Five technologies for 2008 [BT broadband office]

Five technologies for 2008

Posted 16 January 2008 at 2:15PM by Ian Betteridge in Connecting to the Internet, Doing business online, Email and communications

Because it has two of the biggest and most interesting consumer IT trade shows - Macworld Expo and CES - January is always a good time to make predictions about technology. So here's my five picks for the coming year.

VoIP

This will finally be the year that voice over IP starts to take over as the predominant method of making voice calls in business - and possibly on the consumer side as well. For end users, they will hardly notice the difference, but finance and IT directors everywhere will be very happy, thanks to the cost and simplicity of VoIP systems. From small businesses and products like BT Business Broadband Voice through to bigger companies and BT Business Communications Manager, VoIP systems will make a splash.

Mobile data

In business, the BlackBerry and its ilk have become ubiquitous, but thanks to less-than-stellar browser software, mobile web access has been less successful. Apple's iPhone has shown how good a mobile browser can be, and I expect other vendors to follow suit. Soon, browsing on a mobile device will no longer be a second-rate experience.

Unified communications

With voice, data, and just about everything else converging onto an Internet-based platform, this year may well be when unified communications takes off. Soon, people won't have to call your mobile, your desk phone, and then email you only to find out that you're only available via text that day - with unified communications, people contact people, and the method is almost irrelevant.

Touch interfaces

Again driven by the outstanding work Apple put into the iPhone, this could be the year when touch interfaces start to move into the mainstream. Expect Microsoft to raise its game and respond.

Virtual worlds

If last year was when virtual worlds starting popping on to the business radar, 2008 will probably be the point when businesses work out what to do with them.

Tags: blackberry, communications, data, mobile, unified, virtual, voip, worlds

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Comments

1. At January 16, 2008 2:59 PM, James Phillips wrote:

My experience is that UK businesses are slow to experiment with I.T. I think its because of past disappointment with new products which never quite lived up to the hype. Cost is also a factor of course and timing has to be right before many businesses will invest in new technology or even upgrade. I think most business owners have now cottoned onto the fact that many technology suppliers are only too keen to provide a poor product offering, alongside even worse service and so they are reluctant to test these new products until they're convinced.

2. At January 16, 2008 6:05 PM, Zaphod wrote:

The old chestnuts rise again ?
What of WAP ? We all could not live without it but we did in our millions!

So, VOIP. The only driver for VOIP is cost of calls and commission for the salesmen. It matters not to the user if he converses using tin cans and string as long as it reaches the person he wants, at acceptable quality and most of all cheaply. Most people selling it have no idea of the problems and pitfalls. One to one it can be fine, my colleague calls me from China using Skype - but sometimes has to clear down and try again - but we both expect that. Voip will only take off if forced upon users or given away. Otherwise they just ain't bovvered.
Mobile Data. We have set up systems using GPRS, 3G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, but for clearly defined applications. Gizmo Geeks may drive it forward as they can't be without e-mail for more than 10 minutes, but real applications are already using mobile data.
Unified Comms. Again, the sales people babble on but most don't understand it themselves. Most can't even speak about it in English, so growth will probably limited to the sad geeks who can't go on holiday without a laptop.
Touch Screens. Been there, done that back in the 80s. Cost will again be the driver. but most people can exist without.
Virtual worlds ? That's where the salesmen live !

3. At January 17, 2008 3:39 PM, anjanesh wrote:

server virtualisation could be The Next Big Thing in software/hardware deployment. With the current constraint on processor speeds and switch to multi core dies more hardware functions will be handled by Software components .

This will bring large scale parallel processing on ordinary desktops.

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