Trends Identified
IT worker of the future - A new breed
Scarcity of technical talent is a significant concern across many industries, with some organizations facing talent gaps along multiple fronts. The legacy-skilled workforce is retiring, and organizations are scrambling for needed skills in the latest emerging, disruptive technologies. To tackle these challenges, companies will likely need to cultivate a new species—the IT worker of the future—with habits, incentives, and skills that are inherently different from those in play today.
2015
Tech trends 2015 - The fusion of business and IT
Deloitte
CIO as chief integration officer - A new charter for IT
As technology transforms existing business models and gives rise to new ones, the role of the CIO is evolving rapidly, with integration at the core of its mission. Increasingly, CIOs need to harness emerging disruptive technologies for the business while balancing future needs with today’s operational realities. They should view their responsibilities through an enterprise-wide lens to help ensure critical domains such as digital, analytics, and cloud aren’t spurring redundant, conflicting, or compromised investments within departmental or functional silos. In this shifting landscape of opportunities and challenges, CIOs can be not only the connective tissue but the driving force for intersecting, IT-heavy initiatives—even as the C-suite expands to include roles such as chief digital officer, chief data officer, and chief innovation officer. And what happens if CIOs don’t step up? They could find themselves relegated to a “care and feeding” role while others chart a strategic course toward a future built around increasingly commoditized technologies.
2015
Tech trends 2015 - The fusion of business and IT
Deloitte
Software-defined everything - Breaking virtualization’s final frontier
Amid the fervor surrounding digital, analytics, and cloud, it is easy to overlook advances currently being made in infrastructure and operations. The entire operating environment—server, storage, and network—can now be virtualized and automated. The data center of the future represents the potential for not only lowering costs, but also dramatically improving speeds and reducing the complexity of provisioning, deploying, and maintaining technology footprints. Software-defined everything can elevate infrastructure investments, from costly plumbing to competitive differentiators.
2015
Tech trends 2015 - The fusion of business and IT
Deloitte
Continued economic growth?
The financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 significantly reduced economic output in many developed countries, particularly in Europe. While its continuing impacts are apparent in less optimistic long-term economic projections for Europe, virtually all mainstream outlook studies foresee economic expansion globally in the coming decades as Asia's huge populations continue their shift to Western patterns of production and consumption.
2015
Assessment of global megatrends - an update
European Environment Agency (EEA)
Intensified global competition for resources
As they grow, economies tend to use more resources — both renewable biological resources (see GMT 8) and non-renewable stocks of minerals, metals and fossil fuels (addressed in this chapter). Industrial and technological developments, and changing consumption patterns associated with growing prosperity all contribute to this increase in demand.
2015
Assessment of global megatrends - an update
European Environment Agency (EEA)
Growing pressures on ecosystems
Driven by global population growth and associated demands for food and energy, as well as evolving consumption patterns, the pressure on the Earth's ecosystems is continuously increasing. Despite some positive developments, such as a recent reduction in the rates of tropical deforestation, global biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation are projected to increase.
2015
Assessment of global megatrends - an update
European Environment Agency (EEA)
Diverging global population trends
Across the world, the basic determinants of population size and structure — fertility, mortality and migration — have been fundamentally altered by the processes of social and economic development. As a result, the global population doubled to 7 billion in the last half century and will continue growing fast in coming decades, although regional trends differ markedly. In advanced economies, populations are ageing and in some cases reducing in size. At the other extreme, populations in the least developed countries are expanding rapidly. Migration is also affecting the distribution and structure of populations, as people move in search of higher earnings or to escape conflict or environmental degradation.
2015
Assessment of global megatrends - an update
European Environment Agency (EEA)
Living in an urban world
Urbanisation is an integral aspect of development. As countries transition from primarily agricultural economies, the shift to cities offers substantial productivity gains. Jobs and earnings in urban settings create strong incentives for internal migration, often reinforced by government policies and environmental degradation. Only later in economic development do urban-rural disparities begin to dissipate, easing the pressure for further urbanisation. Together, these drivers have brought extraordinary changes to the geographical distribution of humanity during the last century. Whereas just 10–15 % of the global population lived in urban areas in the early 20th century, that figure had risen to 50 % by 2010 (WBGU, 2011) and is projected to reach 67 % by 2050 (UN, 2012). Almost all of that growth is expected to occur in today's developing regions, with urban populations there increasing from 2.6 billion in 2010 to 5.1 billion in 2050.
2015
Assessment of global megatrends - an update
European Environment Agency (EEA)
Changing disease burdens and risks of pandemics
The world is currently experiencing a major shift in health problems related to economic development and changing lifestyles. Since 2000, the global burden of disease from communicable diseases (such as HIV, tuberculosis, and measles) has been outweighed by non-communicable diseases (such as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes). Non-communicable diseases are also the most important cause of death in the world and are typically associated with developed-world lifestyles. But although communicable diseases are globally in decline, they still pose a significant health burden, especially in the developing world. A third factor in changing health conditions is the persistent threat of pandemics.
2015
Assessment of global megatrends - an update
European Environment Agency (EEA)
Accelerating technological change
The pace of technological change is accelerating. The shifts in technological paradigms that once were separated by centuries or millennia — such as the development of agriculture or the industrial revolutions based on steam and then electric power — are now occurring within a single lifetime. Indeed, the pace at which new technologies are being adopted by the market and used in society has rocketed over the past century and a half. In the early 1900s, it took more than 30 years for a quarter of the US population to adopt telephones and radios — but more recently, the World Wide Web reached this level in only seven years.
2015
Assessment of global megatrends - an update
European Environment Agency (EEA)