Technology trends to watch out for in 2011

Satish Joshi, executive VP and global head – technology & innovation, Patni Computer

Enterprise Social Networking
Social Networking has become synonymous with Facebook, Twitter, Second Life and such other sites that provide mechanisms for perfect strangers to interact in an unfettered, un-orchestrated manner. A lot of enterprises have created their presence in these essentially individual focused cyber environments.

However, Enterprise Social Networking needs to be something much more than the usual Social Networking and that realization will drive the evolution of different kinds of interactive platforms – platforms to facilitate and influence human interactions OUTSIDE defined, formal business process workflows and hierarchies - for knowledge and experience sharing, collaboration, for building relationships outside the formal defined business environment and for fulfillment for a common purpose that the members of the community share.

These will be designed to address three different communities – communities that are an integral part of the enterprise (employees, contractors), communities that are directly influenced by but are not a part of the enterprise and communities that are only loosely influenced by or only remotely interested in the enterprise. The platforms commonly associated with Social networking (Facebook, Twitter and the like) may be leveraged effectively for this third community; however generally the mechanisms for building and networking in these communities will be substantially different.

Since the common social networking platforms are completely unregulated and unfettered, the interactions in these networks tend to be flashes in the pan – unrepeatable and not reusable. The enterprise networking platforms therefore while still facilitating impromptu, spontaneous interactions amongst the members of the community, not bound by rigid workflows and rules, will nevertheless be designed to milk reuseable knowledge and interactions to achieve a purpose.

Clouds Everywhere
Cloud computing while becoming ubiquitous is still in many ways rooted in a data center. Whatever view the clouds may provide to the users – their core still consists of server farms running various operating systems and middle ware platforms over which the cloud is built.

In fact, the first, the largest and the most successful cloud ever built was a part of the SETI@Home program which was NOT rooted in a data center but used the spare computing resources of nearly 3 million small and large computing nodes. The primary purpose and the primary application of each of these nodes was something other than building and supporting the cloud. So while the clouds as we know them today – rooted in mega-datacenters (perhaps distributed) will continue to evolve, the virtualization technology will lead to emulating the SETI@Home cloud architecture in many unusual environments.

Just consider the computing resources contained in high end diagnostic equipment such as MRI or PET or such other machines in a hospital. Except when a scan is actually in progress this capacity lies idle. Virtualization technology of today will allow us to pool these spare computing resources and make them available for running more conventional computing loads. This is just one example – how much computing capacity lies idle on a thoroughly automated shop floor where most of the machine tools are driven by a computer brain? Can that be harnessed into a virtual machine to run other compute loads? Sure!

Usability
There are a number of reasons why even after all the progress that has been made “Software Engineering” remains still a pair of self contradictory words. Perhaps the most glaring of these reasons is - how little importance ergonomic considerations have in design of software systems. A car does not sell if its only virtue is a great engine but software does.

This has been changing over the years but still historically the focus has been on making the look and feel of a software product better and prettier – not on designing for end user productivity. Designs were made to make the software scalable and not the end-user scalable! This is poised to change dramatically with the techniques of behavioral and cognitive analysis honed by consumer product designers to being adopted and deployed to design not prettier but more useable interfaces. So much so that the creation of a new software product/application which used to begin with a “Requirements Analysis” phase will now begin with a behavioral study of the prospective users of that product.

There is another strong reason for Useability becoming the starting point of software engineering efforts – more and more regulations are starting to emerge which mandate that software design take into account the requirements of people with special needs and special physical challenges. Such laws already exist for many different products of other industrial endeavors. With computing systems and accessing them effectively becoming necessary part of our daily lives similar laws are fast emerging and will in the near future start warranting that design of software systems comply with them.

Convergence of Cloud Computing, smart Mobile devices and Social networking (Or Enterprise social networking as defined above):
Three block buster platforms – each in its own right a trend setter evolved for a while catering to their own niches in the market. Sure a mobile device could connect to the internet by using a browser or a VPN tunnel or some such mechanism but that coupling was loose. And sure a mobile device could access facebook or twitter again through a browser.

You would clearly experience the distinction between the two environments. While you were got on to Facebook through the browser you “experienced” a Facebook environment, when you quit and went back to the mobile device to read an email you “experienced” a Symbian or a Blackberry or a Windows mobile environment – distinctly differently. With Android and (the soon to come) Chrome OS and tablets and a myriad applications running in the cloud and exposing their capabilities through web services and such other developments these boundaries have already started blurring.

On a more technical level, the speeds and low latency of the 4G networks will make the users completely oblivious to these distinctions. Developments in Enterprise Social networking platforms will integrate both structured enterprises applications access and the more unstructured forms of interactions typical of a social networking platform.