Business news round-up: UK £1.9m cyber security spend, 2017 biz tech predictions & £217bn SME contribution

Outages show importance of cloud backup and recovery strategies

David Linthicum, an internationally recognised cloud industry expert, recently offered his thoughts on the latest cloud backup trends and disaster recovery lessons learned from the Delta Air Lines outage in August.

"Data protection is changing in the world of cloud computing, as IoT comes into play [and] big data systems come into play," says David. "We have a lot more data to protect these days."

He advises that as data from IoT devices and big data systems proliferate in the enterprise, there are a number of ways IT teams should adapt their cloud backup and recovery strategy.

To read David’s advice in full, visit his article on Search Cloud Computing.

UK government re-announces £1.9bn cyber security spend

The UK government has announced a £1.9bn increase in spending on cyber security. The government said the five-year spending increase was part of its new cyber security strategy, unveiled on 1st November 2016.

In a speech at GCHQ on 17th November 2015, then Chancellor, George Osborne, said the government was making cyber security a top priority, and announced the same investment.

According to current Chancellor Philip Hammond, the funding will support the development of automated defences to safeguard citizens and businesses against growing cyber threats.

For further details, visit the Computer Weekly website.

Job-creating impact of International Festival for Business 2016 revealed

According to an independent evaluation, commissioned by Liverpool Vision, the International Festival for Business 2016 (IFB2016) is expected to deliver approximately £250m of sales for UK businesses and create more than 2,000 jobs.

The three-week UK festival was this year hosted in Liverpool, and ran from 13^th June to 1^st July. IFB2016 welcomed 103 international delegations made up of 800 companies from across the globe.

More than 500 UK businesses secured or are expected to secure £87 million in export sales as a direct result of the festival. Domestic trade is also strong, with over 850 UK businesses reporting that they had secured or expect to secure £145 million of UK sales.

Visit Insider Media to find out more about IFB2016 and the survey’s results.

5 business technology predictions for 2017

Steven Scheck, the Principal of a leading US Wi-Fi network provider, has offered his five predictions for technology in 2017.

It is Steven’s belief that digital transformations have reshaped almost every aspect of businesses, and he has included the following in his list of the predictions that will define technology implementation in businesses for the next year:

• The impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) on customer experiences; labelled as ‘the next Industrial Revolution’
• The prevalence of hybrid wireless technologies, which connect two or more devices
• An increase in the influence of big data on businesses, leading to upgrades in speed and efficiency
• Virtual and augmented reality will become more appealing to audiences, resulting in a marketing shift
• Mobility will become ‘the new norm’ for businesses, setting the trend for years to come.

The read the list in more detail, view Steven’s article on the Business2Community website.

SMEs to contribute £217bn to UK economy by 2020

According to research carried out by Hampshire Trust Bank and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), the UK’s small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) are set to increase their added value to the economy by 11% over the next three years. This will swell their total economic contribution to £217bn.

The figures demonstrate particularly strong growth for businesses in Manchester and Leeds, which are both predicted to grow by 15%. Similarly strong growth is predicted in Bristol, which could grow by 14% to £4.2bn, and Birmingham which could see growth of 11% to £6.49bn.