Sit back and relax

Google has been building self-driving cars for years, but what we've seen so far has always been retrofits of existing cars — until now. The search giant unveiled on Tuesday a fully autonomous self-driving car, built from the ground up by Google and its partners.

Company co-founder Sergey Brin revealed his plans at Recode's Code Conference in southern California. He told the media that there's a safety benefit in a custom-built self-driving car. Because the car doesn't have a steering wheel, accelerator or brakes, it has more sensors in strategic spots than is possible in a regular vehicle. It is also equipped with a big "stop" button. In addition, Google's autonomous car even includes internal power steering and power brakes.

As for when the cars (which are significantly smaller than traditional cars and include couch-like seating)—might actually make it to real highways, Google will soon test them with drivers and hope to see them on the roads "Within a couple of years.”

What do you think of Google’s latest creation? Could you trust a driverless car on the road? Would this ever realistically make it to market or is it another publicity stunt?

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The Future Is in the Cloud

Competition is a wonderful thing. And the increased competition in cloud services – especially the intense battle among Amazon, Google, and Microsoft – is resulting in services and pricing that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.

The personal cloud business includes virtual storage services and data sharing. In the past couple of years, adoption has ballooned: the global number of personal storage accounts reached almost 1.25 billion at the end of 2013, racking up 60% annual growth since 2011.

For the past several years, it's become common to consider cloud services as an alternative to on-premises applications and internal data centers. But with the new levels of pricing, controls, and options, it's now getting to the point where most organizations can assume cloud first, and only use internal applications and datacenters when they have a compelling reason to do so, at least for new applications. We're moving from a world where cloud services are no longer just an option, but are instead becoming the default.

The Industry Report Store has a brand new report which examines the consumer cloud market from the telecom operator perspective, with an in-depth analysis of the personal cloud storage opportunity. The Personal Cloud: A Strategic Imperative for Operators presents an overview of the role of operators with a look at Orange's cloud services as well as the Personal cloud market trends, players, opportunities and positioning strategies for network operators.Contact us if you would like sample pages or if you want to enquire about any other reports in our library. 

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Smartglasses 'would boost workplace efficiency'

The use of smartglasses like Google Glass would boost worker efficiency in several verticals including manufacturing, field service, retail and healthcare, a new Gartner report noted.

The analyst firm predicts that smartglass adoption in the US would rise to 10% by 2018 in firms with offsite workers, including field service personnel and inspectors.

Gartner research director Angela McIntyre said that smartglasses with augmented reality (AR) and head-mounted cameras can boost the efficiency of technicians, engineers and other workers in field service, maintenance, healthcare and manufacturing roles.

"In the next three to five years, the industry that is likely to experience the greatest benefit from smartglasses is field service, potentially increasing profits by $1bn annually," McIntyre said.

"The greatest savings in field service will come from diagnosing and fixing problems more quickly and without needing to bring additional experts to remote sites."

The launch of economical, consumer versions of smartglasses would also assist in further adoption because half of the firms that would benefit from these gadgets will offer them to some of their employees who could utilise them, the analyst added.

Adoption of smartglasses would be rather slow as the benefits they offer will be dependent on the apps and services aimed at smartglasses, the report also suggested.

The new gadgets are anticipated to have the most impact on heavy industry, including manufacturing and oil and gas, with medium impact on mixed industries, such as retail, consumer-packaged goods and healthcare.

Gartner also anticipates some of the essential functions of smartglasses would assist in boosting efficiency in the enterprise.

Gartner principal research analyst Tuong Nguyen said that given these advances, the goals of corporate training may evolve away from memorising procedural steps to knowing how to use smartglasses and access key information using voice commands.

"Classroom training and tests on the content of manuals can be reduced since much of the practical training can be done 'on the job' with the assistance of smartglasses," Nguyen said.

"However, training must always include safety and employees should continue to know how to use equipment for routine tasks."

Benefits of using smartglasses in the healthcare industry include facilitating telemedicine and authority consultations with doctors in a different location, and also serving as a how-to guide for carrying out medical procedures, as well as streamlining patient experience at the doctor's office.

"IT organisations are already being asked to make recommendations about whether smartglasses should be used in the workplace based on benefits and risks perspective, as well as policy and implementation," McIntyre said.

"Now is the time for IT organisations to refresh their bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies with smartglasses in mind.

"Though IT organisations will provide smartglasses to employees who regularly wear them for their job task, much of the IT impact may come from employees wearing their personal smartglasses at work."

Reports you may be interested in: 

• ICT Investment Trends in Western Europe - Understanding ICT Spending to 2014
• ICT Priorities in India
• ICT Priorities in Brazil

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