With the advent of new technologies, many companies and organizations are faced with an ever-changing business climate.
Gartner recently identified 10 emerging technologies, which will have a significant impact on consumer markets, business practices, and communication over the next few years. The company released them at the occasion of its Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. An overview of a 8 key technologies.
1. Widespread use of tablet computers
As we mentioned before, an increasing number of businesses and individuals is embracing the use of tablet computers and also smartphones for a variety of applications.
Tablet PCs can help enhance employee productivity, showcase new products and services for consumers, and help improve business to business communication. Many employees are using their own smartphones for businesses, in lieu of company provided smartphones (a.k.a. consumerization). IT departments must adapt to the changing technology needs for their business and personal clients.
2. Context-based user experiences and computing
By understanding the context of a request, technological applications and services can leverage information about a user to deliver a personalized experience.
We tackled context-aware computing previously, but it’s clear that the overall context of the end-user becomes more important. Gartner expects that, “through 2013, context aware applications will appear in targeted areas such as location-based services, augmented reality on mobile devices, and mobile commerce”.
3. Integration of IP–connectivity and the Internet of Things
As the cost of electronics has decreased over the past few years, many devices come with built-in Internet connectivity.
It’s possible for vehicles, appliances, and other devices to maintain connectivity to the internet, allowing users to receive real-time status updates and data. It seems the reality of the Internet of Things is coming closer, and three technologies play a crucial role in it:
- Embedded sensors (and other transducers such as actuators).
- Image Recognition.
- Near Field Communication (NFC) payment.
4. App-driven solutions
With the advent of the Apple Store, Android Marketplace, and other mobile platforms, many developers have released purpose-built programs.
By providing a common framework for developers, applications for user-specific purposes can be easily programmed and released. Gartner sees a strong growth in apps marketplaces and stores and, obviously, the apps themselves. From an ICT management perspective, security of mobile apps is a challenge.
5. Next-generation analytics and the cloud
As information databases grow in size, more powerful computers and programming techniques will allow companies and individuals to harness the information contained in these valuable resources.
The cloud will be playing a key role here. To quote Gartner: “Analytics is also beginning to shift to the cloud and exploit cloud resources for high performance and grid computing. ».
6. Effective storage of large datasets
Also driven by the fact that information databases have grown in size, new technologies in storage arise.
Several new technologies to manage the sheer volume of data are emerging and the single data warehouse model is coming to an end. To quote Gartner: one major implication of big data is that in the future users will not be able to put all useful information into a single data warehouse
7. In-memory computing solutions
As flash memory use has expanded for many business and consumer applications, many processor-driven applications can be offloaded to large-volume flash storage mediums.
Low level computations can be completed at the memory level, allowing for significant changes in the traditional computing architecture.
8. Cloud computing: the private and hybrid cloud
What did you expect? Cloud obviously computing remains one of the most disruptive technologies of 2012.
Many businesses, companies, and individuals have embraced cloud computing for a variety of applications. CRM applications, email applications, analytics, and other processing-intensive applications can be outsourced to central cloud computers, which can offer higher performance and energy savings.
According to Gartner, in 2012 hybrid cloud computing “which brings together external public cloud services and internal private cloud services, as well as the capabilities to secure, manage and govern the entire cloud spectrum”, will be a major focus for 2012.
Private cloud computing, as well as hybrid cloud computing, rank high in the technology lists of other research companies, including IDC and Forrester as well.
