Emerging Technology: Final Integration

Information technology students, in practical definition, are professionals that develop expertise on injecting technology to different aspects of a society, particularly, business. Hence, it is imperative for these professionals to keep track of different technologies so as to discern sustainability of technologies being applied. Being ahead by knowing where the trend of certain technology is moving to is a certain power to make current decisions whether to acquire the technology or not. This is again imperative since IT professionals are the ones who equip a business towards technological competencies and it is nearly covering all other business competencies since information technologies are implemented across the organization.

In my own understanding, a technology is considered emerging if it can satisfy these two conditions: First, it should be able to change how people do their work; second, it should be presently acquired or demanded by people from sectors. Given the two, a technology can be considered emerging and how long will it span as an emerging technology would depend on its innovation. Innovation in this case would be meeting constantly changing need of the people towards that certain technology.

Aside from technology awareness, my IT career is affected since technologies will start changing and I should be able to cope up on these changes in terms of knowledge to be able to identify rightful technologies to use in doing IT projects. This will be a great help for IT professionals like me. Learning emerging technologies can also help me in managing my own technology in terms of innovation and other aspects.

Technologies in my opinion are only limited to a certain span of time. Some lives for a couple of years or decades, however, a certain technology product always dies. People and society are changing which in the same context lead to changes to the demand with technologies. Hence, discoveries or innovation on these technologies should always match with the need or demand at a certain times. Constant changing of the need will also mean constant change in technology. Whether or not a certain technology will emerge depends solely on how acceptable it is to target users. A technology can only emerge in some sense if it has already been accepted by a number of users and it does inflict change on how people usually do their work. It should be recognized to this point that there is a difference between technology existing and emerging. Not all technology which exists emerges at the same time, but technology that emerges obviously exists. Hence, emerging is like a higher level of existence.

SAP Enterprise Portal

Enterprise portals are proven effective for integrating work down to centralization of a company’s data and information. Aside from this, a company’s need for collaboration is also addressed by enterprise portals like SAP. It changes how everything works inside a company. However, this certain technology is not something new anymore. This in a little way disqualifies the technology to be called as emerging. Rather, this technology can be labeled as an emerged one.

Another major concern on why SAP Enterprise Portal fails at some point is its price. Adapting a SAP enterprise portal would use a lot of resources which lead companies to look for other alternatives. Only big business establishments with stable and high revenue afford to acquire a SAP enterprise portal.

SAP enterprise portal has already emerged in my opinion since other affordable substitutes is being looked at by a number of companies. SAP enterprise portal is proven good. However, it fails to promote sustainability as a technology. Sometime in the future, I think this technology will lose its grounds or rather support because more and more better solutions are being proposed by competitors.

Multi-Touch

Multi-touch technology is one among emerging technologies for displays like monitors and mobile phone screens. Slowly, touchscreen displays is being adapted to a number of gadgets. To which, multi-touch would be the next. And in the near future, all displays would adapt multi-touch feature. Hence, this makes Multi-touch a continuously emerging technology.

Multi-touch changes how people interact with their gadgets. Interaction is a lot easier for other. However, it is still a fact that this technology cannot please everyone especially a segment of the market that are not used to interacting with a multi-touch screen.

In my opinion, multi-touch is a currently emerging technology. However, as future researches continue, another new display technology would replace multi-touch. Multi-touch in my opinion is not yet the peak for display technologies. I am sort of looking over on holograms to replace physical display technologies.

References:

¹ http://blogs.pcmag.com/miller/2009/03/emerging_display_technology_ol.php

Windows Mobile

Windows Mobile is one of the competing mobile technologies in the market. Features and functionalities of this certain technology changes how people work through the way it manipulates data for the user. Hence, the technology can also be considered as an emerging technology since users of this kind of phone is gradually increasing given that it helps professionals manage their schedule and etc.

Operating systems provided by Microsoft has already entrenched a certain institution to the users. Most computers nowadays run a Windows interface which is familiar to everyone. In addition, this technology has also proven its value to its users that is why it has already been absorbed by companies, individuals for their own personal use. Windows Mobile, by the term itself, aims at mobilizing the same tradition and putting more value to personal computing since this time computing is more accessible or mobile.

Windows Mobile is simply placing personal computing from a highly used operating system down to a mobile phone. This innovation model is effective since it brings convenience to users on integration of their computers with their mobile. Central unification of data owned by a user is helping most professionals to save time which exactly increases performance and productivity level of working professionals.

Windows Mobile is an emerging technology since users who consume it are able to productively do their work. Hence, the technology is able to change the way users do their job. Another, this technology, although exists long before, is entering a new stage of interface. These qualify Windows Mobile as one present emerging technology adapting to certain needs of professionals.

Although Windows Mobile is currently emerging, I think there will come a period that this technology would lose its feet from the ground especially if it cannot cope up with changing need of professionals. Currently, professional world is consistently changing. Ways on how business performs work is evolving into a more mobile one. To which, it is always a challenge on how mobile technology can cope up with the running need. The need is cannot be sacrificed even it is given another value – mobility. Windows Mobile has to evolve and consistently create improvements on its product line in order not to lose its ground on becoming an emerging technology. It should offer products lined with changing need of professionals as demand goes higher.

Hadoop & Data Intensive Computing

In a company, data is always growing in size. As the data size grows larger, the harder it is to process, store or transfer data. In other words, it is harder to take actions with the data being captured. And, this is where data intensive computing – Hadoop – comes into play. ¹ Hadoop is a programming model and software framework for writing applications that rapidly process vast amounts of data in parallel on large clusters of compute nodes. Hadoop, according to the speaker, is considered as an emerging technology because it inflicts change. This change is a response to a demand as data grows larger in size. It will affect how people in a certain industry do things.

From this session, I was exposed to the idea that when we talk about emerging technology. It does not only include gadgets, software, computers and the likes. It also includes concept on technologies like logical programming algorithms on how data is being processed strategically. As long as something related to technology can drastically change how people work or does things, it is then qualified to become an emerging technology.

Data is a growing asset by any company. In the future, this will consistently increase to which processing of data to support business decisions will be a challenge. To this, Hadoop I think is being looked at as a solution to this upcoming situation. Hadoop is currently emerging for top companies and one by one other company with growing need for data intensive computing will use Hadoop to continue its information operations. Hadoop is just a specific solution right now. In the future, a lot more data intensive computing will come up. Or rather, better and better data intensive computing techniques will be thought of in response to growing need.

References:

¹ http://hadoop.apache.org/mapreduce/