Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2015

1. Computing Everywhere

As smart-phone technology advances, smart-phones will be used in new contexts and environments. Along with wearables, smart-phones will offer connected screens in the workplace and in public. User experience will be key.

2. The Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things is big and it will continue to grow along with user-oriented computing. Prediction: The Internet of Things will be the focus of digital business products and processes in industrial and operational contexts. Expect technology to be embedded everywhere.

3. 3D Printing

3D printing is about to get cheaper, and its market will grow over the next three years. The expansion will be biggest in industrial, biomedical, and consumer applications helping companies reduce costs.

4. Advanced, Pervasive, Invisible Analytics

Analytics will continue to grow propelled by the Internet of Things, creating large pools of data. Every app will need to be an analytic app. But big data isn’t the most important thing: instead we’ll need big questions and big answers.

5. Context-Rich Systems

Thanks to embedded intelligence and analytics, systems will become alert and responsive to their surroundings. Expect context-aware security as well as other trends.

6. Smart Machines

Analytics and context will pave the way for smart machines that can learn for themselves and act accordingly. These machine helpers will continue to evolve. Prediction: The smart machines era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT.

7. Cloud/Client Architecture

As mobile computing meets cloud computing, centrally coordinated applications that can be delivered to any device will continue to grow. Apps that can use intelligence and storage effectively will see lower bandwidth costs. Expect to be able to use applications simultaneously on multiple devices.

8. Software-Defined Infrastructure and Applications

Software defined networking, storage, data centers and security are maturing. Cloud service software is configurable thanks to rich APIs. Computing will have to move away from static models to deal with the changing demands of digital business.

9. Web-Scale IT

More and more companies will begin thinking like Amazon, Google and Facebook. As cloud-optimized and software-defined methods become mainstream, we’ll see a move towards web-scale IT, starting with DevOps.

10. Risk-Based Security and Self-Protection

While 100% security solutions aren’t feasible, advanced risk assessment and mitigation will come into play in the next few years. Security will move away from perimeter defense to multi-faceted approaches. Expect security aware application design, dynamic and static application security testing, and runtime application self-protection.