Software and services firms will have a good year in 2014.

Software spending by businesses and government will rise by 6.2%, while the canny consultants who explain how to use the stuff will enjoy revenue gain of 5.7%, according to Forrester.

Among the hottest areas is “cloud computing”, in which data are hosted in remote servers rather than locally. Red-hot “software as a service” (SaaS) apps will help companies cut costs by letting them rent rather than buy software. Businesses are keen, despite worries that data in the cloud are vulnerable to cyber-criminals. Consumers will join them in greater numbers in the cloud.

The trend towards Big Data is getting bigger; industries from advertising to sports will collect terabytes more in 2014. The Big Data market will grow by more than 30% in each of the next few years, IDC reckons. Interest is especially keen in America, which is driving global IT spending. Concern among netizens about how firms use their personal data will spread, but not coalesce into a backlash. More serious doubts will cling to the financial viability of unregulated data-mining companies: the value of basic personal information on an individual can be as low as $0.0005, so achieving high volumes is imperative. Companies will still struggle to make much sense out of Big Data, as data analytics produces…yet more data.

To watch: Data exchange. Cloud computing will be commoditised. In early 2014 Deutsche Börse will open an exchange for trading cloud-computing resources in Frankfurt and New York. Cloud Exchange will allow organisations to sell unwanted remote computing and storage capacity, or buy extra.

From The World In 2014 magazine, © 2013 The Economist Newspaper Limited.  All rights reserved.

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