The first six weeks of 2007 have given us a hint of things to come in the IT arena, and analysts at Quocirca, a European research organisation, have outlined the technology trends they believe will emerge in the coming months.
IT security firms are already nervous about Windows Vista’s security enhancements, which include embedded protection from worms, viruses and spyware. Many consumers and small business users consider this level of security, along with the Windows Firewall, to be sufficient for their purposes and will no longer invest in additional desktop security from third party vendors. McAfee and Symantec have already launched attacks on Microsoft for the Patch Guard technology that protects the Windows kernel from unauthorised code. The obverse argument is: why shouldn’t Microsoft embed security in its products? After all, it is Microsoft that gets all the flack when the security of its operating system is breached.
Microsoft is expected to be launching upgrades for the majority of its product lines this year. Rather than rush to buy, companies are now more cautious and will wait before they upgrade. Plus the media are watching Microsoft like hawks. The next few months could be a bumpy ride for the software giant, but consumers could be the saving grace as they move to Vista.
Mobile operators are going to get even hungrier for our business. We’ve already seen some of them start to break ranks with lower cost roaming and free calls. The next step will be true flat-rate pricing, with optional pay “as you use value-add services” layered on top. While it becomes even harder for mobile operators to make money, consumers will enjoy more choice. But how long is this sustainable?
Converged communications are going to give employers a severe headache. The explosion of different means of communication and collaboration – telephone, e-mail, IM, tele-conferencing, video- and web-conferencing, Wikis and blogs – are great news for employees. But for their employers, they represent a logistical nightmare. The corporate challenge is how do you manage this mishmash of communication methods?
Blackberry is starting to look less like top of the fruit basket . . . and more like just one of the bunch. Microsoft will continue to roll out into the mobile enterprise space, but they need another player to have a line-up of Windows mobile devices, which will give it the market impact it needs. This could be the year that happens.
Another technology to come down with a bump is Web2.0 as the world wakes up to the truth that the new standard does not actually solve anything, nor provide massive changes in the way people interact. AJAX creates a richer user experience, but little else will change. “Social Networks” are set to coalesce and collapse, leaving the spoils to existing big players such as Google and Microsoft. But the idea of social networks will continue because they consume computer power and decrease travel, meaning that they offer both business and environmental benefits.
Business intelligence (BI) is in for a busy time, but beware the pitfalls, as the need for “real” BI invariably causes market ructions. Businesses’ requirements to draw out real knowledge from underlying documents and data will bring in snake-oil merchants and smoke-and-mirror vendors with little to offer apart from hot air. Expect to see further initiatives between BI vendors and enterprise search vendors in an attempt to broaden the accessibility of business data to more users. Search capabilities will also enable users to explore real time information, which will support operational pressures to react faster to changes in the business environment. The combination of enterprise search and BI will enable business users to quickly access data, analysis and reports using a keyword interface. However BI vendors vary in their approach to search and, as the market for search and BI evolves, organisations investing in search technology will need to prioritise the applications and data sources where search will add the most value.
Expect to see business process management tools morph into business performance management tools, enabling companies to look at how they perform against key performance indicators. Many companies will look to include suppliers and customers in this, leading to a need for standardisation of data exchange formats.
We read a lot last year about the proliferation of devices and the security threats they pose to organisations with sensitive data on their networks. The march of these devices will continue, but now businesses are getting wise. The need for solutions will drive a frenzy of announcements from vendors during 2007.
One myth still lingering is the paperless office. It remains a distant dream, and in fact our paper usage will continue to increase due to the proliferation of the internet, e-mail and digital photography. These markets will continue to represent strong profit opportunities for printer and copier vendors, not only through consumers and business customers investing in colour printers and MFP devices, but also through the aftermarket for consumables in the shape of paper media, ink cartridges and paper.
High costs of OEM ink will see consumers take advantage of the ever growing availability of lower cost third party inks for inkjet printers. As long as third-party ink manufacturers don’t infringe printer manufacturers’ proprietary patents, third party ink offers a cheaper alternative than OEM ink – although print quality may be relatively inferior.
Late 2006 saw an upsurge of interest in environmental issues, with legislation that included WEEE and RoHS. In terms of greener equipment, manufacturers are leading the way, for example with multi-core processors that are more energy efficient. Software plays a key part, too: virtualisation and grid computing make servers more efficient, thus using fewer resources. Of course, for companies and vendors there are commercial benefits, such as lowering costs.
However, we still do not see anything coming along that will significantly improve the way the public sector addresses its IT. Projects will still be too big, the business processes will not be defined properly and users will still not be involved. Expect to see the continuance of many politically driven projects that should have bitten the dust.
The usage of hosted solutions continues to move from the ‘air locked’ solutions of old (payroll, expenses, web hosting, etc), encompassing more areas where integration is required (for example, CRM, human resources, financial department, e-mail) and where business processes are king.
Service oriented architecture (SOA) creates the required infrastructure for Software as a Service (SaaS) to be made readily available and for companies of all sizes to access a wealth of new functions that will lead to the greater use of composite solutions.
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