2015 Internet Trends Report (Summary)

From Mary Meeker of KCPB

Internet usage growth is slowing

  The growth is slowing with about 40% of the world with full internet access at home.  Nearly 3/4 of us have access from mobile phones, but only about 3 billion of that 5.2 billion number have smartphones. That's just a bit more than the 2.8 billion users who have full internet access.

and the US Dollar leads the web

11 of the 15 biggest internet companies are American.  The other 4 are from China.

but Asia is growing the fastest

Internet Growth

China Users = +7%, USA = +2%, India = +33%, Japan = Flat, Brazil = +4%

Smartphones

China Subs = +21%, USA = +9%, India = +55%, Japan = +5%, Brazil = +28

China is close to surpassing the US in percentage of the global GDP.

and Messaging Platforms are the Killer App.

Government, Healthcare, And Education Are Huge Opportunities

"The Internet has already transformed the consumer and business space, where entrepreneurs can build products that meet their needs or solve pain points. Larger, more regulated spaces that are less accessible or comprehensible to the average entrepreneur have seen less Internet-driven innovation, and are essentially sitting ducks for startups." - Tech Crunch Summary

for Enterprise Entrepreneurs

        "‘Enterprise’ Internet Entrepreneurs Often Pursue Prior Company Pain Points" - Slide 30

The most successful businesses have already moved to the cloud

stripe.com Online Payments
domo.com Business Intelligence
docusign.com Digital Signatures
intercom.com Customer Service
gainsight.com Sales Management
directly.com Support Center
zenefits.com Human Resources
anaplan.com Enterprise Planning
greenhouse.com Recruiting
checkr.com Background Checks
guidespark.com Employee Training
envoy.com Enterprise Check-in
apptrain.com Me.  That's my company.  You get me working for you :)

and of course have significant financial resources

"KPCB is a venture capital firm that owns significant equity positions in certain of the companies referenced in this presentation, including those at www.kpcb.com/companies - Slide 180"

Meanwhile, users are creating and curating content

Web users are becoming the trusted news reporters and product reviewers.  Young people today are creating their internet.  People debate and work through serious issues, for example:

Just outside the internet, we're learning that drones are useful for better things than killing people

Agriculture

This quarry hole is mine!

Inspections

Disaster Relief

A word of caution,  you are responsible for securing your data 

Lost devices, insider breaches, spyware all contribute to security breaches.

Still the workplace moves forward online, and becomes global

Service jobs are replacing goods producing jobs, with cognitive jobs growing the fastest.  More people than ever work remotely with flexible hours.  Consumers expect instant response, so businesses are open 24 hours.  Which reminds me, I've got work to do.  It's 9 AM somewhere!

What is Fog Computing?

Are you in the mood for a new technology buzzword?  CISCO's marketing department is rolling with the term 'Fog Computing'.

The Fog is an extension of the Cloud.  So in Fog Computing, data is stored closer to the devices we use to access the internet. The benefit is a reduction of bandwidth and latency.

CISCO routers already live in this grey area between out devices and big data providers. CISCO is adding Linux operating systems to some of their routers, and manage frequently accessed data with a distributed network of these router on the edge of the cloud.

by David Flectcher

Naturally several definitions of Fog Computing mention another buzzword, The Internet of Things. But the concept of caching data nearby isn't new.   My paper Smart Technology for Big Data talks about how Facebook caches images close to users based on how likely the images will be accessed.  Today's article Forget 'the Cloud'; 'the Fog' Is Tech's Future in the Wall Street Journal reluctantly embraces the new term.

Welcome to the Fog.

The Year of the Yottabyte?

Big Data has been the big technology buzzword for a couple of years now.  So recently, as a nod to big data, the term yottabyte has  become a top technology buzzword. In my upcoming paper  "Smart Technology for Big Data" (for Institutional Investor Journals)  this chart introduces big data.

Exhibit 1

Bytes	Magnitude	Common usage	Example
gigabyte (billion)	109	computer RAM	New laptops have about 8GB RAM
terabyte (trillion)	1012	discussing computer hard drives sizes	NYSE produces about 1 TB  of information day
petabyte (quadrillion)	1015	total company storage space	Facebook’s largest Hadoop cluster contains 100 PB disk space
exabyte (quitillion)	1018	all the... in the world	Global internet traffic is 21 EB per month.
zetabyte (sextillion)	1021	future storage discussions	Total size of the internet is about 1 ZB.
yottabyte (septillion)	1024	speculation	Nearly infinite.

It's a favorite exhibit of those who have read the paper. Many had never heard of terms larger than a petabyte.  In the article, I mention that the term yottabyte is used in "speculation".  But is that speculation about to enter the realm of reality?  The recent article about Twitter adding security to impede surveillance mentions that the National Security Agency's datacenter in Bluffdale, Utah is "possibly cabable" of storing a yottabyte. We're still in speculation mode but for how long?  Will 2014 be the year of the Yottabyte?

"Big Data" is so 1998

This 1998 SiliconGraphics ad from Black Enterprise magazine offers solutions for a "Big Data" world.  256GB of system memory on a server and 400 Terabytes of storage. Not bad for the 20th century. Or for this century.

The "Big Data" buzzword almost caught on in 1998, but it's sister buzzword, Data Mining won out.  In the  first chapter of "Predictive Data Mining: A Practical Guide is titled "Big Data" (also from 1998) the author Sholom M. Weiss asks "Is data mining a revolutionary new concept? or can we benefit from the may years of research on data analysis?”



Weiss goes on to say "While big data have the potential for better results, there is no guarantee that they are more predictive than small data" With all the hype around Big Data, it helps to get back to the origins of the term and realize that it's one of may interesting problems that experts in a variety of disciplines have been wrestling with for a long time.