Technology trends in a global and local scaleIT is one of the interesting field in the world, the way its evolving shows how much it has impacted the world. Allow me to discuss some few important things about this subject beginning with the trends across the globe in 2012 and beyond and those that are local here in South Africa.
1. Cloud ComputingWhy inspecting Cloud?
The reasons why I have discussed this trend are because of its popularity in our days today and since South African are embracing it. Therefore I believe that by discussing cloud will contribute to the existing literature on this topic. Negative Repercussions of Cloud Computing Cloud computing is making its way to the top more as especially in Africa. An article by Sean Gallagher shows Africa is embracing cloud. The trust is that Cloud computing has affect every sector even those who don't know about they somehow use to much greater extent. Cloud computing is one of the emerging trends in South Africa and around the world cloud computing has the potential of providing efficiency in the private and the public sectors. Lamb (2011) suggests that cloud computing will assist green IT and reduce the cost of energy. ETRO (2010) describe cloud computing as “an Internet-based technology through which information is stored in servers and provided as an on-demand service to clients, possibly jointly with the traditional form of access”. Through the use of cloud computing companies such as Google have introduce application like Google doc, Google map, etc. which work mainly on cloud. Cloud computing in the aspect of power management has the biggest advantage (Angepat, 2009), again cloud can be in a dimension of salacity and portability using the fact that one can access the files at any time. However they are some major negative impact of cloud computing. Cloud computing is maintained and supervised by a third party this on its own opens a doorway for security threads and confidentiality of data. Since South Africa has recently adopted cloud computing they are many things that need to be overlooked in terms of security. The data in cloud computing is not specifically segregated thus it is distributed throughout the cloud network and causes problems when specific data needs to be segregated. Also another weakness is that cloud is the dependence on network connectivity. So as South Africa is going for cloud it is important look for such thing as network failures because this could result in loss to the company by causing extensive time delays. Angepat (2009) found that there are no federal policies addressing how government information is accessed. If there is anything important about cloud computing it is availability as we approach 2013 we need to make further inspections on the availability of cloud since most companies now rely on it. To avoid these security issue there must be a law that will control privacy Big DataWhy investigation Big Data
Big Data is a global and a local trend. Large companies around the world have the problem of being overwhelmed with big data, information grows every day and as it increase also its complexity becomes difficult to handle. Companies like Deloitte gather their data form different sources. The data is often scattered and unstructured so this makes things hard for their employees to manage this data. There are also other government organizations that are victims of big data such as health sectors and home affairs. Thus discussing about big data will create more streams of knowledge on this subject. Negative Repercussions of Big Data Managing large information in the most efficient way is perfect but also has some negative effects in this article I will focus on three Negative Repercussions about big data. If South Africa can fully implement big data possibly this is what will happen: if used by law enforcement due to the evidence of corruption in almost all government sectors in SA this can lead to more corruption. Because they can use it to trace any information, they can also use it to trace information tenders which one reason for corruption in SA. The use of Bid Data could possibly open door for organized crime, and give hackers a chance to access people’s and company’s confidential information. Data mining can be used by insurance companies and banks to treat people unfairly – example they can approve or deny applications and sometimes create false credit cards or else lower their customer credit limits based the repayment history. Because of this data mining may increase social stratification. Lastly Big data corrupt people's privacy without even them knowing I highlight also on the creation of e-toll system data mining here also treat people unfairly. The only way to deal with these issues employ people with strong character and ethical values and for those who are already in they must be taught and be motivated to about ethical values. Social MediaSocial Business
Social Media is a very diverse topic so I am only going to focal on business side. I think it is important to discuss this trend due to the evolution of social media on business (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter) almost all companies are now using these social network to both network and market their brands. Negative Repercussions of Social Business in SA Social media are actually young but growing at a very rapid rate. I can across this interesting blog “Why Your CEO Needs to Jump on the Social Media Bandwagon" and I think this might just give you an idea of how significant social media have become. Social media will invade the business world in just a moment as we see now in 2012 almost all prominent companies either have a Facebook page or are on Twitter. Today, it seems impossible to do business or even keep on with competition if you are outside the virtual world or cyberspace. Deloitte one of the biggest IT companies in South Africa might also add to the prediction of 2012 on Social Business where give us the idea of how social media has affected their business environment. With this in mind I think we are going to see more of social media in the business world this year. ReferencesAngepat, S. P. C. M. (2009). Cloud Computing: Analysing the risks involved in cloud computing environments
ETRO, F. (2010). The Economic Consequences of the Diffusion of Cloud Computing (World Economic Forum). Lamb, J. (2011). Green IT and use of Private Cloud Computing in South Africa ieeexplore. VansonBourne. (2012). The Business Impact of the Cloud Avanade. (2010). Global Survey: The Business Impact of Big Data. Moxie. (2012). Moxie 2012 Trends Report. Deloitte predicts top 10 tech trends in 2012 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/deloitte-predicts-top-10-tech-trends-in-2012/65290 |
Some thing interesting in Africa |
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