Punditry : The future of technology

Twenty years ago, I looked at the gradual introduction of high-powered scientific calculators into my middle school by some of my more wealthy classmates and recoiled at what I saw as the propensity to substitute our brains with computers in the near future. The scientific calculators were supposed to do trigonometry and floating point arithmetic faster than the human who relied on the log/trig tables. I used to have fun beating the calculator totting folks by using just the tables and my pen and paper. I have been interested in where technology will lead to since then and often pride my ability to see the trends reasonably well.

One trend I saw then was that computing skills will be so wide spread, so called computer scientists will be useless. Interestingly, twenty years hence, computing has indeed become near ubiquitous (if you consider mobile phone a computer given that capabilities), but computer scientists have managed to remain in their jobs. However, that ride is gradually winding down as the industry begins its gradual descent (or ascent, depending on how you like it) into utility computing. The process might take another two decades, but the onset of that age is really upon us.

So what will happen then?

The Data Center: The traditional model of a data center as a corporate technology nerve center, power hog and increasingly center of unreliable cost and complexity will soon be replaced with a new model that will be centered around optimization, efficiency and clarity. The number of data centers will decrease dramatically in the next decade as utility computing models take hold in industry and across public enterprises. Many large multinationals have perfected the art of consolidated data, center or so they think. But with increased reliability at the utility and increased security of corporate data in the utility center, organizations, small and large will farm out much of their data center services to centers of efficiencies and let the utility manage the data infrastructure leaving the corporations to focus on their primary mission.  A growing number of writers agree with this view of the future, but vendors continue to figure out ways to sell expensive infrastructure components to corporations who are having to fork out every savings they can garner from all other sources into technology upgrade, elongating the lifespan of today’s technology departmental structures. That will soon change.

The large IT shop: Many major corporations have a large shop of information technology professionals from their help desk to the programmers, the networking department, information security, enterprise architecture and the increasing number of chief titled tech types. Every one in technology today is a chief of something, thanks in large part to the growing number of high-faluting certifications from CCIE to CISSP to MCSE and the list goes on. All of that will soon come full circle as corporations will no longer need that many technology hands on the deck. In some ways, the industry’s success in automation and improving ease will ultimately become its albatross. Granted, tech jobs will still be there to be had, but not in the number and not as many per corporations. In fact, the interesting title of the future will be Chief Innovation Officer. The titled executive will seat on corporate boards and in executive meetings and will be an expert at both the organization’s mission and be familiar enough with technology to focus primarily on innovation for the corporation. Most of the tech infrastructure and services currently housed by corporations would have been farmed out and so the corporate technology team will be more focused on what the organization’s goals are and will simply procured the appropriate infrastructure and solution from a small selection of vendors. Oracle will no longer be able to sell its database licenses based on each corporations buying its own software an running its own data center. Microsoft will have to make do without the large volume licensing fees it currently derives from selling its operating systems and productivity suites. Corporations will not only be able to subscribe to all their software and storage needs through a utility entity, they will no longer need the large investments in desktop devices. Computing devices will become simplified and the corporate technology department will quickly dwindle in size and complexity.

Unified Computing Platform: The average tech executive and increasingly, the average general worker carry at least three different computing and communications devices. A laptop or netbook for mobile computing, a smartphone for mobile communication and another device for stuff the first two cannot do efficiently. And with all that, we still log around our notes, pick up newspapers from the news stands and collect oodles on documents from meetings. All of that is changing and in two decades, that transformation should be complete, if not long before then. At least in the developed world, and most of the world will be there too, bandwidth will no longer be the limitation to mobility. And soon as everything can be stored and accessed from anywhere securely, the personal computing platform will arrive to spare us from our current overload. Most computer hardware companies will reinvent themselves and corporations will migrate into not just thin clients but very very thing OLED type clients that will either be wearable or just part of the office decor. If we must carry a computing device, that will be a stop gap and at that it will be no more than a small pen like device that can be expanded on demand and will serve all purposed from communication to entertainment to productivity platform and everything in between.

… To be continued. stay tuned.