2009+ Enabling information technologies Radar

The impact levels of new and emerging trends are defined as:

Transformational: likely to require transformation changes within organisations.
Low: more likely to require minor improvements rather than radical changes.

The status of new and emerging technologies are defined as:
Emerging (Red): mainly expressed by academia and a very small number of specialized markets.
Adolescent (Amber): expressed more widely by analysts and thought-leaders.
Early adopter (Green): seen more widely by clients markets. Clients starting to look for solutions.
Mainstream (White): there is a clear need and many clients are implementing solutions.

The implications of time and impact of new and emerging technologies are defined as:

Now-1 year: Look today at how solutions address need.
2-3 years: Consider potential solutions with maybe some pilots.
4+ years: Understand now and consider the potential implications and how these could be addressed.

2009+

Enabling information technologies Radar

• As social networks and collaborative tools are spreading through society and technology innovation is delivered first to customers in a C2B model instead of B2C, technology evolution is more led by the consumer market than the corporate world. As businesses start to investigate what Web 2.0 can do for them, not just for linking information but also for linking people, understanding Wikis, Blogs, forums, and communities is a particular focus. Customers and employees are becoming the source of information and inspiration for companies. This will evolve toward the Enterprise 2.0.
• Future versions of the Web will integrate the Semantic and Contextual Web (also referred to as Web 3.0) and Ontologies, one of its core components. A number of Ontologies—XBRL being one of the more mature—are beginning to enter the mainstream for defining financial information.
• Although the Semantic Web is a few years off full realization, niche applications such as Semantic Search Engines are already available.
• GRC Platforms for Governance, Risk, and Compliance will bring together the portfolio of functionality in the GRC space, enabling the automation of GRCM activities—in particular, the documentation and reporting of risk management and compliance activities.
• Big Web actors have massively adopted Identity Federation. Most B2B exchanges should do the same and let power business users consume the data in Mash-ups.
• Collective Intelligence—the benefits of communicating and knowledge-sharing with people within and external to an organization—is becoming widely accepted as the path to improved innovation and performance.
• Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and other informational and documental systems (such as Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence) have to evolve toward integrated Enterprise Information Management and Planning (EIM and EIP), extending information management and analysis capabilities into business applications. EIM and EIP will be to informational process automation what Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has been to transactional process automation.
• Grid Computing, as with other virtualization models that involve sharing heterogeneous resources and data across a network using open standards, improves time-to-results performance. It also supports the success of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) through support of on-demand access to services and SOA applications, allowing portability and reusability of application components.
  
• Businesses are investigating how they can benefit from Virtual Reality and online and 3D Virtual Worlds such as Second Life. Virtual cybercharacters, or avatars, will evolve towards a new generation of enriched and converged B2B / B2C, self-service, and mobile applications. Organizations are using the world of multimedia applications and video gaming applications as a way of retaining and improving loyalty of Generation Y, digital native users, and customers. Virtual Reality, Physical Reality, and Augmented Reality techniques are blending to create new applications and new ways of working, closer to games.
• Avatars, Interactive Virtual Assistants (IVA), and Virtual Advisors are a key differentiating factor in the development of new services, business models, and commercial relationships in virtual channels. They will allow organizations to be given a face, voice, and personality as conversational interfaces. They are humanizing and socializing the interface, improving accessibility and branding, simplifying navigation, helping and guiding through self-service applications, and introducing emotional intelligence concepts within the virtual commercial cycle. This will categorically improve the interaction experience for clients and users.
• To date, a number of ‘intelligent’ robots have been made for a diverse array of applications, ranging from security to sheep-shearing.
• Speech and voice processing technologies, such as Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), high-quality text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis, speech and voice verification, and new improvements and capabilities in spoken natural language processing, are enabling a new portfolio of second-generation Intelligent Voice Applications, such as automated translators and new applications such as Speech Analytics. These will be useful for customer intelligence strategies in contact centers, and for Web-searching and automatically indexing capabilities in audio and multimedia content management systems. All these basic speech and voice processing technologies are being adopted in multiple embedded devices and mobile terminals, extending the importance of these technologies as one of the key HCIs (Human Computer Interfaces) of the future.
• Multi-Channel Knowledge Management (MC-KM) systems for Customer Services automate the collection and categorization of information into a central knowledge repository to enable faster retrieval of contextual information related to products, services, and procedures from different front-office interfaces (contact center agent’s desk, Web self-service, or branch / retail store channels). MC-KM complements Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Customer Experience Management (CEM) strategies.
• Biometric systems will enhance access control and security systems, by uniquely recognizing humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical (face, fingerprints, hand, iris, DNA) or behavioral traits (keystroke, signature, voice, speech).
• Open Source Mobile software development kits and operating systems, such as Android and Symbian, will enable third-party applications to run on iPhone and mobile terminals and develop new mobile services and applications, such as Location-Aware Applications and Three-Dimensional Location-Based Services Geographical Information Systems (3D LBS GIS) in a mobile environment. It will drive new 3D-generation mobile applications and the use of any phone on any wireless network. More and more applications and operating systems will converge for mobile terminals and Netbooks devices.
• 2D Barcodes are used in innovative mobile applications such as ticketing, as a low-tech and unidirectional substitute to contactless technologies such as Near Field Communication.
• Pilots of mobile payment applications are now being seen, particularly in the travel, transport, and retail verticals.
• 3D LBS GIS provides complete geospatial analysis, functionalities, and representation of any kind of attributes relating to locations. 3D visualization allows non-trained users to understand geospatial information easily.
• Netbooks and mini-notebooks are a lightweight, low-cost, energyefficient, highly portable sub-category laptop that require less processing power and a reduced ability to run resource-intensive operating systems. These kinds of terminals, in addition to other miniaturized devices like PC on Chip should be positioned as a window into the Internet rather than a computing device. They are suitable for Web browsing, email, and general purpose applications, and are targeted at users accessing Web-based Cloud Computing applications that require a less powerful client.
• It’s high legibility and very low power requirements make e-Paper an interesting alternative to LCD to display information, with a broad range of applications, from displaying available balance on smartcards to e-book readers, including digital signage.
• Multi-touch interfaces will allow users a richer, more immediate interaction with applications, terminals, and new devices. This includes swiping, pinching, rotations, and other actions.
• Computer Vision is, in effect, an artificial vision system implemented in software and / or hardware. Very immature at present, we can expect more widespread capabilities in the future.
• The term Open Source Hardware has primarily been used to reflect the free release of information such as schematics, designs, sizes, and other information about hardware, including hardware design and distribution.
• Wearable computers have been applied to areas such as behavioral modeling, health monitoring systems, IT, and media development. Government organizations, military, and health professionals have all incorporated wearable computers into their daily operations.
• Solid-state Storage Technology will replace hard-disk drives in mobile devices such as laptops and Netbooks in the not too distant future. Having no moving parts, they are quieter than hard-disk drives, smaller, and also less fragile. Continuous progress in technology, as with multilevel cell NAND flash chips, will favor cost reductions and enable the emergence of new kinds of storage devices applicable to all environments (personal and professional). The principal advantages of this technology will be: i/o speed increases, reduced energy consumption, and size reduction. Nevertheless, it must be considered that in the following years the cost reduction will evolve in a progressive way, not making it affordable to all markets.
• The next step in wireless and mobile communications is the Fourth Generation Communications System (4G). A 4G system will be able to provide a comprehensive IP solution where voice, data, and streamed multimedia can be given to users on an ‘anytime, anywhere’ basis, and at higher data rates than previous generations. It will be a fully IP-based integrated system and will be capable of providing 100 Mbits/s and 1 Gbit/s speeds both indoors and outdoors, with premium quality and high security. Unified and Converged Communications enabled by IP will be mainstream in all businesses as a way of reducing communication costs and interconnecting multiple and different devices and business applications.
• Modern optical mesh networks are networks of nodes based on OXC (Optical Cross-Connects) and will take advantage of current developments in GMPLS (Generalized MultiProtocol Label Switching) as the control plane at the optical layer. Mesh networks, as a decentralized network model formed by meshes of peer nodes with no single point of failure, will improve efficiency in traffic management and faster self-recovery against failures.
• Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags will be incorporated into more products, animals, or persons for the purpose of identification. Communications for short transactions, such as the purchase of an item, will make use of Near-Field Communications.