Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2012, Part 7

Here's Part 7 of our predictions:

1.   Data will be bigger in 2012. At least the approach known as “big data,” software that enables users to capture and visualize huge amounts of data on their desktops, will be big in 2012, and will overtake Business Intelligence (BI) as the approach large companies will take to sift through and make sense of their data. These days, companies gather a tremendous amount of data, and it is only getting larger and larger. The challenge: how to visualize the data so that the business can gain insights and not be overwhelmed. Big data is different from BI because big data is faster (but no one wants to refer to this as big, fast data if only because the acronym of BFD usually involves a different f-word).  Unlike BI, which often looks for trends within a company’s data, big data enables companies to ask questions on the fly to identify new trends and insights, and to generate real-time answers. There’s a growing acknowledgement that big data will be a BFD in 2012.



2.     Ongoing Tech Trends we expect to continue from 2011:

  • Cloud computing: This trend started in 2010 but continues to go mainstream.
  • The battle of tablets: Just because the first battle went in Apple's direction does not mean that wannabe iPad Killers have given up the fight. Competitors still want to get into the action and capture some of the marketshare. From the media's perspective, it's a two-horse race between the Kindle Fire and iPad. We expect a third option to gain some traction, but the iPad will continue to dominate.
  • The three most important tech trends will be mobile, mobile, mobile. Unless the three most important trends are social, social, social. For example, enterprise technology now needs not only to have an intuitive interface, it also must be accessible on iPads.
  • Gaming is not just for kids. Gaming will continue to be integrated into business and training apps to keep people engaged and entertained.
Let us know if you agree or disagree. And check back tomorrow for additional predictions.

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