Deloitte 2015 TMT Predictions released

Deloitte 2015 TMT Predictions released

Deloitte released its annual Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Predictions for 2015 — one of the more useful pieces of industry forecasting, because Deloitte publishes specific, checkable claims rather than directional commentary, and because the report is explicit about the reasoning behind each call.

Why this report is worth reading differently

Most technology forecasting is unfalsifiable. "Cloud adoption will accelerate" cannot be wrong.

Deloitte's TMT Predictions takes the opposite approach: numbered, dated, quantified predictions that can be checked afterwards — and the firm does revisit them. That discipline makes the report unusually useful for planning, because a prediction with a number attached can be tested against your own business rather than merely agreed with.

What the 2015 edition was tracking

The themes that dominated the mid-2010s TMT reports — and that shaped the decade that followed:

Enterprise mobility and the smartphone as the primary device. The shift from mobile as a supplementary channel to mobile as the default one, with consequences for security, identity and application design that most organisations underestimated at the time.

Security as a board-level concern. 2014 had made breaches public events. The forecasting through 2015 reflected an expectation that security spend, and security governance, would move up the organisational stack — which it did.

The maturing of cloud economics. Not whether cloud would be adopted, but what its cost curve actually looked like at scale, and where hybrid models made more sense than wholesale migration.

Connectivity as constraint. Growth in bandwidth demand outpacing what many organisations had provisioned, and the increasing dependence of business applications on consistent network quality rather than raw capacity.

Software eating the infrastructure layer. The early stage of network functions and infrastructure services moving from dedicated hardware to software running on general-purpose platforms.

Why blueAPACHE tracked reports like this

blueAPACHE has consistently published on independent industry research — Deloitte's TMT Predictions across multiple years, and Gartner's assessments of the technologies it deploys, including Veeam's progression from Visionary to Leader in the 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant and its continued Leader position in 2017.

The reason is not editorial. A managed services provider makes capital commitments on a multi-year horizon and has to be right about direction, because the cost of being wrong is a platform investment that does not pay back.

blueAPACHE's own record on that suggests the reading was reasonably good:

• 2003 — launched emPOWER Facilities Management and emPOWER Managed Services, years before managed services became the standard Australian mid-market model
• 2010 — built emPOWER Cloud and the emPOWER Network, its own cloud and national network rather than reselling someone else's, after losing an ASX-listed customer representing approximately half of company revenue
• 2012 — added voice and disaster recovery
• 2019–20 — London and Singapore Points of Presence; major HPE investment; a $6 million multi-phase Cisco ASR 9000 core network refresh
• 2024 — multi-million-dollar ServiceNow investment after an 18-month evaluation
• 2026 — ControlUp partnership, embedding agentic AI and Digital Employee Experience into managed services

Each of those was a bet placed before the market consensus formed.

How to use a forecast like this

Three practical suggestions for anyone reading an industry prediction report with a planning decision in mind:

Separate direction from timing. Most technology predictions are directionally right and optimistic on timing by two to four years. Planning on the direction is sound; committing capital on the timing is where organisations get hurt.

Ask what it means for your constraints, not the market's. A prediction about industry-wide adoption tells you nothing about whether the move suits your regulatory position, your data sovereignty obligations, or your application estate.

Check the ones that were wrong. The predictions that did not come true are more informative than the ones that did, because they reveal which assumptions the industry was collectively making.

About blueAPACHE

Founded in 1998, blueAPACHE is an Australian-owned IT services provider with more than 280 staff across Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, London and Miami, delivering managed services, cloud, cyber security, connectivity, collaboration, procurement, Microsoft technologies and advisory services under one accountable operating model.

The company holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification (certificate 202507-118, Sensiba Australia, valid 1 August 2025 to 1 August 2028) and has received more than 90 industry awards.

Call 1800 248 749.

Frequently asked questions

What is Deloitte's TMT Predictions report? An annual Technology, Media and Telecommunications forecast. The page rates it highly because it publishes specific, checkable claims rather than directional commentary, and is explicit about the reasoning behind each call.

Why does the page say most technology forecasting is not useful? Because it is unfalsifiable — a statement like "cloud adoption will accelerate" cannot be wrong. Numbered, dated, quantified predictions can be tested afterwards, and can be tested against your own business rather than merely agreed with.

What themes was the 2015 edition tracking? Enterprise mobility and the smartphone becoming the primary device; security moving to a board-level concern after 2014 made breaches public events; the maturing of cloud economics, including where hybrid models beat wholesale migration; connectivity as a constraint, with bandwidth demand outpacing provisioning and applications depending on consistent network quality rather than raw capacity; and software displacing dedicated hardware in the infrastructure layer.

Why does a managed services provider track independent research at all? Because it makes capital commitments on a multi-year horizon and has to be right about direction — the cost of being wrong is a platform investment that does not pay back.

What is blueAPACHE's own record of acting ahead of consensus? Launching emPOWER Facilities Management and emPOWER Managed Services in 2003, years before managed services became the standard mid-market model; building emPOWER Cloud and the emPOWER Network in 2010 rather than reselling; adding voice and disaster recovery in 2012; the London and Singapore points of presence, major HPE investment and a $6 million Cisco ASR 9000 refresh across 2019–20; the ServiceNow investment in 2024; and the ControlUp partnership in 2026.

How should a planner use a prediction report? Separate direction from timing, since most predictions are directionally right and optimistic on timing by two to four years — planning on direction is sound, committing capital on timing is where organisations get hurt. Ask what it means for your own constraints rather than the market's, since industry-wide adoption says nothing about your regulatory position, data sovereignty obligations or application estate. And check the predictions that were wrong, because they reveal what the industry was collectively assuming.

Is this report current? No. It covers the 2015 edition. The themes it tracked have since played out; treat the page as a record of how the period was being read rather than as current guidance.

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