The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said: "the only constant in life is change." This is true for anyone working in a technology-related field. The pace of technological innovation is so fast that even the most amazing imagined future seems easy to come true.

With the maturity of existing technology, unforeseen development will come faster, application and innovation from the consumer to business (and vice versa), we must constantly look for those who have the potential for our own business and our customers value-added.

Looking ahead to 2018, we believe that the following trends will have an impact on business and industry.

Edge of computing

Two big trends in recent years -- cloud computing and the Internet of things -- have brought undeniable benefits to businesses and consumers. But they also have an impact: the amount of data transferred from the connection device to the data center is significantly increased to handle and store data and the associated bandwidth required.

Edge calculations mitigate this problem by performing data processing on the edge of the network. This greatly reduces the bandwidth required between sensors and devices and between data centers. Further promote the edge calculation involves the potential of data integrity, and privacy concerns: before moving equipment to data center, inside the equipment will be anonymous and create encrypted data one possible response to these issues.

As the network cameras, audio, and other sensors - on the edge of the network equipment is becoming more and more complex, the quality is becoming more and more high, the need to balance edge of cloud computing and computing, to provide accurate, reliable and available data.

Integration between clouds.

Still, cloud computing will play an important role in IT infrastructure. While cloud computing can give the impression of a single entity, there are, of course, multiple "clouds" across the globe. As more companies provide cloud-based services, the cloud ecosystem is increasingly becoming the preferred choice for integration, rather than the traditional internal system.

One benefit of cloud integration is that IT can significantly reduce the need for internal IT services. However, advanced composite services from multiple providers can through rich API service creation and deployment, including data analysis, content management and storage, so as to shorten time to market and realize the rapid growth of mass. Any organization that delivers cloud-based services should investigate the integration opportunities associated with related services to increase the value of customers and partners.

Deep learning and machine learning.

Now that we have entered a stage, the depth of learning architecture and machine learning can start the full benefits of implementation: we have a large amount of data available for analysis, within a reasonable time of the available capacity, complex algorithm as well as case to study. When deep learning applications involve impressive presentations such as speech recognition and decision support, their potential analytical capabilities in the security and security realms will be obvious.

On a relatively basic level, deep learning applications will improve video motion detection, facial recognition, individual tracking, and false alarm suppression. It will contribute to system design, configuration, optimization, and device management. In addition, with the development of the application, predictive analysis will be able to improve the possibility of prevention events in many areas, such as terrorist incidents, slide accidents, traffic problems, burglary and so on.

Yet it is too early to tell. The current development is fast and unpredictable, and the need for processing capacity is huge, but the potential for deep learning is huge.

Personalization and privacy

One potential application of deep learning may be to provide highly individualized services. Imagine a retail environment, customers will be recognized after enter the shop, and then according to before buying, preferences, and even their recent history, the related push send to their mobile devices. But something can be done, and that doesn't mean it should be done. The example highlights concerns about privacy and how companies or other organizations use personal data.

Some areas are legislating to solve these problems. In the European Union, the upcoming "universal" Data Protection Act (GDPR) - may comply with the deadline for 2018 - to protection within the eu unity of personal data, no matter where data are stored or used.

Whether for legislative motives, or want to customers and citizens do the right thing, in the aspect of personal data and privacy protection to strengthen personalized balance will be one of the to all organizations in the coming year.

Network security

Cyber security is again on the list of trends over the next 12 months and beyond. The constant reinforcement of cyber security will be a never-ending task, as well-resourced cybercriminals will never stop looking for holes in any new technology.

As the networking equipment exponentially, the number of potential defects will appear, if not solved, can let a network vulnerable to damage, or more simply, can lead to costly downtime. There is no doubt that more attacks and vulnerabilities will emerge in 2018. Proactive and systematic processes are required to ensure that patches are implemented as quickly as possible.

The platform realizes the full benefits of the Internet of things.

When it comes to the Internet of things, it has reached a certain scale in collecting and analyzing data, and it can effectively manage the network of connected devices. For the Internet of things, using an extensible architecture is critical. The so-called iot platform allows devices from different node vendors to coexist and easily exchange information through existing network infrastructure to form intelligent systems.

There are many companies, both mature technology providers and new market participants, supporting the platform of iot devices, and will be further mature in 2018. However, it will be important for the future to be a new international or DE facto standard to achieve interoperability between different iot platforms, and to support a truly vendor-agnostic system.

Blockchain: not just bitcoins.

For many, blockchains and bitcoins have become synonymous. In fact, they are completely independent, and bitcoin USES the blockchain as the basis, and the blockchain can almost verify that anything of value is almost infinite. As an open distributed books, can be effectively record deal between the two parties, and in a verifiable and permanent way to do business, in the year ahead, chain blocks will be tested in the field of more and more applications.

In the communications industry, given the authentication block chain can be of any content, chain blocks can be used to verify from multiple sources (such as worn by the law enforcement agencies and the public mobile phone camera) of the video content, to be used for forensic investigation. In addition to video data, the blockchain can also be used to verify the authenticity of devices connected to the camera network.

Break the walls of smart cities.

The concept of smart cities (and safe cities) is not a new concept. Over the years, more and more different types of sensors have been placed in urban environments, helping to solve specific problems, such as law enforcement and air quality monitoring. As the world population is more and more living in the city, will have 25% of the 2050 people living in the city, will have more sensors are applied to create more livable, sustainable and safe environment.

However, the real smart city is a vision of urban development, integrating information, data, communication and IoT technologies in a secure way to manage the city's assets. These assets include government department information system, school, library, traffic system, hospital, power plants, water supply network, waste management, law enforcement, and emergency services and other community services.

Traditionally, most of these individual services are run in isolation. This has hindered the realization of the vision of a smart city. When all the data in a city is open and available in every service, it can be truly "intelligent". To cope with the challenge for the city, such as citizens' security, traffic jams, aging infrastructure, and response to events such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks, need coordinate analysis on existing data, in order to provide appropriate and effective response.

Non-visual sensors bring new dimensions.

Until recently, the main data (if not the only one) available to the surveillance operators could only provide a two-dimensional perspective. While using the new vision sensors, will be multidimensional, abundant data obtained, can make the situation more rapid and accurate assessment, so as to speed up the upgrading, activate the appropriate response and minimize false alarms.

For example, radar technology USES electromagnetic waves to detect movement. Radar often trigger false alarms things (such as moving shadows or beam, small animals, raindrop or insect, the wind and bad weather) is not sensitive, and can provide about the exact location of any object and the details of the direction.

Although thermal imaging technology is already relatively perfect, but in terms of sound detection accuracy, open the window and broke the window, its produce audio will bring an effective information input, and this in pure video solutions may be ignored.

Virtual assistants and augmented reality will enter the business world.

In 2016, consumers used virtual assistants in large Numbers. Amazon Alexa, Google Home, apple's Siri, and Microsoft's Cortana are all technologies that help people manage their daily lives, and technologies like Facebook can only build on that. Inevitably, these technologies will start to enter the business environment, as consumers want to get the same technical help as they do at work.

Especially for any complex or complex technical product and service provider, virtual support for specification, installation, configuration, and management will exceed expectations. This will be a priority.

Similarly, augmented reality (AR) is so far in the military and aerospace and other fields has been basically a kind of technology, but in the business field and shows great potential, especially now that it has been applied to technology and more and more wearable and mobile devices.

AR a significant opportunity in the field of business is to install and maintain technical solutions, in the technical solutions, visual directives can be overridden in the actual view of the technical staff, to help them to work. Along with the increasingly use of visual sensor and analysis to increase the accuracy of the visual information and perspectives, video monitoring of consumers will use AR focuses these data sources in a view, in order to make more fast and appropriate reaction.

There is no doubt that there will be more trends that we do not foresee in 2018, which will have a bigger or smaller impact than expected. What we do know is that we are in a rapidly changing world, and all organizations need to respond quickly from different perspectives, including politics, culture, economics and technology.

-- John paulson, chief technology officer, Axis communications.