Boom in IT usage in 2011

Gartner, Inc. a very famous multinational firm has highlighted 

the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2011. 

The analysts presented their findings during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, being held in Bangalore on  October 21. Though it is for the organizations, if we are aware of those technical points, it may be useful for us also, as we spend more time with computers and computer related gadgets. Most of you would have read these articles or conversant with these terms.  This I am sharing for the benefit of those who have not come across these terms. I give below the top ten strategic technologies for 2011 which most of us may be concentrating knowingly or unknowingly.

1.     Cloud computing is internet based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, as with the electricity grid.  Cloud computing services exist along a spectrum from open public to closed private. The next three years will see the delivery of a range of cloud service approaches that fall between these two extremes. Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.

2.      Mobile Applications and Media Tablets: Mobile devices are becoming computers in their own right, with an astounding amount of processing ability and bandwidth. By the end of 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing an ideal environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web.

3.      Social Communications and Collaboration : Social media can be divided into Social networking  viz. Face Book, Myspace, Friendster etc and Social collaboration such as wikis, blogs, instant messaging. Social publishing technologies that assist communities in pooling individual content into a usable and community accessible content repository such as Youtube and Flickr

4.      Video is not a new media form, but its use as a standard media type used in non-media companies is expanding rapidly.

5.      Next Generation Analytics: Increasing compute capabilities of computers including mobile devices along with improving connectivity are enabling a shift in how businesses support operational decisions. It is becoming possible to run simulations or models to predict the future outcome, rather than to simply provide backward looking data about past interactions, and to do these predictions in real-time to support each individual business action.

6.      Social Analytics

Social analytics describes the process of measuring, analyzing and interpreting the results of interactions and associations among people, topics and ideas. Social network analysis tools are useful for examining social structure and interdependencies as well as the work patterns of individuals, groups or organizations. Social network analysis involves collecting data from multiple sources, identifying relationships, and evaluating the impact, quality or effectiveness of a relationship.

7.      Context Aware Computing

Context-aware computing centers are on the concept of using information about an end user or object’s environment, activities and connections. Preferences are given to improve the quality of interaction with that of end user. The end user may be a customer, business partner or employee. A contextually aware system anticipates the user's needs and proactively serves up the most appropriate and customized content, product or service.

8.      Storage Class Memory

Huge use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems. It also offers a new layer of the storage hierarchy in servers and client computers that has key advantages — space, heat, performance and ruggedness among them. Unlike RAM, the main memory in servers and PCs, flash memory is persistent even when power is removed. In that way, it looks more like disk drives where information is placed and must survive power-downs and reboots.

9.      Ubiquitous Computing.

Networks will approach and surpass the scale that can be managed in traditional centralized ways. It gives us important guidance on what to expect with proliferating personal devices, the effect of consumerization on IT decisions, and the necessary capabilities that will be driven by the pressure of rapid inflation in the number of computers for each person.

10.   Fabric-based Infrastructure and computer

A fabric-based computer is a modular form of computing where a system can be aggregated from separate building-block modules connected over a fabric or switched backplane. In its basic form, a fabric-based computer comprises a separate processor, memory, I/O, and offload modules (GPU, NPU, etc.) that are connected to a switched interconnect and, importantly, the software required configuring and managing the resulting system.