Business Technology Roundtable

The scale of fraud targeting U.S. federal government programs has reached staggering proportions, demanding immediate attention from policymakers and technology leaders alike.  Recent findings from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveal that federal government fraud losses range from $233 billion to $521 billion annually – representing 3 to 7 percent of federal obligations. This massive drain on public resources demands innovative solutions and a fundamental shift in how government agencies approach fraud prevention. If fraud was stopped, the savings could eliminate the annual Social Security Trust Fund deficit, and support the departments of Homeland Security and Commerce, with enough left over to fund most of the food assistance programs run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Growing Sophistication of Fraud The challenge has grown particularly acute in recent years, with fraudsters becoming increasingly sophisticated in their approaches. During the pandemic, we...

So far, 2014 has turned into a banner year for CIOs that have invested the time and effort to plan for hybrid cloud services, while building strong strategic relationships with their Line of Business leadership. Their approved capital investment budget spend is on-track and operational expenses are contained, as planned. Savvy senior executives across the globe continue to make selective investments in new business technology. In fact, there could be a moderate IT infrastructure spend over the next 12-18 months, which will likely increase the demand for open source software and professional services as new cloud service projects are approved. Worldwide IT spending is now forecast to increase by 4.5 percent in 2014 at constant currency, that's according to updated projections from the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). By and large, this enterprise growth is still being driven by smartphones, apps and the mobile cloud. Aside from mobility related inv...

The top predictions for 2014 business technology investment, according to Gartner Inc., include a focus on disruptions brought about by digital business, the Internet of Things, smart machines and the onset of what they call the Digital Industrial Revolution . That forward-looking view can be balanced by their current IT expense outlook. Worldwide IT spending is forecast to total $3.8 trillion in 2014 -- that's a 3.1 percent increase from 2013 spending of $3.7 trillion, according to the latest market study by Gartner. In 2013, the traditional IT market experienced flat growth, growing 0.4 percent year over year. Spending on devices contracted 1.2 percent in 2013, but it will grow 4.3 percent in 2014. Gartner analysts said convergence of the PC, ultramobiles (including tablets) and mobile phone segments -- as well as erosion of profit margins -- will take place as vendor differentiation will be based upon the price of a device. Software Applications Investment Remains Consta...

Senior executives have been waiting for actionable insight from the mass of information that their IT departments already gather about their customers. But many have become very impatient -- because they want to see results, now. Do you anticipate that data analytics and real-time visualization will advance next year? Ovum expects a significant wave of business technology ramp-ups in 2014, in response to the market demand . They predict a growing third-party vendor and IT services ecosystem that creates Big Data and Fast Data tools and solutions for the enterprise data warehousing and applications markets. This growing trend is occurring as SQL and Hadoop platforms are diversifying, adopting multiple personalities, and providing overlapping functions. According to Ovum’s latest market study, SQL queries can now be run against Hadoop, and many SQL databases will be able to handle JSON document-centric queries. And as silicon-based storage -- DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) and...

Big Data applications have gained new momentum in the marketplace, as the benefits of working with larger and larger data sets enables analysts to spot key business-related trends. International Data Corporation ( IDC ) released a worldwide forecast of Big Data opportunities, noting that the market is expected to grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $16.9 billion in 2015. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40 percent -- or about 7 times that of the overall Information and Communications Technology (ICT) market. "The Big Data market is expanding rapidly as large IT companies and start-ups vie for customers and market share," said Dan Vesset, program vice president, Business Analytics Solutions at IDC. IDC believes that for business technology buyers, opportunities exist to use Big Data solutions to improve operational efficiency and to drive innovation. Use cases are already present across industries and geographic regions. "There are also Big D...