My Tech Predictions for Next Year

As we gear up to bid farewell to this year, it's also time to find out which technologies will be hot in the coming year, so that we can gear up for it. Incidentally, PCQuest also successfully completes 25 years of its existence this month, and we'll make sure that we start our 26th year with lots of new and exciting initiatives for our readers. I'll highlight some of those next month, so let's get to the technology predictions for the next year.

1. Virtualization has been hot for several years now, and we've seen a lot of organizations, including SMEs adopt it. The next logical step to virtualization is to move to a private cloud, and we'll see organizations gradually move toward it in the coming year. The competition in this space has heated up with Microsoft announcing Windows Server 2012 this year, which has much better private cloud capabilities than its predecessors.

2. SMEs will gradually embrace Business Analytics throughout next year as a logical next step to implementing business apps like ERP, CRM, etc. Business Analytics will help them make sense of all the historical data that these applications have generated. It can help them take more informed decisions, be more competitive and grow.

3. BYOD will be adopted by a lot of organizations, especially SMEs because it helps bring down the capex costs for purchasing laptops, PCs, phones, etc. With the consumerization of IT, and the onslaught of cheaper tablets, smartphones, etc, this year, more users will want to bring these personal devices to work. As a result, organizations will have to figure out a way to accommodate these devices in their network and make the most of them.

4. With data growing by leaps and bounds, organizations can't keep adding more storage hardware to accommodate it. This year saw a lot of developments in storage technology that can enable better storage consolidation, management, and virtualization. We'll see organizations deploying these technologies to streamline their storage.

5. Big Data has been in the news throughout this year, but we're yet to see any successful implementation of the same. That's because it's still in its nascent stage, and there aren't any standardized frameworks available for organizations to readily embrace. Next year will hopefully see some frameworks evolve.

6. Cyber Security will continue to remain in the spotlight next year, as cyber crime continues to be on the rise. This year saw a lot of serious security breaches with networks being brought down, data being stolen, etc. Hopefully, we'll see better security solutions evolve next year.

We've discussed several of these technologies and many others in more detail in this issue, so feel free to dig into those to know more about how they will imapct your purchase decisions next year.

Hope you have a great new year ahead!