Strategic technologies for 2010

That crystallising moment when you ask a colleague how you could have managed without email or the internet is beginning to look a little quaint and faded.

If you think the past 10 years were a rollercoaster revolution of new toys and ways of working, then think again. If anything life is going to get busier and everyone will need to be more productive.

We are entering the era not only of the 24/7 business but the 24/7 worker who juggles tweets on Twitter, connections on LinkedIn, pokes on Facebook and, let's not forget, is a lover of all things green, espousing not only sustainable business but sustaining our planet too.

The days when our working days were structured, when we opened letters in the post, when we used fax machines, are confined forever to the history books.

Analyst firm Gartner has predicted the 10 top technologies that will be strategic for most organisations in 2010, including cloud computing, advanced analytics and green tech.

Strategic technologies

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

These technologies impact the organisation's long-term plans, programmes and initiatives. They may be strategic because they have matured to broad market use or because they enable strategic advantage from early adoption.

"Companies should factor the top 10 technologies into their strategic planning process by asking key questions and making deliberate decisions about them during the next two years," said David Cearley, vice-president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

"However, this does not necessarily mean adoption and investment in all of the technologies. They should determine which technologies will help and transform their individual business initiatives."

The top 10 strategic technologies for 2010:

Cloud computing. Cloud-based services can be exploited in a variety of ways to develop an application or a solution. Using cloud resources does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does re-arrange some and reduce others. In addition, consuming cloud-services enterprises will increasingly act as cloud providers and deliver application, information or business process services to customers and business partners.

Advanced analytics. Optimisation and simulation in using analytical tools and models to maximise business process and decision effectiveness by examining alternative outcomes and scenarios, before, during and after process implementation and execution.

Client computing. Virtualisation is bringing new ways of packaging client computing applications and capabilities. As a result, the choice of a particular PC hardware platform, and eventually the OS platform, becomes less critical. Enterprises should proactively build a five- to eight-year strategic client-computing road map outlining an approach to device standards, ownership and support; operating system and application selection, deployment and update; and management and security plans to manage diversity.

IT for green. IT can enable many green initiatives. The use of IT, particularly among the white-collar staff, can greatly enhance an enterprise's green credentials. Common green initiatives include the use of e-documents, reducing travel and teleworking. IT can also provide the analytic tools that others in the enterprise may use to reduce energy consumption in the transportation of goods or other carbon management activities.

Reshaping the data centre. In the past, design principles for data centres were simple: figure out what you have, estimate growth for 15-20 years, then build to suit. Newly-built data centres often opened with huge areas of white floor space, fully powered and backed by a uninterruptable power supply (UPS), water- and air-cooled and mostly empty. However, costs are actually lower if enterprises adopt a pod-based approach to data-centre construction and expansion. If 9,000 sq feet is expected to be needed during the life of a data centre, then design the site to support it, but only build what's needed for five to seven years.

Social computing. Workers do not want two distinct environments to support their work - one for their own work products (whether personal or group) and another for accessing "external" information. Enterprises must focus both on use of social software and social media in the enterprise and participation and integration with externally facing enterprise-sponsored and public communities.

Security: activity monitoring. Security departments are facing increasing demands for ever-greater log analysis and reporting to support audit requirements. A variety of complementary (and sometimes overlapping) monitoring and analysis tools help enterprises better detect and investigate suspicious activity - often with real-time alerting or transaction intervention.

Flash memory. Flash memory is not new, but it is moving up to a new tier in the storage echelon. Flash memory is a semiconductor memory device, familiar from its use in USB memory sticks and digital camera cards. It is much faster than rotating disks, but considerably more expensive; however this differential is shrinking. At the rate of price declines, the technology will enjoy more than a 100pc compound annual growth rate during the new few years and become strategic in many IT areas.

Virtualisation for availability. Virtualisation is on the list this year because Gartner emphasises new elements, such as live migration, for availability that have longer-term implications. Live migration is the movement of a running virtual machine (VM), while its operating system and other software continue to execute as if they remained on the original physical server.

Mobile applications. By year-end 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of mobile commerce providing a rich environment for the convergence of mobility and the web. There are already many thousands of applications for platforms such as the Apple iPhone, in spite of the limited market and need for unique coding. It may take a newer version that is designed to flexibly operate on both full PC and miniature systems, but if the operating system interface and processor architecture were identical, that enabling factor would create a huge turn upwards in mobile application availability.

"This list should be used as a starting point and companies should adjust their list based on their industry, unique business needs and technology adoption mode," said Carl Claunch, also vice-president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

"When determining what may be right for each company, the decision may not have anything to do with a particular technology. In other cases, it will be to continue investing in the technology at the current rate. In still other cases, the decision may be to test/pilot or more aggressively adopt/deploy the technology."

The 10 most endangered technologies

The humble DVD player, the fax machine, the analogue TV, the landline phone and the mobile charger have all been put on the 2010 most endangered technologies list by online retailer Pixmania.

Pixmania, the largest electronics retailer in Europe, has put the DVD player at the top of the list because of the continuing fall in price of the Blu-ray player technology as well as the growth in movie streaming via consoles like the Xbox 360.

The retailer also says that fax machines are set to disappear from offices because of the growth in popularity of touchscreen smart phones, Twitter and other digital technologies that keep us constantly communicating.

Sat-nav devices that adorn dashboards are also on the endangered list due to the rise of smart phones like the iPhone and phones that use the Google Android operating system. Recently, shares in TomTom and Garmin bombed when Google unveiled a free sat-nav tool for Android 2.0 mobile phones.

Even cutting-edge game console the Nintendo Wii's handheld wand, the Wii-mote, is on the endangered list as it is likely to be stomped on by the Microsoft Xbox 360-based Natal motion sensor technology.

The top 10 most endangered technologies of 2010, according to Pixmania, are:

1. DVD players
2. The fax machine
3. Analogue TV
4. The landline phone
5. The mobile phone charger
6. The Wii-mote
7. Sat-nav devices
8. Dongle
9. Computer mouse
10. Chip and PIN credit cards

Social netiquette

Like it or loathe it, social networking is something that businesses across Ireland will need to accept as a fact of life going forward.

In the US some 80pc of businesses use social networking site LinkedIn as their No. 1 recruitment tool. In recent weeks micro-blogging site Twitter, which lets users say what they're up to in 140 characters and which doubles as a zeitgeist search engine invaluable to marketers, joined forces with LinkedIn to make it easier for users of both to cross-file updates and keep up to date by checking their inbox on either site.

With operations in Dublin, Facebook is emerging as a potential marketing tool of choice for SMEs the world over, and with over 325 million people worldwide using it - including 25pc of the Irish population - who can argue.

"Advertising in 2010 will move away from the model of clicking on an ad to click through to a website just to buy a product," explained Colm Long, director of online operations at Facebook.

"It's going to be much more about using the experience to establish a conversation or get feedback to drive new product development. There are lots of different formats we are looking at."

While Facebook is the networking tool of choice for individuals, LinkedIn it seems is the networking tool of choice for professionals with more than two-thirds of FTSE100 using it as their only social networking application, according to research by Bigmouthmedia.

Facebook is the second most popular service, used by 30pc of the executives polled, while Plaxo came in third with a 7.5pc share.

"Although there is a vast array of social-networking tools available, each with its own particular benefits, our research has shown LinkedIn to be the clear favourite amongst Britain's senior business people," said Lyndsay Menzies, Bigmouthmedia chief operations officer.

"Social networking may have become one of the most talked about trends in the online world, but until now there has been little hard evidence showing to what extent the business community has embraced these tools. Our research shows that while many leading executives are now deriving measurable benefits from this rapidly developing channel, some of the UK's most prominent organisations have failed to get to grips with this important trend."

But it seems Ireland is fielding a professional networking contender for the throne currently occupied by business social network LinkedIn. It plans to have more than 80,000 businesses registered to its global digital marketplace by the end of this year.

Loopthing, which was founded by Irish entrepreneur Joseph Kelly, already has 100 businesses using the network.

Loopthing is designed as an addition to a company's website, to boost the communication, networking and revenue-generating capabilities of business communities on a local, national and international level.

"What we're providing here is a new route to market for businesses worldwide. What's most amazing about this is that we figured out a way to connect individuals and businesses through social media, so that everyone can benefit," Kelly said.

“It costs nothing to join and use the network, because our business model involves using only open-source technology to keep the development and running costs low," he added.

"Much in the same way as Twitter became a new broadcasting tool, LinkedIn an employee networking tool, and YouTube the main video channel, Loopthing wants to be seen as any company's interactive online business card."

This article is part of the Business & Leadership Guide to Business Planning 2010

John Kennedy is editor of siliconrepublic.com