IDC: 3rd platform will dominate in 2014.

• Position: TRENDS - International Data Corp

I's that time of year again. All the research analysts are issuing their predictions for 2014. The International Data Corp.'s (IDC) top-10 information and communications technology (ICT) trends, summarized in the following, were heavily influenced by the emergence of the "3rd platform"--the "emerging platform for growth and innovation built on the technology pillars of mobile computing, cloud services, big data and analytics, and social networking."

1. Worldwide IT spending will reach $2.1 trillion in 2014. It will be driven by 3rd Platform technologies, which will capture 89% of IT spending growth.

2. Emerging markets will return to double-digit growth of 10%, driving nearly $740 billion or 35% of worldwide IT revenues and, for the first time, more than 60% of worldwide IT spending growth.

3. Within the 3rd Platform, value will start to migrate "up the stack," from infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to platform as a service (PaaS) and from generic PaaS to data-optimized PaaS. Expect Amazon Web Services to roll out several PaaS offerings for developers and higher value services for businesses, forcing incumbent IT suppliers (including new-to-the-market Google) to urgently reconfigure themselves to fight for position.

4. The mobile device onslaught will continue in 2014 with sales of tablets growing by 18% and smartphones by 12%.

5. Cloud spending, including cloud services and the technology to enable these services, will surge by 25% in 2014, exceeding $100 billion. IDC expects to see a dramatic increase in the number of data centers as cloud players race to achieve global scale.

6. Spending on big data technologies and services will grow...