Technology trends

With technology assisting our everyday lives, it would be interesting to know what are the technology trends for 2015.

Forbes.com has identified the top 10 strategic technology trends for the coming year as follows:

1. Computing everywhere – Smart phones will be used in new contexts and environments. Along with wearables, smartphones will offer connected screens in the workplace and in public. User experience will be a key.

2. The Internet of Things (IoT) – The Internet of Things is big and it will continue to grow along with user-oriented computing. IoT 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 percent 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-faced approaches. Expect security aware application design, dynamic and static application security testing, and runtime application self-protection.

Source: www.forbes.com

Our country can most definitely benefit from existing and emerging technologies and here are some areas where they can be of tremendous use:

1. Our airports can use emerging technologies to manage traffic more effectively and efficiently. Does Gatwick Airport in London, the world’s busiest single-runway airport, experience the same delays in arrivals and departures as we do at NAIA? If we can’t build a new airport or build a third parallel runway to complement our two existing crossing runways, then it might do us a lot of good if we invest in good technology to manage traffic.

2. Most definitely, our Metro Rail Transit (MRT) system needs a technology boost so that our trains do not overshoot the rail. A simple technology that would do our commuters a lot of good is if the Department of Transportation and Communication, in imposing a fare hike beginning next month, would activate the elevators and escalators. After all, the DOTC and the MRT management are not exempt from complying with laws and rules pertaining to the elderly and persons with disability (PWD).

3. The National Bilibid Prison (NBP) can use a lot of technology in monitoring what goes in and out of the Muntinlupa facility – and that would include X-ray machines and other detectors, CCTV cameras everywhere, to name a few.

4. Can something be done about the quality of our Internet connection? We consumers are paying good money to be able to connect to the Internet whenever and wherever we need to. Imagine how much more productive Filipinos can become if they can do their work anywhere they want to, with the aid of a highly efficient public or private Internet provider.

5. Our Comelec bashers should stop thinking of going back to manual vote canvassing and counting and instead appreciate what technology has done for our electoral system. Our country should build on gains already achieved, instead of backsliding and returning to the dark ages.

Before I end this, let me thank everyone who greeted me on my birthday. Thank you to Marriott Hotel for the sumptuous treat, most especially Michelle Garcia and Rommel Orbigo of Megaworld.

It’s good to be writing this column while sipping a cup of Musang (Civet) coffee outside the Good Shepherd Convent here in Baguio City while wondering when this long line of people in front of me who want to buy ube and strawberry jam will end. Take note: the drive to Baguio yesterday from Manila took 13 hours.

I guess that having a good cup of coffee and leaving the worries of 2014 behind in anticipation of a better year ahead for all of us would be a good beginning.

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