Type of Article: MacTech Blog

A new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found that the total value of Venture Capital (VC) investment into blockchain technologies and Bitcoin companies totaled $290 million in the first six months of the year, with more than 30 startups receiving funding in that time.

By 2020, 21 billion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices will be in use worldwide. Of these, close to 6% will be in use for industrial IoT applications.

However, IT organizations have issues identifying these devices and characterizing them as part of current network access policy, said Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com) Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders must therefore update their network access policy to seamlessly address the onslaught of IoT devices, adds the research group.

By 2020, 250 million TV viewers around the world will be ready to watch shows using the latest technology known as High Dynamic Range (HDR).

According to a new report from Strategy Analytics’ Intelligent Home Group (www.strategyanalytics.com), annual worldwide sales of HDR-enabled TVs in 2020 will reach 58 million units, bringing the number of homes with at least one HDR-enabled TV to 107 million. Penetration of HDR TVs will reach nearly 25% of homes in the U.S.

Robert Herjavec, Founder & CEO of global Managed Services provider Herjavec Group, confirms the 2016 Cybercrime Report prediction that ransomware damages and related costs will reach $1 billion annually by the end of 2016. This staggering statistic, highlighted in Herjavec Group and Cybersecurity Ventures’ latest report, “Hackerpocalypse: A Cybercrime Revelation,” (http://tinyurl.com/jqtwmya) reinforces the cybercrime epidemic impacting enterprises and governments worldwide.

Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found that machine learning algorithms used to enable more efficient ad bids over RTB (real-time bidding) networks will generate some $42 billion in annual ad spend by 2021, up from an estimated $3.5 billion in 2016.

Machine learning — a subset of AI — has arrived at a point where it is both accessible as well as affordable to a wide range of stakeholders. Juniper anticipates that the technology will eventually permeate into nearly all industries in the next five years.