As we bid farewell to 2006 and begin to see the
realities of 2007 (ie, no real change), I thought I would have a
look at what could change 2007 into a more interesting year in the
IT space.
First, wouldn't it be great to get more IT and line of business
people working together?
For this to happen we need to change the nomenclatures used, and
provide enabling technologies that allow business processes to be
matched with technical capabilities, and vice versa. Sounds like a
job for service oriented architectures (SOA).
Second, I would like to see greater harmony within the supplier
community. This is needed in many areas, but I will pick on
two.
SOA springs straight to mind - a nascent market that is still
massively misunderstood by those with the responsibility for
buying, but where suppliers are already playing "my SOA is better
than your SOA" games - and confusing everyone (often including
themselves) further. How nice it would be if they would actually
all pull together, create a solid market and then fight over
it.
The second thing that comes to mind is to get away from the
litigious nature of supplier relations at the moment - getting rid
of spurious personal pension schemes such as SCO's chasing of IBM,
or of patent infringement cases such as Roxio suing Nero, or
Creative suing Apple.
Again, let's work in the best interests of the customers, and in
making technology do what it should do - facilitate better business
and easier life.
Third, I would like to see the death of the massively overpriced
mobile data plan. Now that essentially no one is paying for data
transfers down a wired connection, we still have to pay large
amounts per megabyte when we are on the road.
Worse, even if you are on a data plan, try travelling abroad - a
visit to a US hotel that was having problems with its wired system
cost me more than £150 for a one-night stay recently.
All-you-can-eat data plans are coming through from the likes of
3 and T-Mobile - here's to 2007 being the end of the per-byte
plan.
Fourth, I would like to see much greater use of networking at
home. I want my PVR, TV, hi-fi and everything else to have an RJ45
connection to and from it, or better still, full Wi-Fi 802.11g/n,
enabling me to stream content where I want it, as I want it.
With the price of tuning componentry falling to unprecedented
lows (digital television tuning circuitry is available at under
£10), we could look at having, say, 10 tuners in a piece of kit,
enabling each person in a house to watch a different channel at the
same time.
Yes, we need better codecs (the gubbins that compresses and
decompresses audio and video) to shrink the data feeds, fully
ratified 802.11n for fast enough Wi-Fi and some real agreement on
integration, but we are getting there.
Fifth, I really want this to be the year of RFID. Yes, 2005 was
meant to be, 2006 was heralded as being the real year, but I do
feel that RFID will really come of age this year.
We need better education as to where RFID fits in with existing
technologies (such as the humble barcode), and we need a better
understanding of the difference between passive and active RFID,
but I expect to see much greater uptake of RFID, along with sensor
and actuator technologies as we go through 2007.
Finally, I await the "next big thing". We have been stuck for
real innovation on a gross scale for many years, with SOA (which is
basically a rehash of older component oriented stories) being the
nearest thing in the past couple of years.
Maybe we will see Ajax (maybe as part of a full stack, such as
Ruby on Rails) create a marked difference in how users interact
with the internet. Maybe we will see social networking create new
ways of working on a major scale (rather than the small scale
instances currently in place).
Maybe we will see some major changes in the supplier landscape
that will create new, innovative synergies. Here's hoping.
Oh, and yes, I do want world peace as well - it is probably just
as likely to happen as some of the things mentioned above.
Clive Longbottom is service director at analyst firm
Quocirca
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quocirca website
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