Trends in IT

Hottest trends in 2008 on Navtej Kohli IT Blog


Technology is the key that unlocks all doors to success. 2008 has
witnessed many familiar technology trends maturing from sideline fads
to powerful forces in their own right. Check out the hot trends by Navtej Kohli, your sure ticket to success.

1. Data leaks and IP Theft - Even as viruses grow more
dangerous and zombie botnets flood us with spam, security experts are
turning inward. The real threat is from within. One disgruntled sales
manager jumping ship to a competitor and taking customer lists along
can do more damage than the latest worm, while being much harder to
detect.


Security vendors are tackling this problem with new solutions that
range from enterprise rights management to data discovery and policy
generation to data-leak prevention. If your security profile doesn’t
take IP theft and data leakage into account, you should look at vendors
like Liquid Machines, Proofpoint, Reconnex or Vericept.


You may soon have access to these features through your existing vendors, as well.

2. Virtualization - Until recently, virtualization has
been focused on data-center optimization. With virtualized servers,
hardware utilization goes up and flexibility increases. At the same
time, costs associated with hardware and ongoing maintenance drop.

Now that the technology for server consolidation has matured,
virtualization could expand beyond the data center. VMware, Sun, Citrix
and Novell all have mature technologies. Meanwhile, behemoths like
Microsoft and Oracle have entered the space, further validating the
technology.


In the longer term, desktop virtualization could give users greater
flexibility and IT better control. Many analysts have dismissed virtual
desktops as yet another thin-client mirage, but what is more likely to
happen is that virtualization will line up with other trends like
service-orientated architecture (SOA) and mobility to deliver on-demand
applications to whatever device users happen to favor, be they PCs,
thin clients or smart phones.

3. Software as a Service - Speaking of services, the
software as a service (SaaS) market continues to grow. SaaS has slowly
been expanding beyond the mid-market, and since it dovetails well with
other trends like virtualization and utility computing, 2008 could be a
breakout year.

4. The Mobile Workforce - If your concerns about
mobility are still centered on rogue access points and weak wireless
encryption, you’re not keeping up. With the release of the iPhone, the
long-hyped computer-like smart phone phenomena finally arrived. Each
iPhone within the enterprise represents an uncontrolled node that could
introduce viruses, leach out intellectual property secrets and
generally undermine your security policies. You should have plenty of
options for protection in 2008.

5. Windows Vista - The question here is what should
you do about Vista. The typical enterprise isn’t showing much love for
Vista, and Microsoft has responded by keeping XP on the market longer
than it had planned to. However, with their heavy investment in Vista,
don’t expect this to go on indefinitely.


This means CIOs have a decision to make. Do they give in, cross their
fingers and hope that Microsoft fixes all of Vista’s glitches, or do
they start weighing their options? Open-source vendors, predictably,
see Vista as an opportunity. Some have even been touting desktop
virtualization as a way to tentatively try Vista, while having a stable
Linux operating system running alongside just in case.