such as data lakes. But this highlights two other important trends which have become apparent — how this data is being used and how to secure the devices this data captured from.
Nearly every part of our lives can be tracked, traced and monitored should we choose to permit this.
There is a real emphasis on how organisations are using this data to promote, personalise, target or analyse our consumption of services. Data privacy and governance is evolving but perhaps not as fast as the development of new services accessing and analysing this data.
We have also observed how data and device security must be an equally important focus — for example, the Mirai bot, which exploited a vulnerability in a large number of IoT devices to aggregate the capacity to launch some of the largest distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks recorded to date.
And consider the recent security incident within the financial services sector that also highlighted the importance of continual vigilance of customers and suppliers in protecting security credentials and how sophisticated criminal organisations are attempting to compromise digital services.
There are other trends within the digital economy which are still important but maturing at slower rates. These include Blockchain, which has the capability to completely transform financial transactions and our financial services in so many new ways.
The complexity of this transformation and ensuring the integrity of these systems is absolutely critical to accelerating adoption and integration throughout digital economies.
The integration of data and services is another of the key trends in the data economy. How we share data, what data, how we protect and manage this data, as well as data sharing permissions are all key to establishing the principles of the data economy in managing identities, personal data and new interactions.
The data economy is also opening up new dimensions and opportunities which will enable more effective delivery of social and education services, medical treatments and care, the sharing of knowledge and our environment, as well as simplifying time-consuming processes.
Wearable technology is enabling increasing levels of data capture which not only provides real time analysis of patients and can support easier and more interactive treatment for patients over the internet but also enables us to cross boundaries on a global basis in accelerating our understanding of disease and how to increase the effectiveness of therapies.
The data economy brings global understanding closer to each of us in terms of mastering our environment in new dimensions and enabling different education mediums, as well as in animated reality.
It is this accessibility for all to the richness of our world which will be brought to life in new ways through the data economy in 2017 and beyond.
Whether these are social, media or classroom channels, we have already observed the power of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing in enabling individuals and businesses to raise awareness of issues and find new resolutions to these which without the data economy would previously been much harder to establish.
The final key trend of the data economy is this very point that communication and the way we interact is changing. More communication will continue to be in the moment and non-verbal. This is as important to retail, education and advertising as it is politics. The data economy must have reason and purpose as much as influence and interest.
