BYOD, cloud computing, security, virtualisation and video conferencing are among the issues that are on top of the minds of attendees at this year’s Gen-i ICT Conference.
In feedback surveys, as well as in the video below, attendees listed technologies such as cloud computing, mobility, virtualisation, security, video conferencing and unified communications as those they most wish to take advantage of. Continue reading
The Gen-i 2013 ICT Conference comes to a close in Auckland tomorrow, after travelling to 11 cities across New Zealand over the past four weeks.
And we’re expecting it to be a vibrant event with over 300 people anticipated to join us at the Viaduct Events Centre, from 12pm.
Themed “Engage the Future of Business”, this year’s ICT Conference provides innovative and insightful perspectives and opportunities for businesses making technology decisions which strategically impact their future success.
During the 2012 year, there was ‘much ado’ about the impending deadline of the Mayan calendar, or rather, it’s inference to an ‘end-of-things’. While this never came to pass, we cannot say the same for the looming Microsoft end-of-life support for their Windows XP desktop Operating System. Windows XP will no longer be a supported OS after April 2014. No exceptions!… unless you can petition Microsoft through your size & importance on a global scale, and be prepared to pay the additional (approximate) US$250 per XP desktop annually.
As our new CEO Tim Miles has stated in a Herald article recently, at Gen-i we are focussing on the convergence of key ICT trends – Mobility, Cloud, Social Applications and Big Data. These trends are all inter-related and show the shape of ICT in the future.
In my article Bring Your Own Everything I talk about the convergence of the first three. But it’s Big Data that has many New Zealand businesses scratching their head and trying to find out how it is relevant.
Big Data is typically defined by three V’s;
Re-defining “Volume”
So the only scary one there for us is the definition of “Volume”, when associated with “Big” – even large businesses in New Zealand are small in a global context. But slight changes to the definition of “Volume” make it much more relevant for New Zealand.
Even though we have smaller data sets, there is still explosive growth – possibly beyond the capability of existing reporting solutions and beyond the current infrastructure or connectivity capacity.
Also the volume doesn’t have to refer to your data; it’s more about getting insight by combining your data with that of your partners or readily available online sources.
Making Big Data relevant for New Zealand
To gain from the Big Data trend doesn’t mean you need to be massive. You just need to be clever.
The benefits of Big Data can be realised without purchasing expensive, enterprise grade toolsets. Instead, you can use your existing tools in a different way.
Imagine having fast and timely reporting on a marketing campaign, which combines data from door sensors, website statistics, the Point Of Sale system and Twitter feeds. This would give you information you can use – genuine insight that can quickly change and improve the campaign while it is underway, rather than realising the reason for failure a month after it has finished.
It could also be an export. We already make money as a country selling scientific data to the rest of the world – Big Data will make it easier to find new buyers, with new uses for that data.
At its heart, Big Data is just a different way to think about the information you have access to – how to make it work smarter and faster for better decision making.
The local technology industry has the potential to lead economic growth for New Zealand, and can even be the country’s top GDP contributor by 2017.
This is the view shared by NZICT CEO Candace Kinser at this year’s Gen-i ICT Conference.
