What’s hot and what’s not? In the technology sector, the answers to those questions can change with alarming speed. Over at market research firm Gartner, experts spend time cooking up a “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies,” and their 2008 list features 27 hot technologies that we’ll all paying more attention to next year.
The money quote, from VP and Gartner Fellow Jackie Fenn:
Although Web 2.0 is now entering the Trough of Disillusionment, it will emerge within two years to have transformational impact, as companies steadily gain more experience and success with both the technologies and the cultural implications. Later — in between two and five years — cloud computing and service-oriented architecture (SOA), which is moving up the Slope of Enlightenment, will deliver transformation in terms of driving deep changes in the role and capabilities of IT. Finally, public virtual worlds, which are suffering from disillusionment after their peak of hype in 2007, will in the long term represent an important media channel to support and build broader communities of interest.
Also pay attention to:
Green IT: “It has the opportunity — and in many cases, a requirement — to improve the ‘greenness’ of its own activities, as well as to contribute to broader company and industry environmental initiatives.” “Interest is growing in drawing a broad range of services (for example, computational power, storage and business applications) from the ‘cloud,’ rather than from on-premises equipment. Many types of technology providers are aligning themselves with this trend, with the result that confusion and hype will continue for at least another year before distinct submarkets and market leaders emerge.”Social Computing Platforms: “Following the phenomenal success of consumer-oriented social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, companies are examining the role that these sites, or their enterprise-grade equivalents, will play in future collaboration environments. The scope is also expanding to incorporate the notion of social ‘platforms,’ or environments for a broad range of developers to build on the basic application.”
Video Telepresence: “High-end videoconferencing systems (for example, from HP, Cisco, Teliris, and others) that utilize large, high-definition (HD) displays and components to show life-size images of participants in meeting rooms or suites have proven significantly more effective than earlier generations of videoconferencing technology in providing a strong sense of in-room presence between remote participants. High cost is currently the barrier to broader adoption.”
Microblogging: “Pioneered by Twitter (although other services such as FriendFeed or Plurk are also available), microblogging is a relatively new addition to the world of social networking, in which contributors post a stream of very short messages (fewer than 140 characters) providing information about their current activity or thoughts, which can then be subscribed to by others. The phenomenon has caught on among certain online communities, and leading-edge companies are investigating its role in enhancing other social media and channels.”
Fenn also says to keep an eye on 3-D printing, surface computing, augmented reality, and mobile robots. “We expect early adopters to start applying these in novel ways and driving new classes of application, such as using 3-D printers to dramatically change the supply chain by creating products and replacement parts at the point of need.” To hear more, tune into her podcast.
