The increasing pace of change is rapidly driving customer, businesses and technology firms in a tight embrace, with the convergence of disruptive technologies eroding the boundaries separating them. Businesses are becoming more and more agile, and technologies such as social media, mobility, analytics and cloud computing are coming together to unleash unlimited opportunities for everyone involved. This convergence – also known as SMAC – will be the leading disruptor to the business-technology ecosystem over the next few years. Social media A social media strategy has become a must for all enterprises, be it banks, retailers or the government. With over one billion individuals logged on to various social networks, people are now using social media for advice on what products to buy, where to shop and even regarding what firms they want to work with. While most enterprises use social media for their customer service function only, many firms have now started using social media in tandem with their sales and marketing functions. This in turn enables firms to use data generated by the customers effectively to service their larger pools of customers. Mobility Mobile devices have changed the way people access digital content. Smartphones and tablets have brought rich, digital content to the fingertips of consumers. Mobile banking has emerged as one of the most innovative products in the financial services industry. Shoppers are increasingly using their mobile devices for everything from browsing to comparing to buying products. Governments are also reaching out to their citizens, using mobile devices as an efficient channel. Enterprises must also jump on to the mobility bandwagon, and ensure that their applications are mobile ready. Analytics Every year, companies and individuals generate billions of gigabytes of data. Data, which properly analyzed and used in time, can emerge as an unbeatable competitive advantage. Enterprises need to recognize the prospect analytics represents and should adapt their IT strategy to capture such opportunities’. Analytics can help retailers predict buying decisions of shoppers; it can help banks weed out fraudulent transactions; while governments can use analytics to provide services directly to their citizens. Predictive analytics has also been adopted across industries in various scenario building activities. Cloud computing
The undeniable power of cloud computing to foster innovations and imprve productivity is now accepted by both IT vendors and their customers. While the financial services and government sectors are mostly moving to a private cloud model due to information security concerns, other industries like healthcare and retail have adopted public cloud. Moreover, their existing infrastructure has helped telecom players to emerge as providers of cloud computing, leading to erosion in boundaries between IT and telecom vendors.
Experts predict that the confluence of SMAC -- social media, mobility, analytics, and cloud computing -- will be a potent and leading business-technology enabler of the next decade. They agree that the SMAC ecosystem will have a huge rub-off on IT services. Gartner estimates that India-centric IT services vendors will witness an 8-10% annual revenue growth from SMAC. SMAC may provide the much-needed boost for India’s $108-billion IT sector, which has had a jagged growth in the last couple of years on account of global economic challenges, falling consumer spending, and a Eurozone crisis in their main markets. Industry body Nasscom foresees a 12-14% revenue growth in the ongoing fiscal year. The adoption of disruptive technologies could further impel client spending.
Forget cloud computing and mobile applications — they're so 2010. So what are the next “wow factor” tech trends, ideas and products that will rock the world of financial advisers and their clients in the not-so-distant future? Chances are, they will en-compass the wizardry of “big data” algorithms, wearable tech for go-anywhere advisers, video-game-inspired business applications, deep content analysis by supercomputers such as IBM's Watson, and software that has an uncanny ability to read facial expressions and emotions. In financial services, which was once a leader in technological change, the wow factor is now more likely to come from the consumer market, according to Neesha Hathi, senior vice president of Advisor Technology Solutions at The Charles Schwab Corp. “Technology used to come through defense and the government to business, and then make its way down to consumers as the cost became more effective,” Ms. Hathi said. “But since the early 2000s, more often the new innovation is coming from the consumer side of the world. As soon as someone marketed the iPad to consumers, they said to themselves, "Wait, I can use this in my business.'” In an effort to identify emerging technology that will likely have a profound affect on the delivery of financial advice in not-so-distinct future, InvestmentNews talked to some of the best and brightest minds in adviser technology. We compiled a list of five important technological trends that financial advisers cannot afford to ignore. Ram Nagappan, chief information officer at Pershing, looked at our list and concluded that many of the technologies presented here will change advisers' lives sooner rather than later. “We feel that the future is already here,” he said. “We're looking at all these technologies to apply to advisers so we [can] deliver the best experience to them and the end investor.” BIG DATA Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com Inc., has made no secret of his ambition to collect as much data as possible on affluent consumers so that he can sell them not just books and other media but electronics, household appliances and even groceries. Amazon's success serves as inspiration to tech teams in the financial services industry, which are studying how to use big-data analytics and statistical probability to better know their customers, including advisers and their clients. Big data is so big that even the smartest of technophiles have a hard time managing it. This is because it encompasses a huge flow of information about customers, products and services that companies have been gathering for years. Much of this information, whether collected from traditional or digital databases, has moved into the cloud and continues to grow exponentially. “With the explosion of big data and analytics, how do you digest all that information?” said Victor Fetter, chief information officer at LPL Financial. “We believe it's a gold mine — the challenge is that it's moving fast. You have to adapt and create new models,” Mr. Fetter said. Patrick Yip, director of Advisory Technology Strategy at Pershing, said that one of the first times he truly appreciated how big data works was when he received a Google Now alert on his Android smartphone telling him that commuter traffic was getting heavy where he lived, so if he wanted to beat the rush, he should leave home right away. “Context is something that knows you and your preferences and location, and then responds to it,” he said. Pointing to Amazon, which uses big-data algorithms to recommend products based on something that a consumer has previously purchased, Mr. Yip said that Pershing is looking for similar apps that it can recommend to advisers. SMART OFFICE The integrated smart office may be more of a designer's dream than a reality. But in just a few years, advisers can expect to work with wearable devices, office products and even furniture that use cloud technology and integrated software platforms to help facilitate conversations with clients, said Ed O'Brien, senior vice president of Fidelity Institutional's platform technology. Technology will be less visible as computers disappear into user-friendly hardware, he said, noting that Fidelity has designed an “office of the future” prototype on its Smithfield, R.I., campus that shows registered investment advisers how they will use all that new technology to better engage with their clients. “You won't see a lot of physical servers and technology infrastructure,” Mr. O'Brien said. “You'll instead see more-collaborative workspaces with lots of mobile technology and integrated technologies.” Fidelity's office of the future includes a smart coffee table that lets clients sit in a casual office setting with advisers while browsing the web, sharing reports and benchmarking themselves against investment goals. Tablet presentation-sharing technology, meanwhile, allows for collaborative review of quarterly reports and can be accessed remotely. And a cloud-based virtual desktop for RIAs lets advisers work from anywhere they have access to a web browser. Improved video conferencing and better gadget management also will catch on in the smart office. For example, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January offered a glimpse of where video is headed, with a Sony projector that can turn an entire wall into a TV screen, and an Intel smart bowl that someday will charge gadgets simply thrown into it.
Wearable technology, too, is headed advisers' way, Ms. Hathi said. She pointed to Google Glass, the Pebble smartwatch and the Fitbit activity tracker, saying that what seems like a fun gadget will become a valuable business tool. “We are just now exploring how wearables will be used in wealth management,” Ms. Hathi said. Fidelity was the first major brokerage firm to make a public foray into wearable technology six months ago when the Fidelity Labs research and development unit was granted early access to Google Glass and created a Glassware app that lets wearers focus their vision on a logo of a publicly traded company to generate a real-time market quote, according to analysts at online and mobile research firm Corporate Insight. 'GAMIFICATION' Advisers take their work seriously, so the idea of bringing game dynamics into their practices to encourage desired client behavior can make them nervous. But consumer websites and online communities have been using game mechanics to motivate participation and loyalty for years. Gail Graham, chief marketing officer at advisory firm United Capital Private Wealth Counseling, has used its Money Mind Analyzer to work with 45,000 clients and prospects since 2010. Money Mind's web app is played as a question-and-answer game by couples to determine whether each partner is most driven by fear, happiness or a need to commit. The game leads couples to United Capital's Honest Conversation advice program, which comprises about 10,000 retail households, Ms. Graham said. More participants in the financial services industry are starting to venture into the new frontier of “gamification.” Investing platform Kapitall Generation, for example, lures investors onto its platform by letting them play with a “fun and easy” $100,000 practice portfolio before trading for real. In addition, game mechanics are being used by banks to draw in new digitally connected customers, according to Forrester Research Inc. For example, PNC Bank's “Punch the Pig” game prompts customers to transfer money from their spending accounts to growth accounts. Closer to the advisory world, custodians are leading the charge into gamification. For example, Pershing, at its annual Insite conference in June, used online game design to educate conference-goers about its NetX360 platform for advisers. Also, Fidelity Labs has introduced a “Beat the Benchmark” experiment with online gaming in its office of the future's smart coffee table. SUPERCOMPUTING International Business Machines Corp.'s supercomputer, Watson, won “Jeopardy” in 2011 because it could sort and analyze vast amounts of data faster than its human competitors. IBM is actively seeking to use Watson for industrial applications, and the supercomputer is moving into the realm of financial planning. On a “Watson in finance” web page on its website, IBM states that Watson is being designed as “the ultimate financial services assistant,” capable of performing deep content analysis and evidence-based reasoning to help advisers make informed decisions about investments, trading patterns and risk management. Jon Patullo, TD Ameritrade Institutional's managing director for technology product management, is positive about this development, saying that he can see the value in supercomputers sifting through massive amounts of data, such as prospectuses, to help drive efficiencies in advisers' practices. As a further sign of the supercomputer's growth, IBM said Feb. 26 that its Watson Group had launched a global competition to encourage developers to create mobile consumer and business apps powered by Watson. MIND READING Mind reading used to be an illusion invented by magicians and tricksters, but in the future, advisers will be able to do some conjuring of their own with voice, mood and facial analytics. Although mood and facial analytics haven't yet entered the financial services arena, Pershing is using voice analysis, a technology that is catching on at call centers. Customer calls to Pershing are analyzed for empathy expressed by company representatives, silent time on calls and behavioral cues when customers use phrases such as “I'm so frustrated” and “I can't believe this takes so long.” Beyond voice, cloud-based emotion capture technology now under development uses computer vision to recognize viewers' emotional responses to products and services. Is the client happy, sad or confused? The software reads pixellated facial features, assessing shapes to infer how a person is feeling. Already, products such as Affectiva Inc.'s Affdex, Emotient.com, Face.com, Noldus Information Technology's FaceReader and Sightcorp, have arrived on the market to provide companies with consumer analytics based on age, gender, eye tracking, facial expressions, mood and attention level. For example, Sightcorp's webcam eye-tracking software lets companies detect where product users' attention is focused in a controlled lab setting. Expect to see mood and facial analytics enter the advisory industry in the next five to 10 years, said Oleg Tishkevich, chief executive of financial planning platform Finance Logix. He predicts that advisers will be able to scan emotional feedback and metrics on how clients are responding to investment proposals or opportunities. “As the adviser speaks to clients either in real time or on video, the software will read facial expression as they talk about their financial plan, and see if they're happy or sad, and recognize what is and isn't interesting,” Mr. Tishkevich said. “Anything that has a camera, including Google Glass, can be used to read emotion.”
There are two problems with what happened last week.
First, it’s Gartner, which has a track record of being spectacularly wrong with its predictions. Like the time in 2006 (and no, that is not a typo) when Gartner asserted that Apple’s only path to success was to quit the hardware business completely and license the Mac to Dell. Or the rolling forecasts in 2009 that started with Gartner projecting the “sharpest unit decline in history” and ended up with a report of “the strongest growth rate [in PC shipments] in seven years.”
Now, in fairness to the analysts who wrote this report, I think they have identified some likely trends. Sadly, those genuine insights are getting lost because they’re surrounded by tables full of numbers that are so specific as to be ludicrous.
But even if you take their numbers at face value, you need to actually understand them. With a few exceptions, most of the quick-and-dirty rewrites of Gartner’s press release got the story exactly wrong.
And that’s the second problem. All those reports focused on one shiny thing and ignored everything else in the report. Here, I’ve used my virtual yellow magic marker so you can see Gartner’s data as superficially as all those bloggers did: Right. The market for conventional desktop and notebook PCs is declining, because people increasingly value mobility in the devices they use to perform basic computing tasks. So, Gartner predicts a 20 percent decline in demand for big, desk-bound PCs and conventional notebooks, most of which are heavy devices that remain on a desktop full time.
But what’s that line right below the highlighted one? What’s an Ultramobile?
The good folks at Gartner helpfully defined the term for CNET last summer:
Gartner describes the combination of ultrabooks and the MacBook Air as "ultramobile notebooks." Typically, ultramobile laptops are under 3.5 pounds and less than 0.8-inches thick.
In other words, these are lightweight PCs, typically with keyboards and trackpads, powered by the same operating systems used on those heavier desktop and conventional notebook models. Microsoft’s two-pound Surface Pro is a perfect example of this type of lightweight PC/tablet. So are hybrid Windows 8 devices like HP’s Envy X2, Samsung’s 500T and 700T, and even Dell’s 3.3-pound convertible XPS 12. Ultrabooks and MacBook Airs, which are the equivalent of PCs and MacBook Pros in every dimension except weight and thickness, are counted in that line too. In other words, some PCs are getting considerably lighter, but they’re still PCs.
So let’s redo Gartner’s numbers, this time combining the PC and Ultramobile lines. Wow, that’s a completely different story. Large, heavy, general-purpose PCs are becoming less popular, but demand for lightweight devices that can still function as general-purpose PCs is soaring. If you do the math, you’ll see that the increase is projected to be about 881 percent from 2012 to 2017. That phenomenal growth rate in the Ultramobile category means that overall, the number of shipments of devices running desktop operating systems (like Windows and OS X and even Chrome OS) will probably increase by 5 percent between 2012 and 2017.
At an average of about 340 million devices per year, that means roughly 1.7 billion new PCs (including 250 million or so in the Ultramobile category) will reach the market between 2013 and 2017, also known as the Windows 8 era. Not exactly a dead category.
If you trust the numbers, that is, which is a pretty big if.
(A side note from that CNET story: Last July Gartner said it expected about 10.7 million ultramobile units to ship in 2012. Gartner’s final tally for the year was 9.8 million, more than 8 percent lower than its projection just six months earlier. Likewise, last July they projected that the number of ultramobiles shipped in 2013 would be “about 17 million.” Nine months later, they’ve revised that projection upwards to 23.6 million, a change of about 39 percent in just nine months. Think about that before you get too transfixed by the detailed projections for 2014 and 2017.)
And what about that "obsolete,” “irrelevant,” “fading fast” Microsoft?
Well, again, if you trust in Gartner’s numbers enough to write a “Microsoft is doomed” blog post, you really need to look at all the numbers. Here, let me help. [Data from Table 2 in this report, with RIM's tiny numbers added to the much larger "Other" category. I added percentages and trendlines.]
Wait, what? That same Gartner report says that Microsoft will struggle in 2013 and 2014 but then will dramatically increase its share of the overall market by 2017?
Exactly. Here’s what Gartner said in their summary press release:
In the shares of operating systems (OSs) in device sales, the shift to mobile and the fight for the third ecosystem becomes more evident. Android continues to be the dominant OS in the device market, buoyed by strong growth in the smartphone market (see Table 2). Competition for the second spot will be between Apple's iOS/Mac OS and Microsoft Windows.
I think that sounds about right.
Apple isn’t interested in winning market share at any costs. They want the high-margin customers. Microsoft is doing its best to build new-format devices that can work well in corporate environments where management is important. Android and Windows are both fighting aggressively to win share in emerging markets. The real loser is “Other.”
And before you start high-fiving Google over their complete dominance, it’s worth noting that Google’s direct share of the Android ecosystem might be a lot smaller than either of its two rivals. As my colleague Jason Perlow pointed out last week, the open nature of Android is a great blessing and an even greater curse for Google. Samsung, the largest maker of Android devices in the world, “will diverge from Google's OS and become a legitimate fork.” So will Amazon.
ZTE, Lenovo, and Huawei service primarily a domentic market in China, and will run their own weird domestic builds of Android with state-approved social networking software to keep the Chinese government happy...
This leaves us with no less than four, five, or six distinct forks of Android. Google as represented on Nexuses or Google Experience devices; Amazon; Samsung; HTC/Facebook; and whatever weird beast ends up running for domestic Chinese use. And BlackBerry 10's Dalvik implementation.
If you strip away the sensational headlines, the real story is pretty prosaic. The worldwide market for computing devices is changing rapidly, and three ecosystems (one of which is highly fragmented) have excellent prospects of becoming large enough to be taken seriously over the next five years.
Unless things change, which they always do.
Now go ahead and spin a clickbait headline out of that story. I dare you.
As we enter 2013 it’s only fitting to present a few predictions for the sector that’s become as important to established tech as technology itself to the makers of cars, consumer goods and services. With a little help from analysts, entrepreneurs and researchers, here are 10 forecasts on the big changes we’ll see for telecommunications and mobile technology in 2013:
1. HTML5 will make a comeback, helping to make smartphones cheaper.
HTML5 is a new web standard letting apps run on any mobile operating system (iOS, Android, etc.) through a web browser. Though it kicked off a while ago, the infrastructure wasn’t ready, says Tomer Kagan, chief executive officer of Quixey, a search engine for mobile apps. “But HTML5 will make a comeback because of the release of Firefox and Tizen.” These are open-sourced, mobile operating systems that Mozilla and Samsung, respectively, are expected to launch in 2013. That could lead to cheaper smartphones, since HTML5 apps can run on these systems with no need for a browser, and they are cheaper for developers to build. “The costs of running a developer community and app store also go away,” says Kagan. On top of that, “more users internationally will have access to a greater web than ever before.” Essentially, as other mobile operating systems compete against the 90%-marketshare of Android-and-iOS, more developers will push to make apps work across different platforms, using HTML5. One caveat: apps created natively for Android or iOS still tend to perform faster than those on HTML5, meaning the walled gardens or “ecosystems” of mobile-operating systems and native apps may continue for at least a couple more years.
2. Companies will continue to launch dark, rectangular slabs of plastic.
Surprise! Device makers will keep bringing out the same, tried and tested form factor for smartphones: dark, plastic slabs in roughly three sizes of phone, “phablet” and tablet. “There will be new launches of the same, boring form factor,” says Jefferson Wang, a mobile consultant with IBB Consulting. Manufacturers will still make incremental innovations. “The finish doesn’t have to be matt plastic,” says Wang. “It could have a texture or a gloss or different finishes.” That said, Samsung has long been rumored to be working on foldable AMOLED screens that wrap around the borders of a smartphone, so it could also release something along those lines in 2013.
3. A few firms that were late to the mobile game will launch their own phones.
One of the big criticisms made towards Facebook has been its slow move into mobile, but multiple reports suggest the company is working on launching its own Facebook-branded phone in collaboration with HTC, and it’s likely under pressure to finally put something out in 2013. Microsoft and Amazon have reportedly contracted Foxconn, the sprawling Taiwanese manufacturer of iPhones and other handsets, to manufacture their own smartphones for a launch in 2013. Meanwhile a large Internet company with mobile ambitions could buy a struggling device maker, a la Google‘s purchase of Motorola Mobility in 2011. Among the possible targets: HTC, LG, Sony Mobile, Research in Motion and Nokia, who would most likely be bought out by its partner, Microsoft.
4. Wireless technology will give new life to products that were almost killed by smartphones.
Remember watches? Point-and-shoot digital cameras? Day planners? We don’t see very much of these products anymore because they’ve been replaced by smartphones, with their confluence of multiple services into one piece of plastic. But some of these old industries are coming back from the brink by incorporating the same wireless technology we find in smartphones, says IBB’s Wang. Expect to see more wireless-enabled wearable devices in 2013, including watches that track your fitness levels, (like the bluetooth-enabled smart watch that Apple and Intel are reportedly working on) or digital cameras that can connect to to the web and take a better photo than your smartphone can. In 2012 Samsung launched its 16-megapixel, Galaxy digital camera that runs on Android and edits photos, then uploads them directly to Facebook. Devices mainly need to support a mobile operating system like Android, thus allowing them to connect to web protocols. “Even fabric can have wireless capabilities that change based on your emotion and physical state,” says Wang.
5. Samsung will continue to dominate.
The world of mobile devices has had its kings in global sales, innovation and the high-quality products, with Motorola, Nokia, RIM and most recently Apple each having their few-years reign. But Samsung rose through the ranks in 2012, dethroning Nokia as the world’s biggest mobile phone maker, and it will continue to dominate the world of consumer mobile products in 2013. It is reaping the benefits of Android’s growth in most major markets outside of the U.S., and its strong distribution channels, good relationships with carriers and varied price range will help keep the company on top.
6. So will Foxconn.
It’s well known that sales of tablets are on track to overtake those of desktop PCs and even laptops. So who’s benefiting? Taiwan-based Foxconn is one of the world’s biggest mobile handset manufacturers, producing devices for Apple, Dell, Nokia and Sony, with recent reports suggesting it is now prepping phones for Microsoft and Amazon. The company will also continue to benefit significantly from orders from Apple, whose supply chain partners are reportedly working through the traditional Chinese New Year holiday to keep up with demand for the iPad Mini and iPhone 5.
7. Microsoft and (especially) Research in Motion will struggle to sell phones.
Smartphone sales continue to be a two-horse race between Android and Apple’s iOS, with Microsoft’s Windows Phone and RIM’s BlackBerry fighting for third place in mobile “ecosystems.” RIM’s future will rest largely on the fate of it’s forthcoming BlackBerry 10 phone, launching in January 2013 and offering a new “peek-and-go” method of interacting with a device. But Microsoft stands a better chance of staying firmly in the No. 3 spot, thanks to the support of several large device manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung and HTC. These firms are keen to see Windows Phone push back against Google’s dominance with Android, something Nokia CEO Stephen Elop alluded to when he first partnered Nokia with Windows Phone. Windows Phone’s colorful tiles are are also being marketed everywhere, from music videos, to “Gossip Girl,” to billboards. But pressure is also coming from smaller challengers:
8. Dark horses will challenge the third ecosystem.
Smartphones are becoming as much about software as they are about incremental changes to the shape of their rectangular shape. That leaves room for upstart companies to develop new operating systems and launch phones, challenging Microsoft and RIM by taking fourth place in the mobile OS rankings. One dark horse is Tizen, the forthcoming open-source mobile operating system that the Linux Foundation is developing with Samsung and Intel. The other is Mozilla’s Firefox OS, an open-sourced mobile operating system. Research firm Strategy Analytics expects Firefox OS to capture 1% of global smartphone shipments in 2013, by targeting entry-level smartphone users, but it could end up taking more. The Finnish mobile company Jolla is also preparing to launch its open-sourced mobile OS Sailfish in 2013, a descendant of the Meego OS that Nokia abandoned in favor of Windows Phone, and will start by launching a phone in China.
9. Carriers will lose more control to software providers.
Network providers like AT&T, Verizon and Vodafone were once the kings of mobile telephony, each with their own, profitable empire, a one-stop-shop for subscribing to a mobile phone and broadband. Now their power is being circumvented in all sorts of ways: new players like FreedomPop are providing cheaper WiFi access for the home, mobile messaging companies like WhatsApp and GroupMe are eating away at their SMS revenues. Meanwhile, Internet giants know far more about users than the providers like AT&T, who were once king of user information like billing and network habits. Now Facebook, Apple, Google and smaller app developers are collecting nuanced details like location data and address-book info, and across a wider breadth of people (more than a billion in the case of Facebook).
In the coming years, carriers will maintain their crucial advantage of providing spectrum for calls and data connectivity through 3G and 4G. But even that may see some encroachment from the likes of Google. The company is already experimenting with its one-gigabit fiber network in Kansas City, offering lightening-fast broadband and TV services. Who knows if in 2013 Google doesn’t buy spectrum (it has reportedly been in talks with the Dish Network) and experiment on a small market like Kansas City. It might be hard to imagine Google becoming that big, but “there is a collision course between the Internet and the mobile space,” says IBB’s Wang. We’ll always need network carriers like AT&T, but signs point to them going the way of regulated utilities like your electric and water company, rather than service providers that know everything about you.
10. Big demand for big data
It’s a little cliche to include “big data” in a list of 2013 predictions, but a few companies will successfully take advantage of the need to contextualize the glut of data and web-enabled apps that run on mobile devices according to Juniper Research. In so doing, they’ll be able to make valuable predictions of consumer behavior — notwithstanding a host of privacy concerns.
11. Bonus prediction: The definition of “mobile” will broaden.
Today the smartest machine in many homes, besides a desktop computer or laptop, is a smartphone. Everything else from the TV to the toaster, are dumb by comparison. But that’s changing, as more devices are enabled with wireless connectivity as per prediction No. 4. The smartphone is also becoming the hub for them all — used to turn off the lights or control the temperature of a house. More devices will go mobile, augmenting the very definition of the term, and the smartphone will become increasingly important as the “mothership” that controls them all.
Research firm Forrester understands that everyone who’s been listening with even one ear knows that mobile, social, cloud, and data are big freight trains of change that are blowing up old business models and old business practices.
TOP 15 Emerging Technologies are in four groups:
End user computing technologies
1.Next-generation devices and UIs
New sensors and new user interfaces. Think Leap Motion
2.Advanced collaboration and communication
Think social inside, like Yammer or or other social-inside-the-enterprise solutions
3.Systems of engagement
Real-time data, in everyone’s hands. Think Roambi
Sensors and remote computing technologies 1.Smart products
Thing that can sense, react, and communicate. Think operating system for places and buildings
2.In-location positioning
GPS and in-building location sensors
3.Machine-to-machine networks
Background intelligence on people and things. Think ReelyActive
Process data management technologies 1.Smart process applications and semantics
Real business processes are a lot messier than your flow charts. Smart process apps know that.
2.Advanced analytics
Smarter, more predictive data. Think Cloudera’s Impala tool for Hadoop
3.Pervasive BI
People need business intelligence that comes every hour, not at the end of the month
4.Process and data cloud services
Scalable, burstable, and cheap computing capability. PaaS, BaaS, etc.
Infrastructure and application platforms 1.Big data platforms
Infrastructure to handle big data and high speed … and use all that data you’ve been uselessly storing
2.Breakthrough storage and compute
Yes, hardware may still be necessary, even if you’re never going to be like Google
3.Software-defined infrastructure
Software that dynamically routes your networking and data center capabilities
4.Cloud application frameworks
Technologies for deploying and running distributed apps in the cloud, like, perhaps, a multi-continent-spanning database
5.New identity and trust models
New federated trust and identity models for a changing world of jobs and careers … and maybe even killing all usernames and passwords
