Predicting technology is always an iffy business, since tomorrow’s trends might always include an innovation, an entirely new market, or some previously unimagined combination of conditions and invention. Given today’s economic uncertainties, it is even more difficult. For New Zealand, certainly, much depends upon the relative value of the NZ dollar and whether companies can be convinced that the worst is over. Nonetheless, we are entering revolutionary times in the IT sector, marked by a few dominant themes that continue to move across the landscape. Chief among these are the economy, cloud computing (with all of its associated issues), and mobile technology. There are plenty of other trends, of course, and, for the viewer, much depends upon what part of the industry you happen to be involved with.
The economy has brought about industry consolidation and re-evaluation of expenditure which have, in turn, affected corporate spending plans, upgrade cycles, interest in new technologies, and willingness to undertake new projects. Cloud computing can be viewed in the broadest sense as an evolution in data centre infrastructure and in how services are delivered both internally and externally–including virtualisation, Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and other types of service provision. The trend toward mobile data services, most evident in the consumer space, includes the mobile internet, apps, and location based services.
We spoke with a number of different companies to gain a local perspective on 2010, including Ovum, Telecom’s Gen-i data division, HP, Juniper Networks, and Revera. All agree that these are trying times, but there are also new opportunities opening up as the technology revolution continues. There is broad agreement on the major trends, but it is interesting to note that each company also sees a variety of follow-on ramifications within its own sphere of interest.
This feature is available at http://reseller.co.nz.
