Thanks to the highly connected data centres of today, 2019 is likely to give rise to technology and processes that are undoubtedly better, faster and stronger. Bill Fenick and Bryan Hill of Interxion put their heads together to give us their expert insight into what those technologies might be.
Bill Fenick, VP of enterprise at Interxion:
Enterprises will be smarter about the cloud
The cloud has quickly become a mainstay in the enterprise. However, early on, many businesses dove in to the cloud head first, and quickly realised that not only are not all apps meant to be reengineered for the cloud, but even a lift and shift approach doesn’t always work. Because of this, in 2019, I believe that while enterprises will continue to adopt cloud in a more ferocious way, they’ll do it with a better layer of intelligence on top.
Artificial Intelligence will drive cloud adoption
As companies increasingly integrate a variety of AI-driven technologies across voice, vision, language and machine learning in order to transform their businesses and get the competitive edge in 2019, I believe they will be leveraging cloud technologies as a matter of course.
Location is becoming more important to enterprises
Today’s enterprises have the need for speed. Regardless of it being application to application or application to end user, businesses need data to move faster than ever before. As a result, in 2019 I expect enterprises to pay closer attention to the location of their data, whether that’s the location in proximity to other data sources including the cloud, or geographic location.
Bryan Hill, director of marketing & business development, Digital Media for Interxion:
A battle will commence in OTT
Over the past few years, we’ve seen tech giants such as Netflix and Amazon dominate traditional broadcasters when it comes to the digital distribution of content to consumers. As a result, we’ve witnessed a great deal of consolidation within the industry as traditional broadcasters try to keep up. I expect to see a battle around who can best distribute content to consumers directly in 2019.
New ad models will enter the OTT scene
Just as traditional broadcasters must make money, today’s new OTT players need to as well. However, because OTT providers like Netflix don’t serve traditional advertisements and have set new consumer expectations to not tolerate them, I expect in 2019 that we’ll begin to see new and different advertisement models – ranging from more product placement within series and live television to sponsored channels and content – being experimented with in efforts to create extra monetary value.
Gaming moves to the cloud
Consumers now expect video games to be available on demand and accessible from any screen, similar to how they’ve come to watch TV and movies. To meet these demands, I believe the future of gaming will take place in the cloud. Companies like Microsoft, Google, and EA all made cloud gaming announcements recently with Project xCloud, Project Stream and Project Atlas, and I expect all major gaming companies to follow suit.
OTT meets personalisation
From a user perspective, consumers are likely blissfully unaware that their OTT experiences are starting to be tailored to their unique viewing habits – a font size, menu adjustment or colour update to their user interface here, a recommended programming prompt there. However, as we continue to shift to an OTT world, I expect to see the micro-personalisation of these experiences become even more critical.
