As 2011 gets underway in earnest, and the C.E.S. show is behind us, its time to look at 10 technologies that are going to dominate 2011 for CIOs and CTOs.
1. Mobile Devices that blur the line between Smartphones and Computers
The launch of the iPhone in 2007 changed the world of enterprise computing forever. Although Microsoft and Palm had competed for mind and marketshare for more than a decade with various versions of PocketPC and PalmOS based devices, they never found an audience beyond the heavy power users who treated them as highly specialized PDAs. The iPhone changed all that. With the launch in the full glare of the media propelled by the polished presentations at MacWorld and Apple WDC by none other than Steve Jobs, suddenly the smartphone became "cool" and a status symbol at work.
The launch of the AppStore with support for third party apps made the phone genuinely useful for casual users. The email and calendar sync functions the phone brought with it, drove users to question the need for two devices: One for personal use and another for corporate use (typically a Blackberry). More often than not, the Blackberry and its physical keypad were given up in favor of the iPhone's capacitative buttons, the personal communication device and the business calendaring and email merging together.
Now more than 5 years later, we have seen an accelerating trend: More and more powerful smartphones that are in effect little computers in themselves. The iPad has taken up a niche between a phone and a full fledged laptop and its thriving in its spot. The Motorola ATRIX introduced at CES carries this trend even further: A single Android based device that can be your phone when you travel and when you reach your office, it can be docked and used to drive a full video display with a full keyboard.
This trend of devices that are crossovers exhibiting qualities of both Smartphones and Computers will only accelerate with the arrival of the iPad 2, the RIM Playbook and the various HP Web OS based devices to be announced in Q1 of this year.
1. Mobile Devices that blur the line between Smartphones and Computers
The launch of the iPhone in 2007 changed the world of enterprise computing forever. Although Microsoft and Palm had competed for mind and marketshare for more than a decade with various versions of PocketPC and PalmOS based devices, they never found an audience beyond the heavy power users who treated them as highly specialized PDAs. The iPhone changed all that. With the launch in the full glare of the media propelled by the polished presentations at MacWorld and Apple WDC by none other than Steve Jobs, suddenly the smartphone became "cool" and a status symbol at work.
The launch of the AppStore with support for third party apps made the phone genuinely useful for casual users. The email and calendar sync functions the phone brought with it, drove users to question the need for two devices: One for personal use and another for corporate use (typically a Blackberry). More often than not, the Blackberry and its physical keypad were given up in favor of the iPhone's capacitative buttons, the personal communication device and the business calendaring and email merging together.
Now more than 5 years later, we have seen an accelerating trend: More and more powerful smartphones that are in effect little computers in themselves. The iPad has taken up a niche between a phone and a full fledged laptop and its thriving in its spot. The Motorola ATRIX introduced at CES carries this trend even further: A single Android based device that can be your phone when you travel and when you reach your office, it can be docked and used to drive a full video display with a full keyboard.
This trend of devices that are crossovers exhibiting qualities of both Smartphones and Computers will only accelerate with the arrival of the iPad 2, the RIM Playbook and the various HP Web OS based devices to be announced in Q1 of this year.
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