I’m no expert in economics, but I can see the numbers and it looks good, but what about the future? As much as an economist can look at all economic indicators, I look at it from my frame of reference, how will technology contribute to the Regions growth from 2020 and beyond?

The World Economic Forum has identified five areas technology can help economic growth, they are

• Direct job creation
• Contribution to GDP Growth
• Emergence of new services and Industry
• Workforce Transformation
• Business Innovation

Let’s explore those further

Technology can play a direct part in job creation by employing and attracting good talent from outside the region. With the initiative like Tech-Collective in Ahuriri, which houses Xero, Re-Leased, Now and others, Hawkes Bay can leverage this success because of strong infrastructure and lifestyle to attract further investment.

Technology can and does contribute to GDP growth through innovation and efficiency gain.

Ultra-Fast Broadband for example will continue to drive growth. And as the governments UFB program comes to an end in 2022 (87% of NZ homes with fibre to the door) the region is well place to increase productivity through further up take of high-speed internet.

Chorus (the Governments major partner for UFB) have claimed a 10 percent increase

in productivity for small and medium businesses through internet usage further, small and medium companies that use web technologies grow and export twice as much as their peers.

Research from Sapere Research Group also “estimate that an additional 10% of employees gaining access to UFB in the workplace would result in a gain of 1.62% of gross domestic product (GDP)”.

That number is not insignificant and if we add in the possibility of a 5G network we can assume a positive outcome for growth to the region.

With good infrastructure comes the emergence of new services and industries. Cloud computing will continue to drive efficiency for small business and as mentioned before Hawkes Bay is well placed to accommodate new businesses.

For my mind, Internet of Things (IoT) is likely to create new services in our region. For example the management and ongoing analytics of data captured will create new services, particularly in our horticultural base, although not in any way limited to that.

Using data analytics for Ag and Hort companies by collaboration are likely to be at the forefront of these new entities. The ability to measure data all the way along the chain, from plant selection and orchard management through to harvesting, sorting, transporting and point-of-sale will be the key driver for any new business.

Workforce Transformation is one of the most exciting for our region. Shortages of pickers continues to be a serious issue for the growth of the pip fruit industry, and this inevitably will drive technology into the field. Although still in infancy prototypes of picking machines are hitting the orchards but aren’t likely to have too much impact in the short term as they require orchards that are designed for robotic pickers.

Although we are seeing automation in packhouses and this will continue as industry replaces existing plant. The advantages will be in efficiency, reduced wastage and technology that will compliment existing workforces. For example, stacking or loading pallets is a physical and tiresome job but a robot can easily do this thereby redirecting labour to more value add positions.

Business Innovation is something I think we do quite well in this region, sometimes out of necessity. Sometime it doesn’t have to be a huge innovations. As the roll out of fibre extends to the more regional parts of the region, simply moving to an online presence can mean growth for the region.

Towns like Wairoa, Takapau to name just two will benefit from faster broadband and unrestricted plans.

Having a tight labour market encourages innovation and uptake of technology. The challenge is being able to fund the transition to some of this technology, like robotic pickers. They are extremely expensive to build and deploy and also require orchards to be redesigned to enable access for the robot.

Clearly embracing technology in our business has real tangible benefit and the challenge is to make sure you have the right technology partner that understands your business. As I mention the completion of the Governments UFB roll out will continue to have a positive impact of our economic growth.

Also, I can’t overstate the power of collaboration of data sets, particularly in the Ag and Hort sectors. This will have a significant impact on the sectors performance, yield and workforce cost. The challenge like always is what do I need to do to prepare my business for this.

Smartphones, love them or hate them they are now a critical business tool that enables a huge amount of work to be done almost anywhere anytime and we have come.

A long way since the humble smartphone hit the shelves. The first successful smartphone arguable was the blackberry, (or due to its addictiveness nicknamed “Crackberry”). Excellent device for keeping on top of those emails, but it was Apple that really stepped things up in 2007 when they launched the first iPhone. This became the benchmark.

Fast forward and what we have today really doesn’t compare to those early devices. With mobile data growing exponentially the smartphone today is truly a very powerful tool. We stream content to it, we consume media through them and of course we connect with each other through social media. These devices mean we are more productive while working remotely than was ever imagined.

So what’s in store for the smartphone this year?

Often new innovations in smartphones will be launched at events like CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and while not all of them hit the market it does give a measure of where the market is and what we are likely to see. Smartphone launches can be a bit like the automobile show where concept cars are displayed each year. The difference is, innovation in smartphone do tend to hit the market and quickly due to the still competitive global market

In the coming year new innovations by all account will centre around a couple of new designs. Firstly foldable devices are all the talk at the moment and Samsung seem to have given its greatest signal yet with the Galaxy X. The device will fold out to 7.3 inch (larger than the + devices but smaller than a tablet). Its folded size will be around 4.6 inch.

The challenge for manufacturers with foldable phones as well as flexible screens is the components need to be flexible- including the battery. Purportedly Samsung are looking at two batteries, one for the inner and then the other for the outer screen. This means the outer battery only needs to be used when the device is fully open.

The other big move in devices will be 5G capable devices. As some countries have moved or started to move to 5G devices will need to be capable of these new speeds. At the moment there are no devices, so it would appear the industry still sees this as an emerging market and this year will give us an indication of when manufacturers think the shift will come.

5G will enable faster downloads and more content to be streamed which may in its own way sprout new innovation around it, much in the same way fibre was able to develop streaming services like Netflix.

Augmented Reality functionality hasn’t taken off yet but many of the leading manufacturers have embedded the functionality into their software. Apple launched the iPhone X and later the XS with much fanfare around the AR function. The tape measure app that comes preloaded in iPhone is an example of AR practical use. Working with major companies Apple are trying to lead the market (and hence own it) with collaboration with businesses like Ikea.

The feeling is AR is not destined to stay within smartphone hardware. True AR will require additional equipment like headsets and glasses. But in the meantime, smartphones are developing this within their current designs and as mentioned some are collaborating heavily with industry players, particularly retailers.

Further evolution of biometrics with an improved fingerprint scanner. Developing fast is the on-glass fingerprint scanner. Real estate on a Smartphone is highly competitive (think why Apple remove Headphone Jack) and why everything is getting smaller. Personally, I think this will be one development that is likely to be the standard moving forward. If a manufacturer can re-proposition the space currently taken up with a scanner then they are surely going to do it. Why would they do that when there is reliable face ID recognition?

Because no one likes to have put their password into a phone and that’s what is inevitable you have to do if the face ID failures.

It will be interesting to see what the two main players Apple and Samsung launch this year. Samsung usually launch their flagship Galaxy device around March and Apple launches in September. CES is currently on again in Las Vegas, and it will be interesting to see what the other players in this market release there.

The Smartphone is one of the most useful business tools, it gives flexibility in work, it gives answers on the road and over the coming decade I’m keen to see what this will morph into and how this will enhance our lives. Perhaps it will become redundant by wearable or implanted devices, perhaps it won’t, but as we wrap up holidays with family and friends, one of its most useful functions at this time of year is the do not disturb function.

There has been quite a bit of discussion and some excitement around 5G coming and what that might mean for us here in New Zealand.

Firstly, what is 5G. Simply 5G is the fifth- generation mobile network. In 1987 1st generation was deployed in New Zealand and this was all about voice, 2nd generation in the 90s was digital enabling text, 3rd and 4th generations were all about data. 5G is all about the data as well but has some unique characteristics that really do take it to the next level.

The real excitement around 5G is the increase in speed and capacity as well as low latency. Downloading a HD movie in about 10 seconds compared to around 10 minutes using 4G. Initial trials in New Zealand have indicated speeds of 9 Gbps outdoor to 19 Gbps indoor and latency of around 10ms to potentially 1ms against current latency of around 50ms.

Those impressive numbers mean applications that currently require low latency and which are data heavy will now be able to be carried out remotely enabling a new generation of remote applications.

This is where the benefits of 5G will be realised, its ability to enable remote working where it couldn’t be done before due to the nature of the business. This could translate into the ability to access data in the field through Augmented Reality (AR) which at the moment may be too data hungry or low latency dependant. More on this later.

Globally 5G is being developed and deployed in many countries, as I write this Verizon in the US (Indianapolis) has deployed a 5G network (although not on international 5G standards) this week and have released it to the consumer market through consumer wireless broadband plans.

South Korea is poised to be the first country to deploy 5G completely. South Korea’s three main operators are banding together to deploy 5G services by March 2019, making it the first country if they meet that date.

The Europeans have set up a 5G Action Plan aimed at aligning roadmaps for a coordinated deployment across member unions.

New Zealand is set to deploy by 2020 through Spark. There are some challenges to meeting this timeframe, notably no spectrum has been allocated for 5G and while Spark as a temporary licence they would want that to be permanent to commercially deploy in New Zealand.

What would happen to your business if you lost a server, had a hard drive failure or lost/broke a laptop, tablet or mobile phone?

Would your business be able to pick things up and continue to operate the business?

For those with a Disaster Recovery Plan, probably yes, and for those without one, possibly but with more difficulty than those businesses that do have a plan.

So what is Disaster Recovery (DR)? It is the process of planning and implementation to ensure the business systems operate in the event of some form of disruption to those systems. As opposed to Business Continuity, DR focusses on systems, rather than people and processes

Disaster Recovery (DR) is the process of planning to ensure the business can operate with minimal disruption should a significant event occurs that affects systems.

The importance of planning around DR is as important as any other planning the business undertakes and the advantage of capturing this plan is the process itself to ensure all aspects of the business are captured

So in order to prepare and plan one of the first things to do is to work out what your RPO (recovery point objective) and RTO (recovery time objective) are. RPO is the point in time when you recover your data. For example, are you ok with losing all data created in the last month? The last week? The last 24 hours?

RTO is the maximum time you will tolerate an IT system, network or application to be unavailable. For example, can your organisation function without email for an hour? A day? A week?

Once you have decided the RPOs and RTOs for critical IT services and applications you should then check that your backup regime reflects that. If not then this is the weakness you will need to address through appropriate planning and shortfall management.

Incorporate telephony in as well, both mobile and fixed as this can be forgotten because we assume its not important or critical. Simply identifying what data is kept on devices may lead to a policy around employees back ups on devices, (think photos and contacts).

With the proliferation of smartphones Im surprised at how often I see business owners with smartphones that are not backed up. Unfortunately I have also seen the reaction when they realise all their data is lost because the phone is either lost or unable to be restored.

I heard an instance where a sales manager held all the companies customer and prospect information on his iPhone, when he lost his phone he and the business lost all of that information simply because he didn’t back up the device.

Consideration for the type of event and different scenarios may also be worth while. In New Zealand we are fortunate to have a really robust electrical and telecommunication system with well over 99% reliability. This enables some confidence in the event of a major disaster like Christchurch that you can pick up business as long as you have access to the internet and power.