Digital Transformation Going Mainstream in 2016, IDC Predicts

It is the time of year when the big technology research shops gaze into the near future to identify trends that will have the most impact on corporate America and the tech industry over the next few years. International Data Corporation's (IDC’s) outlook is being published on Nov 4. It is a 20-page document, chock-full of details, and its authors are not afraid of making numerical guesses about the future. By 2020, for example, IDC says that more than 30 percent of today’s tech suppliers will “not exist as we know them today,” having been acquired or failed. Going beyond the detail in the IDC forecast, and reading reports published in Oct by Gartner and Forrester Research, the overall theme is that the pace of digital innovation is accelerating and broadening.

The digital technologies that are changing the economics and practices of traditional business -- cloud computing, mobile devices, advanced data analysis and artificial intelligence -- are better, cheaper and more widely available. “Mainstream companies in every industry are realizing they’ll be disrupted if they don’t get moving now,” said Frank Gens, IDC’s chief analyst and the report’s principal author. Many of these companies, according to IDC, are not moving fast enough. It predicts that a third of the top 20 companies in every industry will be “disrupted” over the next three years, meaning their revenue, profits and market position will deteriorate -- not that they will go out of business.