2019 Volume 1

2018 is dead. Long live 2019.

So, what of 2019? If, like me, you are keen to expand your selling powers and try to dust off your crystal ball at this time of year, normally one has an inkling of what the year ahead has in store. However, 2019 is different. It feels different. It could well be the year of.....well, not much really. A limbo year. A year to take stock. But still a year of opportunity if you know where to look.

Why do I feel this way? Well, here are a few casual observations and some maybe-over-a-Guinness musings for your little grey cells. 

GDPR has come into our lives and been overshadowed by Brexit; companies have gone from worrying about EU data protection refulations to worrying about the EU itself. This is not helped by the spectre of a Noel Edmond's Deal or No Deal, with Mrs May as the banker trying to outwit 27 players. The problem is that we, and they, all know what is in her box.

Artifical intelligence is still in its infancy in terms of ABB (Actual Business Benefit - just invented that metric) and has been talked about in the same breath as chatbots and VR and AR. Yet, here we are all, still safe in our jobs, not being replaced by robots and certainly not living in a Ready Player One virtual world. Last time I looked, people were still making technology decisions and signing those contracts, not the other way around.

Whilst we see a lot of ABB in the Internet of Things, the real kicker will be 5G networking. However, this is still 12 months + away and, until then, M2M communications, whilst a reality now, will be still at the handshake level, the 'where am I and let me tell you something' level of alerts and messaging, not true M2M, AI-driven communication. When they arrive in anger at speeds 10x, 20x faster than we know now, 5G and Narrowband IoT will open the Pandora's Box of mobile communications once and for all, meaning it will become intrinsic not only to us as individuals (as it is now), but to corporations, to governments, to countries. A key business technology, not just a cost-centre. And do not forget, it empowers their associated machines. The rise of the machines? Maybe.

With this connectivity, real-time becomes literal, not simply a euphemism for 'almost real-time'. Remote surgical procedures, instantaneous disaster response situations, life-saving decisions, these will all be forever changed, as will new ways to do business, automate decisions and change the way money is made and invested. But this is some time off. As of now, we are left with extending 3G and 4G the best we can, living off antiquated mobility contracts and delivering value to individuals - not necessarily corporations as a whole. Well, not quite yet, anyway.

The Internet of Space. Software Defined WAN. 5G. IoT. Drones. Milestone methods of connectivity (drones, driverless cars - other forms of physical connectivity when you think about it, they are not simply transport). The step-change in connectivity is happening fast but 2019 is going to be about SD WAN. It will be (probably is, not sure as I write), the fastest growing WAN technology for sure, allowing organisations to deliver services quickly, with agility, shrinking geographies and overcoming traditional obstacles simply there due to the old, cumbersome networking infrastructure paradigms. We are seeing a step change and companies like Vodafone are separating the underlay from the OTT solutions in the SD WAN world, that awful jargon simply meaning the long-awaited delivery of bespoke networking, truly vendor agnostic and completely borderless. This is somewhere to lay your hat for the year ahead, I am positive. Underlay is not just about carpet afterall. Who knew?

As for the other connectivity milestones, Elon Musk continues to work with NASA, as do 9 other enterprises, facilitating cheap and simple (in relative terms) ways of putting people and things in space. Moon bases as well, apparently. So the Internet of Space is coming for sure - high-speed, ubiquitous backbone satellite connectivity that will integrate with 5G and SD WAN. Total communications. Zero timelag for critical deployments, immediate delivery, uberfast connectivity and unlimited possibilities. The convergence of travel and communication for the first time ever - that is the future, right there. Be anywhere, think instantly, do immediately....communication is only held up by distance, travel, 20th century tec and people's imagination. We are right at the cusp of removing all boundaries of how we travel and communicate.

Cyber threats continue to hit the headlines and 2019 will not see the end of them. In fact, someone will be hacked to the point of going bankrupt, as the GDPR boys will finally grow some minerals and hit them with the full force of the regulation. Kaboom. Hacking, phishing, mining, attacks....these are words we associate with the last 10 years but, as we move into 2019, nothing has changed.

Firewall vendors and their product schtick, DDoS, CASBs, Z-Scalers, GDPR audits done by the Big 4, these are all still happening around us and to us and it would appear that nobody knows how to combat the ever-more sophisticated world of cyber terrorism (that is the only word for it). Nothing is sacred. Not even our children - the organised hacking of schools is the latest installment in the Game of Cyber Risk. One thing is for sure - 2019 will bring about a change in how we personally secure ourselves and how organisations look to protect themselves from the cyber liability and lawsuits. Know Your Customer score will become a regular conversation piece for the IT Man About Town in 2019, with mobile companies such as Vodafone leading the way in using their industry-leading KYC scores to work with enterprise clients and public sector organisations to help remove passwords through the delivery of integrated security solutions.

GDPR and cyber threat has, strangely, come with a couple of benefits, assuming people have been taking note and not running around with their hair on fire. GDPR and security (by design, by default, no less) is now 'essential'. What does essential actually mean? It means it is the lifeblood of any organisation. Will you take out an account with a bank that has been hacked? No. Will you buy a IoT connected car from a manufacturer that has been hacked? No. We all make different decisions now, based on different insights, based on both fear and trust, love and hate. Not just on the best deal. A hack can kill a brand. No way back. Kaput. We citizens of the world are now a savvy, picky and wary bunch.

So, flipping this on its head, for the security-rich, GDPR-ready organisation, there is the now the enhanced ability to, quite simply, look at things. We call it Business Intelligence these days. Or Big Data. We can look at all this information, stare at it, make decisions using it. And the more connectivity we have, as outlined above, the more in depth this information is, the richer the content and, consequently, the more accurate and expansive one's decisions can become. Somewhere in your Big Data is your KYC score. Somewhere in all this data is your next $10m. $100m. Who knows.

All I can say is this - all that investment in GDPR and cyber security, all the information and insight that organisations now have about their customers, internal and external, allows them to secure, adapt and grow their brands, building new bespoke products and services and driving new revenue streams. That looks a bit like Digital Transformation to me. On top of all this, assuming you buy into this theory, you can now leverage the Big Data of your partners. Sci-Fi? Nope. Reality.

Federated Big Data. That is the next 2019 'thing' for sure. Using your partner's knowledge and insight, with intelligence, insight and analytics, to find and execute a real business advantage; for example, anonomysed global mobile data can be used for.....the list is endless. Put shops where people go who buy your product, set up aid stations to help victims of epidemics, position ATMs to get the most use out of them, reroute deliveries to miss traffic jams. You think of some more. Companies like Vodafone now offer these insights as a service and organisations are quickly understanding the value of federated big data. Best you do too for 2019 will be a Big Year for Big Data.

So, 2019 Volume 1, over. And it is slightly more exciting than I first realised when I set out to write this little blog. Hmmm. Big Data. KYC. SD WAN. Mobile consolidation. Planning. The underlay for the future. The plotting, scheming and advising season. The foundation year before Uni really kicks off. That is 2019. The year before the big things happen. The year to steal a march on the opposition, perhaps. The year to PoC some new tec. The year....well, the year of Brexit as well, just to dampen the spirit a little.

2019 looks quite exciting. Ready?