Technology Predictions for 2013
The year 2012 was the year of hypes and we had lot of discussions about Cloud, Big Data and Enterprise Mobility. The year 2013 will be the year, where we can see lot of hypes will become realities. Just going behind the hypes will not help you, but a pragmatic approach to new technologies will give you lot of business values and operational agility. In 2013, Mobile apps will continue the momentum and Cloud adoption will be widely improved on 2013. Organizations, especially larger organizations will invest huge amount for enabling the enterprise mobility in the year 2013, and they will try to expose REST/Hypermedia APIs over the organizational data, for providing a better mobility across the enterprise and public world.
I believe that people are moving to minimalist solutions for both apps and developer tools, and you can see the minimalist approach, more and more, in the year 2013.
Wide Adoption to Public Cloud
In the past few years, there was a huge hype over the cloud computing and many organizations had already adopted cloud computing for their apps. In the year 2013, the hype over cloud would become a big reality, and I strongly believe that huge adoption of cloud computing will happen in the new year. I hope that year 2013 will be a huge year for public clouds such as Windows Azure and AWS, and many enterprises will adopt public clouds. Private cloud will also get some momentum, but I predict that some organizations will move to public clouds from their initial initiatives of private cloud based solutions. It is not easy that building a solid private cloud. Public clouds will introduce lot of PaaS capabilities in the new year, and cloud platforms will become like developer platforms such as .NET and Java, and platform wars such as .NET Vs Java might be moved to cloud platforms such as Windows Azure Vs AWS. The biggest advantage of Cloud adoption is the operational and business agility, you are getting through Cloud. You don’t have to worry about infrastructure stuffs and salability matters, and you can fully focus on your apps which can easily scale-up and scale-down.
Technologies to watch : Windows Azure, AWS
My technology focus : I will fully focus on Windows Azure and its rich PaaS capabilities, with a strong focus on cloud computing architectural patterns.
Emergence of HTML 5 and JavaScript as a Platform
HLML 5 is gradually becoming a development platform for different kind of apps including Mobile apps. JavaScript is the language of the new platform, and HTML 5 and JavaScript is simply becoming a development platform for the modern web apps. JavaScript is not just a programming language on the browser, but you can write JavaScript apps on the server and mobile. With the advent of Node.js, you can build high performance apps on server, which lets the developers to write end to end JavaScript apps, and can use a single language for both browser and server. I predict that HTML 5 and JavaScript will be widely adopted for developing next-generation Mobile apps. Node.js would be the great choice for building REST APIs for the server-side implementation of your Mobile apps.
Technologies to watch : HTML 5, CSS 3, JavaScript as a programming language, Microsoft TypeScript, AngularJS, Node.js, Socket.io, Express.js, Meteor, Derby.js, Yahoo Mojito
My technology focus : I will be focus on HTML 5, Microsoft TypeScript, Node.js and Derby.js. I have been using Node.js on the Windows Azure platform and will be focus more on Node.js along with the Windows Azure’s PaaS offerings.
Big Data and Data Analysis
Big data and data analysis was the hottest buzz word in 2012, and you can see more adoption on Big data and data analysis in the new year. Many recent surveys are predicting that big data is the one of the top priorities for many organizations especially for larger enterprises. Many larger organizations don't have any proper strategy for data management and analysis, so these organizations will definitely look on a data management strategy with Big Data. Gartner is predicting that big data demand will generate 4.4 million related jobs by 2015.
Technologies to watch : Apache Hadoop
My technology focus : I am not a expert on Big Data, but in the new year, I will keep an eye on Big Data and technologies such as Hadoop and Hadoop on Windows Azure.
Responsive Web Design will become a Default standard for Web Apps
The internet users are gradually moving to mobile and tablet devices, so that providing better browsing experience over the different devices and browsers is very important. Last year, lot of web apps had adopted Responsive Web Design, but this will become a default standard for web apps in the year 2013. Your customers will always ask for Responsive Web Design for most of their web apps, and Responsive Web Design will become a default standard for web apps.
Technologies to watch : Twitter Bootstrap, Foundation
Adoption of Agile and Lean Development practices
The traditional way of software development packed with heavy software process is getting fail in many situations and becoming big bottleneck for continuous improvement and innovations, and also for developing evolving software. I hope that enterprises will widely adopt agile and lean development practices which can provide better customer satisfaction and can also reduce lot of waste involved in traditional way of software development. The big challenge of agile and lean adoption would be the oppose from traditional managers who are very comfortable with traditional way of software development. I hope that more developers will adopt Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) along with a Continuous Integration (CI) server such ad TeamCity and Hudson. A mix of SCRUM and KANBAN would be better process for agile and lean development practices.