Media tablets, 3D flat-panel TVs, and Cloud Computing are some of the technologies that have moved into the “Peak of Inflated Expectations”, according to Gartner’s August 2010 review. 1800 technologies were evaluated in producing their report.
Key themes for 2010 are:
- New styles of user interaction will drive new usage patterns, such as gesture recognition and tangible user interfaces (think interactive whiteboards, for example).
- Augmented reality, which is the migration of the Web phenomenon – and technology in general – beyond the desktop and into the context of people’s everyday lives. Location-aware applications on the iPhone and Android platforms are an example of this next generation delivery. The iPhone text-while-you-walk app integrates a camera view of where you are walking as a background to your text editor (please don’t rely on the view for driving though!).
- Data-driven decisions from applying data in new applications such as social analytics and sentiment analysis. You can Know-your-customer through the explosion of available data for analytics.
- The adoption and impact of cloud computing continues to expand, and is expected to be a transformational technology, maturing in the next 2 to 5 years.
- Value from the periphery – technologies such as mobile robots and 3D printing are not yet widely used, but they can already provide significant value when used appropriately.
Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie wrote a powerful and inspiring memo “Dawn of a New Day” ahead of his retirement.
“Cloud computing will become pervasive for developers and IT – a shift that’ll catalyze the transformation of infrastructure, systems & business processes across all major organizations worldwide. And all these new services will work hand-in-hand with an unimaginably fascinating world of devices-to-come. Today’s PC’s, phones & pads are just the very beginning; we’ll see decades to come of incredible innovation from which will emerge all sorts of ‘connected companions’ that we’ll wear, we’ll carry, we’ll use on our desks & walls and the environment all around us.”