Growing Technological Trends – Get Ready for the Changes

Sometime back when I was talking to one of my colleague about Virtual Desktop, he was mentioning that the virtual desktop user can carry their desktop in a flash drive; this triggered me to think about the technological changes that we have to accept in coming years. The technological innovation takes us to new heights and certainly the growth is not going to stop here. We have to start preparing ourselves to adopt the changes the way we operate in coming years. We are in the age of technological sophistication and its all different story to imagine running a day without all these!

I will try to discuss about the blend of current and future trends, so that I can maintain my thought flow.

Today Enterprises started getting into
- Cloud computing where there is no physical presence of hardware or infrastructure;
- Mobile Technologies that took almost everything into it in addition to Phone capability;
- Virtual Desktop or Virtual Workspace that helps you to access your desktop from anywhere and anytime using any device, infact you can carry your desktop in a flash drive;
- Social Media & Network connects people across globe and business users started utilizing the social media heavily to run their business successfully;
- Green Technology that helps reducing the use of natural sources;
- Unified Communication makes communication unified and easy; Wireless connection to the world and what not!

Is this the limit to the growth? Absolutely NO, it’s not the limit for the technological growth. There are lot more to expect in coming years, and I have listed few that may already started coming out or conceived in someone innovative brain somewhere in this world. The article is not about the technologies available for high profile people working for NASA or military, it’s about the technology that may be available for the common users.

In coming years, highly sophisticated Tablets and Smartphone devices may replace all laptops and notebooks. Currently desktops are almost replaced by laptops and notebook, and soon it’s time for laptops to retire! Every new OS comes with touch control to support all tablets devices. Microsoft is already working toward touch interface OS with its Windows 8 Operating System (that will also work with traditional mouse & keyboard) to sustain in the OS market. Going forward the OS installed in the devices may even recognize the person using the device by touch sensor technology, and the OS may get serve them based on what is authorized for the user!

We are moving toward the world of complete virtualization, our server is virtual, our desktop is virtual, our storage is virtual, our money is virtual and we can even develop applications virtually. Virtualization tries to reach all the corners of the human activities. In coming years the user need not even have a flash drive to access their desktop/laptop, the user will be able to access the work environment or personal environment using a home TV, TV in the flight, smartphone, or any device that has atleast browser capability and internet. With this virtual environment, the user will be able to access the local/home printer, map any local or remote drives, access USB devices connected, and access all virtual folders from anywhere anytime. With growing video and audio technologies, it won’t be surprise for the common technological user to have access to virtual meeting, person virtually present in a meeting hall or conference room without travelling physically! They can hand shake and discuss face to face, but virtually.

Technology has taken the marketing and advertisement world to next level, where the users can experience interactive videos, track specific object in a video, and can play relevant video based on the selection of the object in the video. In coming years, users can order and complete payment transactions by interacting directly with the playing video and audio instruction.

Healthcare is one of the industries that utilize the technology to the best, and doctors, nurses or care takers are enjoying the use of technology for electronic recording, electronic prescriptions, digitizing patient and all medical records. Sooner, we will get into paperless medical systems where almost every medical related activities and notes will be in electronic format.

The technology brought every banking operation into mobile device, using mobile banking one can deposit checks, can check the transactions, transfer fund and what not. In coming years we are going to see Mobile Banking is going to take over all the manual operations and mobile devices will become your credit card, debit card, and even it may completely replace your wallet.

Keep watching below top technologies and these are ones that are going to rule the technological world in coming years with unexpected twist and turns…

• Cloud Computing – almost every business users and technical resources have become familiar with this word. It helps the enterprises to scale the need of infrastructure as per their need without worrying about new hardware, bandwidth and software configurations. It help the enterprise to run their business efficiently and optimized way, and gives agility that increase the productivity. In few years from now, we are going to hear that every infrastructure is going to be on Cloud.

• Mobile Computing – Atleast for last three years, Mobile Computing takes the lead topic that attracts everyone. With launch of new tablets and Smartphones (iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Playbook, Android Tables or Smartphones), the expectation of the users have grown high and we can see lot and lot of players coming into this space to grab the opportunity. It’s going to penetrate into almost all the industry soon.

• Virtualization – We can’t talk about Green IT without Virtualization. Almost every enterprise moving their infrastructure to virtualized environment consolidating and rationalizing their number of physical servers. Virtualization will play vital role in the success of Cloud computing.

• Security – With growing trend for cloud and mobility, certainly it’s essential to apply security across cloud, network devices, mobile devices where every application is accessible through various devices. It’s more than securing the data, information or network; it’s a continuous process of securing the data and transferring information between networks and applications.

• Social Network – Today almost everyone use one or other social media for collaborate and connect with people. It’s unavoidable for enterprises to merge atleast to some extent the social collaboration and business operations to run the businesses successfully. Soon, we may even step into the stage where we abandon emails, and use social media for all communications.

• Unified Communication – with growing trend for borderless business extension, it is becoming absolutely essential for the business owners to invest in Unified Communication to maintain the relationship among employees, partners, business owners and vendors. With this scenario, IT department have to deliver necessary application (includes video, audio, network, etc) to connect securely anyone, anywhere and anytime. So virtual meeting, virtual presence and virtual connection are going to be more realistic.

• Green IT – Innovation that will help reducing the natural sources is going to be one of the top focus in coming years. It may be complete automation of any end-to-end operation that eliminates or reduces the use of paper, energy usage, physical space utilization, applications for virtual workspace, and eco-friendly application.

• Business Intelligence & Analytics – Now, we are in the Agile Business Intelligence & Analytics that enable flexibility and allow the business users to work with the data often and adjust the changes accordingly. Tomorrow, we may have Business Intelligence technology that will predict our Business growth and opportunity very accurately.
Though we have lot to discuss about trend changing technologies, sooner we may get into the stage where we will start missing few traditional ways of operations we are familiar for all these years. Get ready to accept the changes.