IT research firm Gartner has released a report on new technologies that will have a big impact on business over the next ten years, concluding that Web 2.0, mashups, location-aware software, and sensor mesh networking will lead the way in the next generation of software tools. The 2006 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle report (available for a fee) examines dozens of technologies for their maturity, impact, and adoption. The forecast is organized into three categories: Web 2.0, Real World Web, and Application Architecture.
Trendy Web 2.0 refers to Internet services that allow people to collaborate and share information online in more robust ways, such as wikis and social networks. According to the Web 2.0-emblematic Wikipedia, the correct term for such ventures is the "Participatory Web," which emphasizes tools and platforms that enable users "to tag, blog, comment, modify, augment, select from, rank, and generally talk back to the contributions of other users." Examples include Google AdSense, Flickr, and Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript and XML).
Web 2.0 mashups are also hot. Following from the practice of DJs in the music world, known to mash multiple songs into the same mix, software developers are increasingly taking several applications and mashing them into ad hoc services. The most prominent examples are the customized offerings that take advantage of Google Maps, which allows users to employ its software and databases to create value-added services.
The so-called Real World Web (a.k.a. the Internet of Things) gets a good share of hype from Gartner, as well. It refers to the self-organizing world of embedded sensors and microprocessors in common objects to evolve into location-aware applications, which can be found today in services such as product tracking and inventory, field force management, and logistics. Sensor mesh networks, in which nets arise from proximate meshes of peer nodes, are outgrowths of this phenomenon, which Gartner believes will become significant in the coming years.
New application architectures—such as the service-oriented architecture (SOA) and event-driven architecture (EDA)—will also figure prominently in the future. SOA (invented by Gartner analysts) defines the use of services based on the requirements of users, who need not even know the underlying platform. An event-driven architecture defines how systems can be engineered and designed to sense and respond to changes in state. These should find increased use in the near future in areas such as financial trading, supply chains, fraud detection, homeland security, telecommunications, logistics, and sensor networks.
For business, most of this is hype today, but in the coming years, we all might wonder what we ever did without such everyday technologies—or perhaps completely forget they were ever predicted to begin with.
THE NEXT HYPE CYCLE
IT research firm Gartner has released a report on new technologies that will have a big impact on business over the next ten years, concluding that Web 2.0, mashups, location-aware software, and sensor mesh networking will lead the way in the next generation of software tools. The 2006 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle report (available for a fee) examines dozens of technologies for their maturity, impact, and adoption. The forecast is organized into three categories: Web 2.0, Real World Web, and Application Architecture.
Trendy Web 2.0 refers to Internet services that allow people to collaborate and share information online in more robust ways, such as wikis and social networks. According to the Web 2.0-emblematic Wikipedia, the correct term for such ventures is the "Participatory Web," which emphasizes tools and platforms that enable users "to tag, blog, comment, modify, augment, select from, rank, and generally talk back to the contributions of other users." Examples include Google AdSense, Flickr, and Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript and XML).
Web 2.0 mashups are also hot. Following from the practice of DJs in the music world, known to mash multiple songs into the same mix, software developers are increasingly taking several applications and mashing them into ad hoc services. The most prominent examples are the customized offerings that take advantage of Google Maps, which allows users to employ its software and databases to create value-added services.
The so-called Real World Web (a.k.a. the Internet of Things) gets a good share of hype from Gartner, as well. It refers to the self-organizing world of embedded sensors and microprocessors in common objects to evolve into location-aware applications, which can be found today in services such as product tracking and inventory, field force management, and logistics. Sensor mesh networks, in which nets arise from proximate meshes of peer nodes, are outgrowths of this phenomenon, which Gartner believes will become significant in the coming years.
New application architectures—such as the service-oriented architecture (SOA) and event-driven architecture (EDA)—will also figure prominently in the future. SOA (invented by Gartner analysts) defines the use of services based on the requirements of users, who need not even know the underlying platform. An event-driven architecture defines how systems can be engineered and designed to sense and respond to changes in state. These should find increased use in the near future in areas such as financial trading, supply chains, fraud detection, homeland security, telecommunications, logistics, and sensor networks.
For business, most of this is hype today, but in the coming years, we all might wonder what we ever did without such everyday technologies—or perhaps completely forget they were ever predicted to begin with.