Huawei 2012 Annual Report Download - page 36

Market Trends33
The age of digital business is drawing near,
as seen by our commercial dependence on
networks for production and operations.
Network developments have significant influence
on business activities. Which business today can
even continue to operate if its network fails?
E-commerce is booming and extending its reach
into every consumer buying decision, whether
involving digital content (e-books and digital
music), cars, or home appliances, or even small
items like snacks and slippers. In 2012 alone,
electronic retail sales worldwide totaled US$1.1
trillion. Information technologies will be further
applied to enterprise production and operations.
Rather than being tools or support components,
ICT will become integral to production, decision-
making, customer relationship management,
service provisioning, marketing, and logistics. ICT
will be employed in the building of end-to-end
systems that work in real time, playing a role
in each and every link, from idea generation to
product conceptualization to precision marketing
to efficient operations to on-time delivery. In other
words, digitization will become a key characteristic
of the future enterprise.
A borderless Internet gives rise to a digital society.
Thanks to the boundary-free nature of the Internet,
a large number of borderless virtual communities
and societies have come into being. A plethora of
these communities will combine to form a digital
society that transcends borders, cultures, and
races. Facebook is home to over one billion users
(or netizens), making it the third largest “citizenry”
in the world. This type of digital society, which
mirrors while extending beyond the physical world,
will undoubtedly impact many aspects of social
administration and transformation, including
politics, economy, law, culture, news & media,
security, and ethics, among others.
As a communications tool and support system,
information technologies have significantly
changed the way in which people live and work
over the past few decades. They also spawn new
economies and industries while reshuffling
traditional ones. No doubt, the increasing
integration of the physical and digital worlds will
have a more tremendous impact on society. Such
integration will direct ICT development in a way
that can better serve society.
Smart infrastructure presents opportunities
for further ICT development
Technologically-speaking, ICT innovations mainly
fall into five groups: mobility, broadband
interconnectivity, social networking, cloud
computing, and big data processing. The
objective of these innovations is to transform the
physical world into a smart world underpinned
by smart ICT infrastructure, making the latter key
to advancing information-based development.
From big data to “big” wisdom, the IT systems
of carriers and enterprises are evolving from
post-processing support systems to real-time
business systems. This transition marks a
fundamental change in how IT functions.
We are living in what may be the “big bang”
of information. In 2012, up to 2.4 zettabytes
of data (that’s 2.4 billion terabytes) was
generated globally; it would take as many as
three trillion DVDs to store all this data. By 2020,
the amount of data generated is expected to
grow sixteen-fold. This data will have two major
sources. The first is from the huge amount of
transactions between enterprises and between
enterprises and consumers. The second is from
countless interactions on the Internet, social
networks, enterprise service networks, and the
Internet of Things. Social networking will be
particularly pervasive; it will be emblematic of
all applications, not just for social networking
utilities like Facebook. Typically, big data has
four characteristics: variety, volume, velocity, and
value. Velocity and value are most important.