Indeed these trends do not prominently appear in most of the technology predictions for 2013 that you would find on the Internet.
Are we missing the forest for the trees? Or, am I seeing a wrong pattern??
Let me argue my case.
Google is winning the ecosystem war
The nature of the ecosystem is changing. Earlier, ecosystems were built on familiarity, standardization, interoperability and supporting infrastructure.?
Familiarity: Once you are used to a way of working why would you want to change?
Standardization: Why would IT want to complicate life by introducing variety?
Interoperability: Who would want to develop a product, which cannot coexist with the most popular ecosystem?
Supporting Infrastructure: People, expertise, add-on products etc.
However, the core product would not improve on its own just because more people are using it. User needs and user feedback had to be programmed into the next version.
Herein lies the beauty of the next generation of services ? be it Google Search, Google Map, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon or even Wikipedia. They improve on their own through learning algorithms.
Learning algorithm are algorithms that becomes more accurate on its own when more people use it. A good example of Learning Algorithm is Google Search. Have you noticed how accurately it can understand misspelled words ? words not in the dictionary, proper names, abbreviations, Indian regional language words etc.? Have you noticed how accurate the auto-suggest is? You would rarely have to type your complete search terms. It works so well even when you try to search something like an Indian regional language song.?
Microsoft came up with UI innovations in Bing but Google could easily adopt what worked well. I have not yet met anybody who prefers to use Bing over Google.
IBM Watson won the Jeopardy! and had the ability to answer questions like a human. In May 2012, Google introduced ?Knowledge Graph? and with that, you get direct answers to many questions in addition to the search results.
Even if some service replicates the algorithm, it would not be as good because the usage database would be missing. It would be a chicken and egg situation because people will not use it as it is not as good and the algorithm would not become better because people do not use it as much.
Same is the case with Google Maps. With more usage it becomes more accurate. Apple has already burnt its finger by trying to replace it.
In 2013, this dominance will become more apparent and the challengers would find it difficult to compete.
Facebook: There are enough number of studies which indicate that buying influence of social media is very low.
Amazon: Would you purchase without comparing price? Serious purchasing without price comparison is a no-no.?
Apple: Industry best kept secret is that new generation Android phones are to iPhone ? and Steve Jobs is not around to pull a rabbit out of his hat.
Microsoft: Right now they are clueless and busy defending their own turf.?
The era of WIMP is over
WIMP: Windows, Icon, Mouse and Pointer.?
The future is touch, voice, gesture, visual augmentation etc. There are many new ways to interact with the computer but the most important thing for 2013 is the transition to touch sensitive display devices.?
The road has already been laid by the success of touch phones and touch tablets. It is much more natural for us to touch the screen directly than to use a device like mouse to manipulate a small pointer in the screen. However, ?mobility? and ?small screen size? seem to have blinded us to the importance of ?touch screen?.
Somehow we seem to miss the point that user interface designed for WIMP does not work very well in touch screen. The implication is that all existing user interfaces have to be redone in next few years.
It is ironic that Microsoft has realized this and hence has created Windows 8 ? and almost everybody has criticized that decision.
In 2013, we will see touch screens in all types of devices ? not just smart phones and tablets. They will come in many different sizes ? very small to very large. We are yet to figure out how best to design the UI for such screens. Hopefully, by the end of 2013, we would have made significant progress.
Impact of cloud is inversely proportional to the size of the entity
For individual, for scientific community, for startups and for SME sector cloud computing is a big deal. Larger the size of the organization lesser is the potential impact of cloud.
Personal Cloud has already transformed our lives. Just think of the many cloud services you use: e-mail, social networking, address book, data storage service, photo sharing, video sharing , blogging, VOIP service, location-based services. Where would we be without these services? They have already transformed our lives.
For scientists, it means availability of unlimited computing power for short duration at affordable cost. Traditionally, such amount of computing power would not even be available in the most elitist of institutions.
For startups, the scalability offered by cloud can make the difference between success and failure. They do not need to worry about under investing on hardware and failing to scale if they succeed. They also do not have to worry about over investing and running out of cash sooner.
For SMEs, it means accessibility to software, which would be too costly otherwise.
But as the size of the enterprise increases, the differentiator slowly vanishes. For large enterprises, the cost advantage of cloud is far from clear. Just because you can spin off an instance of a machine on a click of a button does not mean that the organization would become agile. If the ERP is moved from in-premise to cloud, would it help in generating additional revenue??
In Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technology ? ?Cloud Computing? has been hovering around the peak for the last 3 years.?
In 2013, we may see it going down the ?Trough of Disillusionment!?
That brings us to the related item Big Data, which would not have come into focus without cloud computing. But would it have the broad based transformational impact that all analysts are predicting? My opinion is that for most of us it is like a solution in search of a problem. Whether I am right or wrong I can say with confidence that in 2013 you are unlikely to hear success stories about Big Data.
What about not so transformational trends?
Consumerization of IT is here to stay: IT has lost control of technology adoption cycle. It is controlled by the customers, internal users and the line of business.?This is leading to the conflict between security and privacy on one side and usability and convenience on the other side: MDM and BYOD will be key concerns of enterprises.
Gamification is more of a buzzword: It is about tricking people to do what they would not do otherwise. Gamification would not work in the long run.
For the brick and mortar technologies, 3D Printing does not appear to be ripe yet; though it has interesting possibilities. Also, in spite of all the hype, NFC is not likely to take off.
In-memory computing, on the other hand, looks more promising. In certain situations, it can improve the performance by order of magnitude.?
However the real dark horse may just be AI and Robotics. It may be at the threshold of a breakthrough. Here is a glimpse of what has already been achieved. Actual breakthrough may happen few years down the line.
Udayan Banerjee is CTO, NIIT Technologies. Udayan Banerjee is on Google+
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