The year of 2012 saw the continued and healthy industry adoption of cloud computing. But the industry really experienced widespread adoption of enterprise mobility, driven largely by bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trends and the consumerisation of information technology.

Businesses reviewed and adopted technologies that could help employees leverage the efficiency and flexibility of mobile, cloud-enabled networks in a manner that is seamless, personalised and secure.

The rampant adoption of portable smart devices accelerated the ease to create, consume and share data at high speeds and exponentially larger quantities, , 

Shifting business demands had a direct impact on IT spending. Canalys reported that global data centre transformation will be valued at US$128 billion this year, up 6% from 2011, with the Asia-Pacific region accounting for a quarter of global data centre investments in five years.

Businesses are embracing transformative and disruptive technologies to improve their capability to support rising big-data trends from social platforms and within the business environment.

In addition, a perception shift has seen the IT department move from being a cost centre to a value centre.

The rise in the big-data phenomenon has led businesses to rethink the power of big-data analytics to gain insights and empower decisions.

In the public space, pre-empting the spread of diseases and gaining insights into voter preferences during elections are fast becoming a reality. To tap into, and put a human face on, the societal impact of big data, EMC launched an initiative based on the premise that real-time visualisation of data collected by satellites, and by billions of sensors, RFID tags and GPS-enabled cameras and smartphones around the world, is enabling humanity to sense, measure, understand and affect aspects of our existence in ways never before imagined.

2013 technology outlook

The economic outlook in Asia continues to stay positive, with emerging markets taking the lead in driving the economy forward under immense pressure to improve business performance, productivity and efficiency.

Forward-looking organisations look to IT as a way to achieve business priorities and objectives.

As Asian businesses invest heavily in building resilient infrastructures, analyst firms such as Canalys predict total IT investments to grow by an average of 5% per annum to reach $152 billion by 2016. This supports global spending patterns, with IDC predicting an increase in cloud storage spending to reach $22.6 billion by 2015.

EMC expects continuing momentum in the following areas:

1. IT transformation: consumerisation of IT and BYOD trends is fuelling demand for technologies that are more responsive and offer access any time, anywhere with any device in a reliable, scalable and secure manner.

Virtualisation and cloud-based services form a large part of this transformational journey. 2013 will pave the way for a more mature IT environment where transforming applications, infrastructure and backup capabilities are critical for businesses moving in an era of mobility and business intelligence.

2. Big data: 2013 will be an even more promising year of big data and data scientists as businesses look to leverage analytics to uncover greater insights and derive value for that competitive edge.

By 2016, Asia-Pacific will generate the most cloud traffic. Organisations will do well to harness the power and value of big data to improve business agility and intelligence for higher productivity and a better return on investment.

In line with the explosive demand for analytics, Gartner and IDC report that there will be a shortage of data scientists to manage the data. They estimate demand of one million big-data jobs in the Global 1,000 companies by 2015, but only one-third of those will be filled.

Research firm Nucleus claims that public and private sector organisations that leverage technology to examine large and complex data sets will see a return on investment of 241%. Businesses will need to look into their big-data talent pool early to meet the challenges of the coming year.

3. Trusted IT: virtualisation, cloud computing, mobile technologies and the emergence of big-data applications have dramatically altered how organisations create, deliver and manage information.

The increasing exposure of information within rapidly expanding IT infrastructures, application portfolios and cloud environments opens organisations up to new forms of security risk. Organisations will increasingly need to develop systems and solutions that mitigate these risks while observing regulatory compliance for data protection.

Against a challenging economic backdrop, EMC will continue to operate from a position of strength to innovate and accelerate customers' journey to cloud computing, helping organisations store, manage, protect and analyse information in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way.

Nathakorn Potejanasaj is country manager of EMC Information Systems (Thailand) Co.