Worldwide IT spending is forecast to grow 3.6% to $3.8 trillion (€2.8 trillion) in 2014 as opportunities of a digital world excite IT leaders, according to Gartner.
“The Digital Industrial Economy will be built on the foundations of the Nexus of Forces (which includes a confluence and integration of cloud, social collaboration, mobile and information) and the Internet of Everything by combining the physical world and the virtual,” said Peter Sondergaard, SVP and global head of research at Gartner.
Gartner expects that in 2020 there will be up to 30 billion devices – up from 2.5 billion in 2009 - connected with unique IP addresses. Most of these will be products such as mobile phones and PCs.
Gartner predicts that the total economic value add for the Internet of Things will be $1.9 trillion dollars in 2020, benefiting a wide range of industries such as healthcare, retail and transportation.
“In the technology and telecom sectors, revenue associated with the Internet of Things will exceed $309 billion per year by 2020,” said Sondergaard.
He said that as all of these “things” connected to the internet generate data, cyber security will be an ongoing concern, both inside and outside the enterprise.
“The security of embedded technologies that your organization has right now may be the most important operational responsibility you will have in 2020,” added Sondergaard. “Digitalization will create new infrastructures and new vulnerabilities in our infrastructures.”