Type of Article: MacTech Blog

Worldwide information and communications technology (ICT) spending is set to accelerate over the next five years, thanks to the growth of new technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), and cognitive computing and artificial intelligence (AI).

While the latest International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Black Book forecasts traditional ICT spending to lag GDP growth by 2020, total ICT spending including these new categories will return to growth rates double that of the global economy.

Worldwide shipments of PCs, tablets and smartphones are predicted to exceed 2.35 billion units in 2018, an increase of 2.0 percent from 2017, according to Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com). This would be the highest year-over-year growth since 2015, notes the research group. 

TripWire (www.tripwire.com), a provider of security and compliance solutions for enterprises and industrial organizations, has announced the results of a survey conducted by Dimensional Research that looked at the need for soft skills in cybersecurity. The survey was conducted in July, and its respondents included 315 IT security professionals at companies with over 100 employees.

A new study by Juniper Research (www.juniperresearh.com) has identified the top 10 smart cities in the UK, with London topping the list. Below London are: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bristol, Manchester, Brighton & Hove, Liverpool, Oxford, Birmingham, and Milton Keynes.

IDC has published its first Marketscape assessment of the worldwide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market. The Marketscape is focused on global public cloud IaaS providers with mature public cloud IaaS services and revenue in multiple regions worldwide as of calendar year end 2016.