IDC defined the Third Platform is a loosely defined platform revolving around the four technologies of mobile, cloud, social and big data. Gartner calls "the convergence and mutual reinforcement of four interdependent trends: social interaction, mobility, cloud, and information" as a "nexus of forces".
 
HDS CTO Adrian De Luca says IT must embrace the third platform and the CIO “must respond to these requirements and become an architect and broker of business services rather than a technology-builder focused on data centre infrastructure.”
 
He cited the building of smart cities, big data in competitive industries, hybrid clouds, data driven mobility and regulatory developments as the five key trends that, combined with the local business drivers, will shape the IT landscape in the Asia Pacific region in 2015.
 
De Luca says the winners in tomorrow’s economy will be those that are able to transform themselves today. One technology HDS cited is Big Data.
 
According to HDS, Big Data has become a key business imperative for organisations operating in highly-competitive industries. For example, banks and other financial services firms are applying deep analytics on in-house data to assess borrower risk, detect churn and identify cross-selling or upselling opportunities based on spending behaviour.
 
According to a 2013 report by Forrester titled “Big Data Adoption Trends In Asia Pacific: 2013 To 2014“, there is growing interest in big data adoption across the region. The common link across all big data initiatives is an interest in using more types of data, from more sources, to enable timelier, better-informed insights. Forrester identified two use cases that drive big data awareness and investment across industries. These are demand-driven, customer relationship-oriented initiatives; and supply-driven, efficiency-oriented initiatives.
 
Figure 1: Big Data Adoption Trends In Asia Pacific: 2013 To 2014

Source: Forrester Research 2013

The next generation of big data solutions will not only require new infrastructure platforms to store and manage vast data lakes, but also the ability to analyse the data in real-time. To do this, scale-out infrastructure with machine learning, business context software will need to be tightly integrated to enable rapid and predictable deployment and to ensure optimal operation.
 
Another area that HDS recently has been making inroads into is cloud. Gartner predicts that by 2015, at least 20 percent of all cloud services will be consumed via internal or external cloud service brokerages, rather than directly, up from less than 5 percent today. The analyst cites three major challenges in the run up to cloud computing adoption: security and data privacy, governance and the cloud computing environment itself.
 
As cloud platforms reach a level of functionality and mature, the stage is set for organisations to transform their core applications to leverage a mix of private and public clouds. Solutions that can integrate both platforms to deliver a seamless hybrid cloud experience will enable organisations to achieve better cost alignment while meeting privacy and compliance requirements.
 
Savvy CIOs have been taking the initiative to move enterprise and mission-critical applications onto private clouds and at the same time experiment with the public cloud for transient internal workloads and even customer-facing web applications. With the public cloud however, the ease with which instances can be spun up and paid for is also resulting in “cloud sprawl”.
 
Cloud sprawl is an offshoot of the growing popularity of cloud computing and the deluge of vendors seizing the moment to make money off the cloud in one form or another. Virtualization, one of the foundation technologies of cloud computing, is to be blamed just as it (virtualization) is arguably the reason why we have server sprawl on a rampage in the datacentre resulting in higher management costs as IT tries to tame the proliferation of virtual servers in and outside the datacentre.