"Seven grand challenges" facing IT over the next quarter
of a century have been identified by analystGartner.
Many of the innovations that will unfold during the next 25
years can be found today in research papers, patents or prototypes
already in production, said the analyst.
"IT leaders should always be looking ahead for the emerging
technologies that will have a dramatic impact on their business,
and information on many of these future innovations are already in
some public domains," said Ken McGee, an analyst for the
company.
The seven IT grand challenges:
- Never having to manually recharge devices - the ubiquity of
portable computing and communications devices powered by battery
means that many people would find it highly desirable to either
have their batteries charged remotely or devices powered by a
remote source, bypassing the use of batteries altogether.
- Parallel
programming - rather than simply creating faster single-core
processors to perform tasks serially, another way to meet the
constant demand for faster processor speed is to develop multiple,
slower speed processors that perform tasks serially.
- Non-tactile, natural computing interface - the idea of
interacting with computers without any mechanical interface has
long been a desirable goal in computing.
- Automated speech translation - once the many hurdles of natural
language processing are overcome to yield human-to-computer
communications in one language, the complexity extends further when
translation and output is required to a target language that is
understandable to a human.
- Persistent and reliable long-term storage - current
technologies are hard-pressed to perfectly preserve Dr Francine
Berman's 2006 estimate of 161 exabytes (x1018) of
digital information on digital media for more than 20 years.
- Increase programmer productivity 100-fold - as business and
society's demand for software development increases, and the
apparent decline of students pursuing software engineering and
computer science degrees intensifies, removing uncertainty from
meeting future demands will have to be met by increasing the
output, or productivity, per programmer.
- Identifying the financial consequences of IT investing - one of
the most perplexing challenges faced by IT leaders has been to
convey the business value of IT in terms readily understandable by
business executives.
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