Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2018

The continued innovation and technology evolution has resulted in seemingly endless options and technologies available for companies. Current trend will be here to stay, and technology leaders need to adjust their digital strategies to develop a reasonable pace for adoption and continuous development.

Following technologies will be in focus during 2018.

1. Artificial Intelligence & machine learning

During 2017 it was hard to escape predictions that artificial intelligence is about to change the world. In 2018, this is unlikely to change. However, an increased focus on repeatable and quantifiable results is likely to ground some of the “big picture” thinking in reality. With Google, Apple, and Facebook investing in this arena, This domain is ready to take off. I expect 2018 to provide a continuous stream of small but sure steps forward, as machine learning and neural network technology takes on more routine tasks.

2. IoT & Security

While it’s been trending for a few years now, Internet of Things (IOT) security will rise to the top of the security trend list in 2018. IoT security is a complex and multifaceted problem, and one that affects all organizations. Organizations need to be proactive with the security of their IoT devices, whether it’s those they produce or those they consume. By 2022, IoT technology will be in 90% of electronics for all designs.

 3. Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality

Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality are changing the way that people perceive and interact with the digital world. Combined with conversational platforms, a fundamental shift in the user experience to an invisible and immersive experience will emerge. Application vendors, system software vendors and development platform vendors will all compete to deliver this model

4. Blockchain
 Technology

Blockchain is a digital ledger in which transactions made in bitcoin or other cryptocurrency are recorded in date order and publicly. The benefit is that this removes business friction by being independent of individual applications or participants, and can potentially allow untrusted parties to exchange commercial transactions, but caution is still advised when dealing with blockchain and the regulations behind it (or the lack thereof). This technology holds the promise to change industries, and although the conversation often surrounds financial opportunities, blockchain has many potential applications in government, healthcare, content distribution, supply chain and more.

5. Visual and VOICE activated search

Looking at current trend by 2020 visual and voice search will increase digital commerce revenue by 28%. With visual and voice search gaining lot of momentum and on the way to being dominant touch screen device search modes, enterprises should experiment to identify the best ways to capitalize on this consumer shift. Given search methods also enables companies to gather more useful information about consumer habits, and early responders will see an increase in conversion rates, revenue, new customers and customer satisfaction.

 6.    Re-platforming the enterprise

In 2018, we’ll see an aggressive move to consolidate IT platforms so companies can respond to market changes faster, be more productive and make better-informed decisions. These common platforms are rich in analytics, follow the information flow of the business and are simple enough that users can constantly change the business without writing (much) code. Moreover, they bring an operational and evergreen scale to traditionally bespoke enterprise IT. These common platforms — from Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others — provide very suitable if not substantially improved replacements for what used to be custom builds. Common platform will provide not only a foundation to improve processes, but also telemetry and insights. For smart adopters, we may see twofold to fivefold business acceleration.

7. Intelligent Apps and Big Data Analytics

AI is already integrated into the technologies we use every day, and will continue to do so. Intelligent apps will change the whole market phenomenon of 2018. Big Data Analytics will drive the next big paradigm shift in the IT industry in the year 2018. The exponential growth in the organizational data and increase in the number of connected devices fuels the demand for faster handling of these large volumes of mission-critical structured & unstructured data. Big Data analytics will shape the future by instantly mining the data stores for machine learning and other real-time applications. Data is the future! Enterprises would need to reckon best strategies to collect, manage as well as process large volumes of important data from a variety of sources to gain the competitive edge.

8.   Software-defined Storage

One of the biggest revolutions in the storage technology has been brought in by Software-defined storage technology which is effectively a storage hypervisor turning legacy storage systems. Promising scalability and high-level of performance to big data, SDS enhances storage system intelligence out of hardware into a layer of software that manages the entire storage infrastructure as a single entity. Software-defined storage data centers are the next step for virtualization and cloud computing as they provide a solution to support both legacy enterprise applications as well as cloud computing solutions.

9.   Cloud technology……. Out on the edge

Edge Computing, in the context of IoT, is the idea that you can actually do some of the computational work required by a system close to the endpoints instead of in a cloud or a data center. The intent is to minimize latency, which, according to Renaud, means that it’s going to be a hot trend in certain kinds of industrial IoT application. The hottest trend is the use of dedicated edge boxes to connect brownfield devices or to do some form of low-latency analytics or control-plane applications.

10.   Wi-Fi 2018

The world of enterprise Wi-Fi moves fast, but 2018 is going to see gear based on 802.11ac Wave 2 remain the state of the art – its successor, 802.11ax, is still one for the future.

Wave 2 is the latest Wi-Fi standard to be certified by the IEEE. Its main technological innovation is MU-MIMO, or multi-user multiple-input, multiple-output. In practice, this means that manufacturers can create access points that talk to multiple devices at the same instant. Earlier APs had to handle multiple streams sequentially. The Wave 2 standard could open the door for gigabit Wi-Fi, though. The PHY (physical) rate, which in turn affects the throughput rate of data transfer, is much higher in Wave 2. Wave 1 PHY rate maxes out at 1.3 Gbps, while Wave 2 can be 2.34 Gbps. Even if the throughput was 50% lower than the theoretical PHY rate for Wave 2, in theory it would still be above 1 Gbps.

Few other trends those will be part of the discussion are:

1.    Quality of Experience & Customer Experience Becomes Immersive

2.    Tri-Band WIFI technology

3.    5G rollout

4.    Home Automation

5.    Mesh Networks

6.   Chatbots

Android O feature spotlight:

Android O feature spotlight:

1. Connectivity enhancements : 

Automatically enable WiFi when you're near a saved network, There's a toggle for this feature in the O preview WiFi settings, but it's grayed out along with the open network notification. Although, it's off whereas the network notification is stuck on. Presumably this will be accessible in a future version of Android O. We've still got three more builds before the final one.

2. Picture-in-Picture mode

Picture-in-picture, which is already available on Android TV, is coming to Android O. This is mostly used for video playback. Android O won't be restricted to phones, so there will be improved arrow and tab key navigation for when used with a physical keyboard.

3. Multi-display support

Interestingly, Android O will be able to support multiple displays, allowing a user to move an activity to one screen to the next.

4. Notifications in Android O

Many of the new features regard notifications, and in Android O we will see user-customisable notification channels whereby alerts are grouped by type. Users will be able to snooze notifications, and devs can set time limits for notifications to time out. Also adjustable will be the background colours of notifications, and the messaging style.

5. Background limits

In Android Nougat Google introduced the ability to restrict certain app activities in the background, and in Android O it improves on this by placing the priority on extending battery life without user-input.

6. Better management of cached data

Every app will have a storage space quota for cached data, and when the system needs to free up disk space it will delete data from apps using more than their allocated quota first.

7. New enterprise features

Google says it has made the profile owner and device owner management modes more powerful, productive and easier to provision than ever, with highlights including the ability to use a managed profile on a corporate-owned device and enterprise management for file-based encryption.

You can read about the new updates coming to Android O in more detail over on the Android Developer's site.

8. Copy Less

This feature is expected to ease copying text from one app and pasting it within another by giving suggestions in the second app as to what you might be about to type based on what you were doing in the previous app.

9. Improved gestures

Today you can quickly call up your contacts using Ok Google, but in Android O you will be able to draw onscreen the letter C to open your contacts menu. This is similar to what we've seen in many Chinese phones - the ability to in standby mode draw onscreen a letter and open an app of your choice - though here it should work when the screen is switched on and in any app. This feature may not be ready in time for Android O, however, the source warned.

Why Bluetooth required for IOT success?

Bluetooth technology is already embedded in current day to day lives, and it will continue to have an impact to make “Things” smarter. Instrumentation can become smarter with wireless data capture. Wireless data reporting, or capturing, offers convenience and efficiency to many different industries. Spectrum and reliability of Bluetooth would be a good differentiator.

In the Education field, Teachers can quickly monitor student’s reports/status from a mobile device instead of walking from room to room and paying attention to everyone. Consumers can enjoy music from their wireless Bluetooth headphones and track their heartbeat and progress from a wearable, Bluetooth-connected device while running. House doors can be unlocked and lights can be turned on or off by simply touching your smartphone. Even industrial machines can be monitored and controlled by a Bluetooth-connected device to determine their status or predictive maintenance needs. Bluetooth beacons would be available with different options.

Bluetooth, which operates in the 2.4 GHz band using frequency hopping spread spectrum on 79 1-megahertz channels, has kept pace with technological evolution and found a place in both consumer-facing “Internet of Things” uses – smart homes and wearables, for instance – as well as in the industrial “Internet of Things” where adaptability and reliability are requisites.

Expectations for more immediate control of network-connected IoT devices through smartphone apps translates into a growing need for simultaneous connectivity to Bluetooth mobile devices and 802.15.4 networks. For example, users will expect to interact through their smartphones directly with an IoT device in an appliance even while that same device communicates with the cloud for overall home management services or if the device temporarily loses its cloud connection.



To make this point, let’s take a look at a new Bluetooth module from Silicon Labs. The Blue Gecko BGM113 module has a 3-decibel mill watt power output optimized for applications with a 150-foot range; the company says this is a good fit for “smartphone accessories, wearable sports and fitness products, wireless locks and point-of-sale devices.”




In keeping with IoT product trends in both the industrial and consumer space, unit price and battery life are huge considerations. These items are most important factors for Industrial IOT.


Bluetooth low energy also provides much lower power consumption than Classic, which is useful in battery operated systems such as wireless sensors.”

Open Flow Solution

Open Flow by
David M

SDN Controller and Mininet integration

OpenFlow: HP VAN SDN Controller and Mininet integration

By
David

Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2016

“What are my tech predictions for 2016? #tech2016”

We are closing towards end of 2015, Fantastic year for Cloud and associated technologies. Many Big mergers and acquisitions changed whole economics of the industry. 2016 would also be focusing on many related technologies.  Some of following M&A changed complete dynamics of the industry i.e. Dell & EMC, Charter Communications & TWC, Intel & Altera, Avago & Broadcom, NXP & Freescale and more. 

I think following top 10 tech trends will be in focus during 2016.

1. Commercial Drone, Hybrid Console and Cloud Games

The use of drones has typically been the place of enthusiasts – interested in flying drones as a hobby because people enjoy flying and/or enjoy creating videos of surrounding scenery. However, drones are no longer just the personal toys of the enthusiasts and have been opened up to a wider commercial purpose.

We expect to see more of this innovation during 2016 and over the next 5 years.

2. The Device Mesh

A variety of other trends have led to an increased number of sensors embedded in many technologies and devices that we use personally and professionally. They become smarter as they gather more data on our daily patterns. More apps are being built to be plugged together, and the value of the combination is much greater than the sum of the parts. So much focus on this from industry and analysts.(Gartner in particular)

3.Virtual Reality & Consumer Robotics

2015 is already been a successful year for this field which showcase some information about both Virtual reality and robotics and it is believed that next year will be a ground breaking year for this emerging technology (robot called Pepper was launched on the market in June in Japan). It is anticipated that over the upcoming several years there will be considerable uptake of solutions in this area. This is likely to be particularly impactful in the entertainment industry, but it will also have ramifications for healthcare and industry.

4. 5G

With 4G seeming as if it only just launched yesterday, anyway 5G is just around the corner. There are reportedly plans to test a 5G network in Europe by End of 2015 but real momentum starts in 2016, and some of the big companies in this sector like Huawei, Ericsson and KPN are already involved. Verizon Wireless is planning to field test 5G and aims to put actual services onto the market by 2017.

5. QOE, IoT & IOE (IoT/IoE Architecture & Platforms)

Daily consumption of High definition videos, uninterrupted IP video delivery continues to grow, which needs to have tools to make ensure quality levels. While Quality of Experience (QOE)/ QOS indexes are most widely utilized in video delivery. These matrixes are used to validate how users perceive towards the specific technology and their usage behaviors. Ref :https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/video-streaming-qoe-reach-500-million-2020-rajeev-tiwari-acp-?trk=pulse_spock-articles

IoT platforms complement the vast network of applications and services architecture an organization can govern. Management, security and integration standards of IoT platforms are the core to building elements in the Internet of Things as a whole.

Standards in the IoT/IoE platforms also help to set the capabilities for communicating and controlling endpoints in the IoT/IoE, along with its security and overall management


6. Adaptive Security Architecture & Advanced Systems Architecture

Developers should find new ways for perimeter defense, to detect, respond, and predict attacks through continuous blocking and adapting application scenarios. Apps should have ways to protect themselves, with security people involved at the design phase; and this needs to be supported by test and field diagnostics. Its mandatory to be reviewed by systems that continuously analyzes user and entity behavior. New architectures built around field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are being used for things such as face recognition. Due to adaptive changes in technology and gadgets its very important to have such architecture in place for personal and professional security.

7.SSDs take a bigger bite out of the data center

Already flash beats spinning disk in price-performance for IOPS-intensive applications such as VDI or high-performance databases, because equally perform ant spinning disk requires so many spindles to keep up. All-flash arrays and SSD-packed servers are no longer rare. Plus, everyone is excited about 3D NAND, which will offer much higher SSD capacities and performance. Many big players have filled their data centers with SSD’s for better power conservation and Performance reasons.

8.Advanced Machine Learning

Fundamental and research-level topics around machine learning problems mostly with discrete and combinatorial structures. Example problems, mathematical models and representations (structured prediction, estimation with sparsity structure, graphs, negative correlations and diversity, etc.) and suitable algorithmic techniques using smooth and non-smooth convex optimization, decomposition techniques, sub-modular and combinatorial optimization. People will need to engage at a higher level as a result.


9. Bluetooth beacons

Bluetooth powered Beacons 'lighthouses' – are now being installed in shopping malls, museums, hotels, airports and even offices that can track the exact location of a smartphone or smart watch wearer, and send them real-time notifications. So far it's been rather lamely talked up as a way of texting vouchers to passing shoppers, but beyond mobile commerce the spread of intelligent, wireless Bluetooth beacon hardware also means indoor mapping and much, much more. At any rate, Bluetooth beacons are about to emerge as the links within, and between, the Internet of Things, the smart city and the smart home.

10.The hybrid cloud gets real

Difficult work “hybrid cloud.” Was it supposed to mean integration between on-premises infrastructure and the public cloud? The integration of any two clouds? If it required a private cloud set up like a public cloud, well, so few of the former exist, the hybrid cloud might as well be mythical.

Conclusion:

Other important areas could get attentions i.e, payment gateways, Smart robotics, SmartCar’s,Bitcoin technology, Cloud based video games, Fitness wearables and Self-charging phones
check following links:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-strategic-technology-trends-2016-rajeev-tiwari-acp-

Video Streaming QOE to Reach ~$500 Million by 2020

Reference: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/video-streaming-qoe-reach-500-million-2020-rajeev-tiwari-acp-?trk=pulse_spock-articles

Daily consumption of High definition videos, uninterrupted IP video delivery continues to grow, which needs to have tools to make ensure quality levels. While Quality of Experience (QOE)/ QOS indexes are most widely utilized in video delivery. These matrixes are used to validate how users perceive towards the specific technology and their usage behaviors.

Everyday video consumption growing and current infrastructure is not capable to support it, so underplaying Content delivery networks, have been forced to scale to keep up; even with best scaling algorithms or best available Hardware’s, single CDN architecture is not enough for current video usage. As 4K, 8K and now 11K (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/11k-mobile-display-3d-capabilities-rajeev-tiwari-acp- ) and higher bitrates become more commonplace.

This continuous momentum will affect even small operators. The increasing shift Dynamic CDN architectures to better handle this network load goes hand in hand with QoE and QOS;

Dynamic CDN setups can be handed by a big telecom giant and sometimes in a singular product. Mobile networks will also add valuable points, with an estimated 150,000+ petabytes of mobile video streaming usage predicted in 2019, the importance of mobile network optimization and QoE will continue to affect a majority of viewers.

Irrespective of mobile video streaming or traditional telecom providers service providers are primarily focused on minimizing the Quality of experience, which can reduce content delivery on mobile devices without any unwanted delay. Number of new innovations added around Congestion detection, Congestion minimization, Congestion elimination, Dynamic Bandwidth shaping, effective network topologies etc. and many more Biggest challenge for telecom operators to reduce the RTT delivery.

Gstreamer Basics

Public, Private, and Hybrid Cloud Computing Types

Reality or Hype,Public, Private, and Hybrid Cloud Computing Types

Cloud computing comes in three forms: public clouds, private clouds, and hybrids clouds. Depending on the type of data you're working with, you'll want to compare public, private, and hybrid clouds in terms of the different levels of security and management required

Public Cloud
A public cloud is one in which the services and infrastructure are provided off-site over the Internet. These clouds offer the greatest level of efficiency in shared resources; however, they are also more vulnerable than private clouds. A public cloud is the obvious choice when 

• Used to run operations significantly more efficient, for example, with the storage of non-sensitive content, like online document collaboration, emails and more.
• Your standardized workload for applications is used by lots of people, such as e-mail.
• You need to test and develop application code.
• You have SaaS (Software as a Service) applications from a vendor who has a well-implemented security strategy.
• You need incremental capacity (the ability to add computer capacity for peak times).
• You’re doing collaboration projects.
• You’re doing an ad-hoc software development project using a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering cloud.

Private Cloud

A private cloud allows customers the benefits of cloud computing—self-service, automation, consolidation and metered usage—but behind the safety of their firewall on their own virtual private network. Although there are many advantages to the public cloud, enterprises very rarely deploy 100% of their applications into the public cloud. Logistically, it is often much simpler to move from your on-premises environment to a private cloud than from on-premises to public cloud. Private cloud environments can be configured to support any application, just as your datacenter currently hosts it. Private cloud is an especially attractive option if certain features in legacy applications prevent some applications from operating well in the public cloud.

Ideally suited for any organization that needs to store and process private data or carry out sensitive tasks. A private cloud could be utilized by companies that are required by regulation to store sensitive data internally and who will still want to benefit from some of the advantages of cloud computing inside their business infrastructure, like on-demand resource allocation.

Hybrid Cloud:
With hybrid clouds, organizations mix and match public- and private-cloud resources based on technical and business requirements. For example, an organization may run an application primarily in its private cloud, but tap into public-cloud resources during periods of peak demand. Or it may run an application primarily in a public- cloud environment while keeping some data relating to that application in its private cloud for compliance reasons.

A hybrid cloud could also theoretically consist of multiple private and/or public clouds. The enterprise data center denoted in the illustration may have active servers (virtualized or physical) that are not included in the private cloud.

Important benefits o Operational flexibility: run mission critical on private cloud, dev/test on public cloud o Scalability: run peak and bursty workloads on the public cloud.

Myth vs Hype >> Cloud with SDN

Cloud Computing is the use of data center servers and software networks to dynamically allocate resources and run Applications for remote end users. Typically divided into three categories (private, public, and hybrid) cloud deployments have grown rapidly in recent years, promising cost savings and greater flexibility over traditional private data centers.

Virtualization is key for cloud computing. By allowing physical servers to run one or more virtual machines on demand, cloud architectures offer rapid scaling and efficient allocation of server resources on the fly.

Cloud technology including Public Private and Hybrid explained at following article http://streamingcodecs.blogspot.com/2015/10/public-private-and-hybrid-cloud.html Private cloud refers to cloud infrastructure dedicated to a single company and accessed by a private network connection, operating on servers managed either internally or by a third-party provider. For many organizations in highly regulated industries, private clouds remain the solution of choice. Cloud infrastructure platforms such as OpenStack offer a framework for private cloud deployment and management, and a bevy of vendors have begun releasing supported versions of the open source platform.

The public cloud refers to services such as Amazon Web Services, which sell server resources (rather than dedicated physical servers) accessed over a public network such as the Internet.

Hybrid cloud (sometimes called “cloud bursting”) is the combination of multiple clouds. For example, a company could use public cloud services to handle temporary bursts of activity that exceed private cloud capacity. Some companies also use private clouds for certain sensitive business units while hosting less critical applications on the public cloud.

The equally important characteristics to successful cloud networks including: (from Brocade Open analysis report)

·       Scalable and high performance

·       Extensible and interoperable

·       Policy and automation driven

·       Software-centric

·       Content-aware

·       Multi-domain/multi-tenant

·       Secure

Combining a variety of virtual and physical components, the networking portion of the cloud solution is much more complicated and comprehensive than typical networking solutions. Most clouds include a network orchestration or virtualization piece that provides abstractions to hide the complexity necessary to maintain and scale these clouds and make them much more manageable.

Clouds, cloud networks and related technologies will drive a significant shift in the networking market in the years ahead.

Agile, responsive enterprises are built on agile, responsive neatly into this philosophy. They reduce network complexity, adapt easily to change and enable you to respond quickly to business needs. 
SDNs can trigger a dramatic revolution in data center efficiency.
It’s difficult to deliver services and keep competitive with infrastructure designed for a simpler, less complicated time. During the era of client-server computing, most network traffic flowed from the data center to the clients in what’s known as a north-south traffic flow. Infrastructure. Software-defined networks (SDN) fit

Four ways to create an SDN

Create a flexible, adaptive path forward solution, regardless of the SDN approach you choose

The programmable approach. Many networking companies rely on a standards-based, programmable SDN approach that eliminates any dependency on proprietary software. You can implement programmable — as well as traditional and controller-based — networking solutions on one common platform. Open Z and S series switches support the Cumulus Networks Linux-based operating system for networking hardware, and networking operating System, and others.

Data packet payload manipulation and Service deployment:

On-box encryption and VPN, customized encryption algorithms, deep packet inspection, application awareness requiring payload inspection, ability to inject packets into a network stream Open Flow has no ability to instantiate a service directly on a network element. Service examples include firewall, Wide Area Application Services (WAAS), intrusion protection system (IPS) software, SDN Enabled broadband network gate (BNG), video monitoring, etc.

The centralized-controller approach:The Open Network Foundation, NEC and Big Switch Networks place control at the edge of the network with SDN controllers that support multiple network switching and routing devices. You can implement this approach with your choice of NEC and Big Switch Networks joint solutions.

The virtualization/hypervisor approach. VMware, Midokura and Microsoft use software-defined virtual switches to control the network — without requiring SDN/Open flow in the switching hardware. You can implement this approach with your choice of VMware, Microsoft and Midokura joint solutions. 

Cloud architectures have become pervasive across data centers, enterprises, and communication service providers, but the “cloud” is more than just architecture, it is also an approach and a mindset. In today’s social, mobile world, cloud applications have to scale dramatically and fail fast or succeed fast, and the new IT infrastructure has to support these requirements.

Fifty five percent of enterprises today use cloud computing, and more than sixty percent of businesses expect to have external-facing applications in the cloud within the next two to three years.