In preparation for my ninth set of annual predictions this is my self assessment of our published expectations for the current year. We got the market growth almost exactly right, there was above average spending growth in major oil producing countries, Blockchains (and especially Bitcoin) saw very strong adoption and value growth, consumer remained unaffected by the major data breaches in the year and new nationalism in the UK, USA and Spain certainly reduced market spending by the uncertainty these movements caused. Currency fluctuations weren’t as steep as in 2016, but still make sizing problematic – an issue largely ignore by the major computer market research firms. As always the statistics I quote here are our own and I share much more detail than I publish on this site at a country or offering level with my clients. My table shows how I score each of my last predictions.
Table – ITCandor 2017 predictions – a self-assessment
| No. | My top 10 predictions | Score | Comment |
| 1 | The ITC market will grow by 1.5% in 2017 to reach $6.3T. | 9 | We resized the market upwards, so the total will be $6.6T – the growth will be 1.3%, which is pretty close |
| 2 | ITC spending growth will grow considerably in oil producing countries as oil production is restricted, raising prices. | 10 | Yes – of the top 15 oil producing countries covered by ITCandor there was above market ITC spending growth in all but Mexico and Nigeria. |
| 3 | Suppliers will address product and services markets in genuinely innovative ways, while redefining their core businesses. | 7 | Not really, although the growing partnerships between VMware and AWS shows an attempt to continue to make hypervisers relevant in a hybrid cloud world. |
| 4 | Blockchain systems will create significant changes in the way citizens, consumers and businesses exchange and pay for products. | 10 | Absolutely the biggest ITC growtha nd success – bitcoin prices reached astonishing levels. |
| 5 | Virtual and augmented reality will be widely adopted by businesses at an industry sector and specialised application levels. | 7 | Not realy – its being adopted continuously, but made no special headway in 2017. |
| 6 | Growing business uncertainty and the reduction of the number and scope of free trade zones across the world will impact ITC sales negatively. | 8 | Yes – uncertainty has reduced spending levels in the UK all year, Spain since the first Catalonia referendum and The USA in the first half of 2017. |
| 7 | New and more useful marketing campaigns will replace the current (increasingly irrelevant) Cloud, IoT, IoE and Big Data themes. | 7 | Not really – ‘Digital Transformation’, ‘AI and machine learning’ have been the biggest themes, but the old ones are still being promulgated. |
| 8 | Internet usage will continue to expand despite major failures to protect business, customer and citizen data in 2017. | 10 | Yes – users don’t seem to be concerned about data breaches and identity theft, of which there were many in 2017. |
| 9 | Cisco will restructure itself in a major way in 2017 in order to compete more effectively with other leading ITC suppliers. | 0 | No – John Chambers announced his retirement from the board at the end of the year – perhaps a major restructuring will happen after that! |
| 10 | Growing nationalism and protectionism will have a measurable and significant negative impact, making our skills shortages even worse. | 10 | Yes – we’ve published posts on its affects in the USA, UK and Spain. |
Source, ITCandor, 2017
So overall my accuracy was 78% – better than for 2016 (74%), but worse than in 2015 (84%). I would have been considerably more accurate if Cisco had announced its restructuring (of which there is a minute possibility in the 2 weeks left of the year I suppose). In 2018 there will be all-out war between the major ITC suppliers and government – especially in Blockchain and the ‘personal data rich’ applications from Facebook, Apple and Google, which we’ll be analysing in our 2018 predictions (coming soon!).