Whats on your 2013 Techmap?

So that's 2012 done and dusted with, which always brings about the questions what is going to be big this year and what was a hit last year.  So we thought we would have a quick punt on what 2013 might bring to businesses in the shape of technology.  

Over the years we have had a pretty good guess and what was coming down the line from VDI, through to ESN and Cloud.  The following tops the bill for us on what is going to be on your techmap at some point this year:

• Expect to see a significant rise with cloud built on Openstack, the project has gained fantastic momentum and shows no signs of slowing down.  Private Cloud built upon Public Cloud processes can only be a good thing
• Keeping on the opensource theme, expect Bigdata to become more strategic with Hadoop taking the lead.  Once tier 1 cloud providers position Hadoop as a Service the technology will become more accessible to the SMB market place
• Cloud services will be consumed with greater velocity meaning technology needs to be provided to aggregate these cloud services from personal through to private into a single pane of glass such as Citrix Cloud Gateway
• Symantec O3 should make a name for itself this year providing a sensible framework for SSO, Content and Security services again becoming a single pane of glass for cloud services
• Windows 8 was launched with Gusto in 2012 and expect it to make an appearance on a desk near you soon either through Windows XP desktop replacement or through BYO strategies
• Mobility will morph into Enterprise Mobility Management consuming BYO with it as the industry accepts its inevitable. Consumer choice will be delivered through Digital Allowance schemes and hopefully HMRC will provide clarity around tax implications.
• Another area of growth we expect to see happen over the next year [largely fuelled by BYO is the interest in Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms (MEAP), no longer is a single way of developing applications acceptable or affordable for businesses to adopt.  There has been significant promise of HTML5 being the development architecture of choice but this has yet to come to fruition.  It is clear that this is an opportunity within the market place to provide one framework to all devices, the browser maybe the right approach but that is yet to be seen.  There will still be a huge demand for native applications as they provide the most rich user experience to date.  The approach of mobilising applications will largely be driven through improved development skills as they need to adopt new design skills to deliver touch-optimised applications that operate across a range of devices
• In 2013 we also expect to see the main network operators roll out 4G networks. With continuous streaming of high speed data the move to mobile will change the world of screens at home and work as we know it.
• Certified cloud architectures such as Flexpod will continue to gain market share
• Office 365 will gain further momentum fuelled largely by the plethora of new Microsoft Workloads due for launch in 2013
• If you don't adopt cloud in your strategy then you can expect your users to circumnavigate the IT department and spin services up through AWS or Rackspace for example
• The software defined datacentre will get a lot of airtime this year largely driven by network vitualisation
• Apple will continue to dominate the tablet market with specific verticals being key adopters of the technology.
• We also expect to see business and industry drive their mobility proposition to the next level of maturity. On top of the considerable benefits seen from native iOS apps, companies are now investing strategically in business process re-engineering projects that drive savings and efficiency through native app development.  Links to ERP and CRM systems will give organisations access to core data and the functionality to operate from wherever they chose.

So that's what we think will be in your Techmap for 2013 but we know there will be more lurking around the corner.  It would be great to hear what solutions you are looking into.

Charles Barratt | Solutions Development Manager | Equanet