Western Sydney Business Connection - Gold Member HWL Ebsworth's Top 2015 Technology Predictions

Gold Member HWL Ebsworth's Top 2015 Technology Predictions - What To Expect From A Legal Perspective

16-Dec-2014 16:43 | Anonymous

According to several press reports quoting respected global ICT industry analyst IDC, worldwide ICT spending is predicted to grow to more than US$3.8 trillion in 2015, an increase of 3.8 per cent over 2014 (see for example www.arnnet.com.au).

Some of the more interesting of IDC's top tech predictions for the coming year include:

most spending growth will be on so called '3rd Platform' technologies, that is 'as a service' technologies;
the uptake of cloud based 'infrastructure as a service' will grow by 36%;
the analysis of video, audio and images will emerge as a driver of 'big data' products;
'big data' supply chains (i.e. data as a service) will emerge as a cloud service to offer customers value-added data from raw commercial and open data sets;
IDC predicts that there will be two or three major mergers, acquisitions, or restructurings among the top-tier IT vendors, and consolidation generally;
a new category of 'data as a service' will emerge providing organisations with 'threat intelligence' as a service – threat information specifically related to that organisation; and
China will become a major influence on the worldwide ICT market, accounting for 43% of worldwide ICT industry growth.

A few examples from 2014 illustrate the explosive change in the tech industry that underpin IDC's predictions:

Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp for US$19B. WhatsApp's value was in the personal data it held on its (at the time) 450m users (WhatsApp had few employees, almost no physical assets and its technology was unremarkable and freely available). Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, commented at the time: 'I may be wrong, but WhatsApp may be the first company with 1B+ users that is not worth anything';

Uber – the 'share' taxi service – explosive growth and valuation this year at US$40B;
Apple Pay - more than 500 banks and all major credit card companies working with Apple;
Bitcoin - the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, Tokyo based Mt Gox, suffered a hack that cost the company around 750,000 bitcoins worth about US$474 million. New York has proposed Bitcoin regulations that may establish a legal framework for the digital currency;
The EU Court of Justice's so-called 'right to be forgotten' ruling in May; and
Net Neutrality - In January, a U.S. appeals court struck down the FCC's 2011 regulations requiring Internet providers to treat all traffic equally. In response, the FCC proposed in April this year to allow broadband providers to engage in 'commercially reasonable' traffic management. Last month President Obama called for the retention of the net neutrality proposition, urging the FCC to reclassify broadband as a regulated utility, imposing telephone-style regulations.

From a legal perspective, it is becoming critical for business to understand the risk and compliance framework that underpins the data economy. As the local and international requirements for due diligence become ever more stringent and company officers are held to account for their actions, the coming few years are likely to see an increased requirement for an understanding of the legal risks inherent in the commercial exploitation of data. Well understood risks including privacy, confidentiality and sovereignty are likely to be joined by new risks including:

Net neutrality – towards an environment where networking is provided as a service, the regulation of net neutrality seems a likely possibility;
Digital currencies and pay wars are likely to lead to the introduction of regulation to safeguard against the kind of loss suffered by the Mt Gox exchange;
Disruption to regulated industries – Both Uber and other so called 'sharing' services (example, Lyft, Sidecar, Airbnb) face battles with regulators in highly regulated established industries; and
The right to be forgotten means that Google and other search engines are required to edit history – leading to disputes over what should or should not be deleted.