A new year brings along trend reports from specialized research firms, and at Sentia, we always consider how the findings relate to our customers. Are these trends impacting your organization? 

Let’s have a look at what IDC Canada sees as the most significant trends on CIOs agendas in the 2016 Canadian Information & Communication Technology Predictions and Forecast: Digital Transformation and Disruption Report.

The report and webcast provide business decision makers and technology management within your organization with insights and perspective on the top developments that will affect the Canadian market in the year to come.

IDC reports that the C-suite is looking to boost its competitive advantage through digital transformation to enable business requirements. This approach is being used to drive growth and new revenue streams by transforming business models and ecosystems and to also leverage related competencies. CIOs will be leading every department to make the shift to digital transformation.

In addition, IDC states that CIOs will focus on legacy IT services and how to maintain them to address availability with limited budgets, while at the same time, increase digital transformation within the business. To accomplish their goals successfully in 2016, Companies will need to put their efforts around innovation and integration. Fostering a new culture of innovation within IT while investing in new technology will be the new imperative.

IDC draws on its industry-defining research and insights to present these predictions that explore user trends and vendor strategies that will redefine the ICT market, redistribute market share in Canada, and help leaders capitalize on emerging market opportunities and plan for future growth.

Here are the 2016 Canadian Information & Communication Technology (ICT) Predictions:

1. Digital transformation (DX) becomes boardroom topic as C-Suites drive for competitive advantage in 2016. More than two thirds of enterprises are in the early stages of the Digital Transformation journey, but few organizations are "advanced."

2. Different industries, regions, and the 3rd Platform drive growth. IT services and Software will contribute strongly to ICT spending growth in 2016, driven largely by as-a-Service (aaS) offerings and Telecom.

5. Canadians will experiment with cognitive computing in 2016 but mainstream adoption lags to 2020. IDC forecasts that worldwide cognitive software platform spending will be over US$1 billion this year.

6. Security spending will surpass C$2 billion in 2016 but Canadian businesses will still not be investing in all the right places. Organizations must take a holistic approach to designing a security strategy, and ensure that end-user security training is prioritized and implemented.

7. Vendor and partner ecosystem disruption - realignment of preferred vendor relationships begins in 2016. By 2020, 30% of vendors will not exist as we know them today.

8. Mobile business apps take off. By 2018, 60% of new applications will be "Mobile First", but Canadian businesses must move forward now to develop and deploy mobile apps quickly, securely, and cost effectively to become more competitive globally.

9. Connected Life. Canadian consumers will spend more on tech and services than clothing in 2016: connected consumer entertainment, fitness, personal health, connected cars, home automation, security, and tracking are areas of new spending growth in Canada.

10. On the horizon - Innovation Accelerators drive pervasive change. By 2020, 70% of drone deployments are expected to be driven by industry automation such as pipeline management, surveillance, farming, and offshore drilling.

"2016 is expected to be an exciting but disruptive year on a number of fronts in the Canadian ICT sector. Canadian organizations need to put in place strong executive leadership through the critical DX ramp-up stage to achieve a balance between encouraging rapid, distributed innovation and the growing need for governance and integration of DX initiatives."

- Lars Goransson, General Manager and Group Vice President at IDC Canada.

If you’d like to listen to the on-demand webcast presented last December, visit the link below to register: 
IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2016 Predictions

Read full story on IDC 2016 Predictions here.