Dimension Data, the global ICT solutions and services provider on November 29 published its top IT predictions for 2017, and the focus on digital is set to remain the key trend in the industry for the next 12 months.
Dimension Data's Chief Technology Officer, Ettienne Reinecke says digital is about building truly customer-centric business models on IT including the network, data centre, applications, and other infrastructure - which may be on-premise, or cloud-based. Today, there's no such thing as a digital strategy just strategy in a digital world. And while the digital age is creating a degree of uncertainty for some organisations, it's also opening the doors to exciting possibilities and ushering in an era of infinite potential.
Reinecke cites ownership and access to data and metadata as a key theme.
In the year ahead, control and ownership of data and metadata will emerge as a point of discussion - and indeed contention.
That's because data and metadata are the gold dust that allow organisations to glean rich insights about customer behaviour. In addition, metadata allows organisations to identify specific behavioural patterns, derive business intelligence, and make informed business decisions, Reinecke explains.
As a result, organisations are becoming increasingly protective of their metadata, and wary of who has access to it. Organisations don't just want ownership and control of their data for compliance reasons: they want it to perform analytics. We expect that this will trigger some interesting discussions between businesses and their cloud providers. For example, where are the boundaries with respect to ownership, especially around metadata. We foresee this issue resulting in a bit of push and pull among the various parties.
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