Sogeti on top 12 technology trends for 2013

USA: The SogetiLabs Technology Outlook 2013 was composed by polling a group of Sogeti experts who in turn based their input on direct conversations with clients and partners and their own view of the industry as well as. In addition to the trends defined, the report also highlights a number of questions per trend where the answers will serve as a checkpoint if companies are ready for change.

General trends
The fast moving technology innovations impact companies across the world:
* On the technology side, the interest of our clients is moving away from the systems of record towards the systems of engagement.

* Concretely this is a move away from administrative processes towards using technology to improve or reinvent the real interaction with people.

* Many companies and organizations have a hard time to catch up to the many trends and innovations of the day.

"The best way to get ahead, to digest all things happening and distill them to form a clear course forward is to examine how the technology will be adopted and how the use of technology will then change the behavior of people. All of which is highly unpredictable," said Erik van Ommeren, one of the Sogeti innovation and technology experts behind the new report.

Top 12 trends
The SogetiLabs Technology Outlook 2013 has defined 12 top trends showing off what is on the minds of customers, and what is expected to be important for 2013 and beyond.

Mobile BYOD – Bring your own Device, being mobile at work stays a top trend. Supporting a connecting workforce through Mobile/BYOD makes organizations attractive to (new) employees and aims to increase work experience and productivity.

Augmented Reality – Overlaying the physical world with a digital layer is changing the interaction between people, objects and information. Compare it to living your life inside Facebook.

Smart TV – The ultimate media device: Interactive, HD and social, raising questions such as who is in control of the content. Integration of Internet and Web 2.0 features into television sets and set-top boxes, as well as the technological convergence between computers and these television sets/set-top boxes.

Big Data – Big Data shows the hidden patterns in all sorts of data, helps predict behavior and enables predictive simulations. Big Data will improve customer insight, help you target customers and track sentiments online.

Cloud Services – The business promise of Cloud Computing is simple: Worry-free IT. Current and expected adoption is enormous. New ways of software design are appearing and there will be great improvements in Cloud disaster recovery. In addition, real time analytics and Big Data will strengthen Cloud usage and storage of data.

Jericho Style Security – Securing the data, not the device, is a continuing security trend which brings a more granular and flexible security approach.

Privacy Enhancing Technologies – Technology can be used to turn privacy into a differentiating selling point. Big Data and other intrusive technologies require making Privacy a fundamental principle when designing new solutions.

Quality Assurance Across the Application Lifecycle – Testing of new applications is not enough anymore. A more complete Quality approach across the entire Application Lifecycle is one key success factor for today. Testing or Quality are no longer restricted to the test teams, it is a shared IT and business responsibility.

Agile Methods – Agile has become a new paradigm to manage projects focusing on transparency, collaboration, iterative and incremental development resulting in significantly reducing the time-to-market. While initially Agile was mostly used in IT, it is now increasingly also applied in "business" projects.

Model Driven Engineering – With the maturity of modeling tools, Models are no longer used only for documentation in the software development process, they are now an integral part of the development and even operations process, allowing traceability between models, code generation, and automated testing.

3D Printing – 3D Printing will transform product information, non-food retail and create an explosion of personalization. In short, consumers take over! 3D printing fosters a design and production agility which is a key factor for the years to come.

Internet of Things – Connecting physical things to the internet makes it possible to access remote sensor data and to control the physical world from a distance. Sensors and smart devices will be making our lives easier and allow for optimization of large complex systems such as transportation grids, utilities, healthcare and others. New synergistic services will be developed that go beyond the possibilities of the current isolated embedded system.