1. Computing Everywhere
Gartner predicts that with continued mobile device proliferation and development of wearable tech, there will be an increase in servicing the needs of individuals in their varied contexts and environments. It’s not about the device anymore, but the unique needs of individual users.
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2. The Internet of Things
Digitising everything has created four basic usage models – Manage, monetise, operate and extend – that shouldn’t just be limited to the assets and machines of the Internet of Things. A pay-per-use model for example can be leveraged to assets, services, people, places and systems.
3. 3D Printing
3D printing will grow exponentialy in the next year, reaching a tipping point over the next three as low-cost devices reach the mainstream market and industrial uses expand. Its cost-effectiveness will see new industrial, biomedical and consumer applications with improved design, streamlined prototyping, and short-run manufacturing.
4. Advanced, Pervasive and Invisible Analytics
Managing and filtering the huge volumes of data generated by IoT, social media and wearable devices will see analytics taking centre stage to deliver the right information about the right person at the right time.
5. Context-Rich Systems
Data without context is useless. Intelligence blended with analytics will drive systems that are alert to their surroundings and able to respond accordingly. Context-aware security is an early application of this new capability.
6. Smart Machines
Autonomous machines able to think for themselves are on the horizon with the development of deep analytics, understanding of context and environment, smart machines, and advanced algorithms.
7. Cloud/Client Computing
The convergence of cloud and mobile computing will promote the growth of centrally co-ordinated apps deliverable to any device.
In the near-term, focus will be on synchronising content and apps across multiple devices for maximum portability, and evolve to support simultaneous use of multiple devices.
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8. Software-Defined Applications and Infrastructure
Agile programming is essential to enable organisations to make the digital business work. Cloud services are software-configurable through API calls, and applications increasingly have rich APIs to access their function and content programmatically.
9. Web-Scale IT
More organisations will begin thinking, acting and building applications and infrastructure like Web giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook through Web-scale IT. Evolving over time, the first step toward the Web-scale IT future for many organisations should be DevOps – co-ordinating development and operations to drive development of apps and services.
10. Risk-Based Security and Self-Protection
Many organisations will begin to apply more sophisticated risk assessment and mitigation tools beyond perimeter and firewalls. Apps and devices will be self-aware and self-protecting.
