MANSFIELD, Ohio – The future of internet technologies for businesses is not a matter of cost, it’s a matter of value. NCORITA’s fourth technology conference focused on “The Future of IT.” Keynote speaker Carl Deal challenged attendees to think about how the technologies he was about to speak about could be applied to their world.“When we start talking about digital, start talking about the future, first of all is extinction,” Deal said. “Extinction is driven by the choices we make—it’s self-inflicted. The second is it’s inflicted upon us by the choices our competitors make, or don’t make, and the forces of natural selection in the marketplace.”Deal is an executive partner with Gartner Inc. He advises technology and business executives on strategy and innovation to attain profitable growth.He said people often talk about what’s “possible” when it comes to technology. Instead, the focus should be on the present, like the current application of digital refrigerators and how enthused pharmacological companies are for the application of storing medications like insulin. Stored in the refrigerator, if a patient failed to return the bottle to the refrigerator, they could receive a text message reminder.“Everything we’re going to talk about today is in production, in practice, somewhere,” Deal said. “The question is where’s it going? By 2020, there will be 30 billion internet of things—30 billion things connected to the internet. There will be 7.3 billion personal devices.” Deal also noted that digital and mobile are taking over the consumer-buying.“By 2016 more than 2 billion online shopping will be performed exclusively by digital and mobile assistance,” Deal said Gartner predicts. “Seri now has the capability of placing orders and buying things for you. So, here’s how it applies to you.“The good thing is the internet in mobile technology is great because it’s personal. The bad thing is it’s driving consumer behavior to where it’s going to hit us on the business side. It’s going to impact how we exchange funds in the business world.”Other technological innovations he described that are in use or in production today included digital tattoos, digital dust that can read the existence of land mines, digestible chips in production in the United Kingdom, retailers using 3-D printing, and digital doorbells that can allow people to answer their doors remotely—or as he described, he could answer the door for his 75-year-old mother.“By 2018 the total cost for business operations will be reduced by 30 percent by smart machines for industrialized services,” Deal said.Robotics is replacing human activity.That doesn’t come as a surprise. The top two products produced on 3-D printers are eyeglasses and custom gold jewelry. Looking forward, smart parts, self-aware parts, will show up on manufacturing floors.Customer experience innovations is the future, said Deal. Amazon and Google offer the same products and services “within pennies of each other.” And why does the consumer choose one over the other?“It’s the customer experience. Who is the easiest to do business with? The reason Amazon Prime is so cheap is so you come back,” Deal said. “We have to be able to generate a customer experience that will make our customers want to come back to us.”“No matter what the future holds it’s going to be based around these three components: It’s going to be data intensive; it’s going to be security intensive; it’s going to be network intensive,” Deal added. He said the need is to be agile--not fast, but agile. Agility for an organization is the ability to change direction quickly.