What you see today is a result of what happened yesterday,
and what you'll see tomorrow will be a result of what's happening today. If
you want to predict the future with at least some degree of accuracy, you have
to be aware of what happened in the past and present. So this time round,
we're going to make our set of predictions on what to expect in the coming
year based on what's happened throughout this year. Unlike last year, where we
covered 100 different technologies individually, this time we're going to look
at broad areas and tell you about the key technologies in those. At the end of
the day, what good is technology if you can't make use of it? So we predict
which technologies will become hot next year for you to choose from, and which
ones to keep watch on for the coming years. We've also gone beyond
technologies and talked about interesting products derived from them, as well as
the standards that are being worked on. Products are the proof of success for
any technology and standards tell us how much faith we have in it to make
further investments.
Every technology has a lifecycle. In the beginning,
there's a lot of talk about it, and gradually if it gains acceptance and
everything goes right, it starts being adopted. It flourishes until the time
something new and better comes out, after which it starts losing popularity and
eventually fades away into oblivion. We applied this curve on the 100
technologies we analyzed last
December. This time, we'll apply it to each area that
we've covered. The areas include
wireless, security, storage, data centers, open source, basic hardware, and
software development.
The curve itself is broken into seven parts: Buzz, Long
Term, Very Hot, Hot, Steady, Lukewarm, and Down. Buzz stands for technologies
that are really being talked about, but there's no concrete action
happening on them. It may or may not happen. Long Term technologies are those
that will happen in 2-3 years. Very Hot technologies are the talk of the town,
with some early birds implementing them. Hot technologies are those that have
gained critical mass, so you should implement them. Steady technologies have
already been implemented by lots of people, and you should have already done it.
Lukewarm technologies are old news, and loosing visibility. Likewise,
technologies that are down are ones that are loosing ground as well as
visibility to newer trends and technologies.
We hope that the pages to follow help you plan your
investments better in the coming year. Happy reading!
Wireless | Exciting Time for Developers Ahead |
Security | Storage Matters |
Basic Hardware: Innovate or Die |
Data Centers |
Enterprise Mobility | Open Source |
By Anil Chopra, Krishna Kumar, Shekhar Govindrajan, Sujay Sarma and Vinod Unny