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High-Tech Trends To Watch
Wed Sep 25, 1:28 PM ET
Jay Lyman, www.NewsFactor.com

Current economic conditions may make it difficult to muster excitement about high-tech, but several trends are gaining momentum and are likely to alter the technology landscape in coming months and years. These trends include Web services, miniaturization and other chip breakthroughs, IT outsourcing and a departure from custom software development.



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For example, Web services not only will improve profitability and save enterprises time and money, but also will fuel new networking, client and server technology implementations, according to experts. Specifically, Yankee Group senior analyst Laura DiDio told NewsFactor that Web services will result in better security and may allow many companies to "cut out the middleman." However, she said, enterprises also will face a more complex IT landscape as they incorporate Web services into today's heterogeneous networks.

Chips Shrink

Other trends, such as chip miniaturization, may be less prominent than Web services but still will affect the overall tech industry, enabling, for example, the manufacture of devices in which every piece is a processor, Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds told NewsFactor.

Reynolds said that as a result of chip miniaturization, people will notice cameras in more places and devices. "This will be the most noticeable change in the next five years," he explained.

And miniaturization will make it easier for another development to move forward: Forrester research director Carl Howe cited a trend toward making chips and devices more powerful by equipping them with multiple processors. Separately, he said open source software will emerge as a more potent force in high-tech because it represents a better development process.

Outsourcing Opportunities

While Reynolds said that other chip technology, such as hardware-based security, will have even more limited visibility than miniaturization, it is likely to be pervasive by 2007.

Meanwhile, with economic hard times seeming certain to linger through the end of 2002 and beyond, Yankee Group program manager Andrew Efstathiou pointed to a move toward IT outsourcing. "The difficult economic times actually accelerate outsourcing in general because you have to look toward cost savings," he said.

Efstathiou added that outsourcing is likely to extend its reach higher up the corporate structure, particularly in such industries as financial services and healthcare, reaching application management and business process levels.

Long-Term Trend

A longer-term trend that has been gathering steam for years, according to Efstathiou, is a move away from custom development and software toward use of packaged applications. "That will change the delivery model for integrators and consultants." Packaged apps allow "reproducibility" and make it easier to carry out software changes and upgrades, he noted.

"It also makes [applications] more easily deployable across different environments," Efstathiou said. "Companies are consolidating. As they merge, it's easier if they have packaged apps to accomplish mergers and integrations."

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