Windows 8: Office killer app

Now that Microsoft Windows 8 is globally available many people wonder if it will be the next Windows Vista or the next Mobile 5. Well, I am not that pessimistic and I am sure W8 will be adopted by at least 50% of the desktop users. As tablet use increases in enterprises, I am confident W8 tablets will gain its share. Ok, it will never outnumber iPads (not even reach 10% market share), but the full Office license will be the killer app for touch tablets. This is where we were waiting for, it is the next step for laptop users and a cool step.
So my predICTion is that more than 60% of laptop users will swap it for a touch tablet with W8 within 4 years!

Pred-ICT-ion: Layar.com is heading the wrong AR direction

Layar (www.layar.com) started as a very succesfull augmented reality company, by launching their layar browser and content services. But, nowadays, they are fully focussing on adding digital content to print. And in my opinion, that is a great mistake. They should deliver the best environment for augmented reality content creation, for in the near future several interesting devices will become available for consumers, like smart digital windows, AR-glasses and other see-through equipment. My pred-ICT-ion is that Layar will lose ground to companies like Google and Microsoft within 2 years and. I don't understand why Layar is directing to digital print. Pressure of their investors....?

Coders are a dying breed?

Last week our company Centric held a so-called RAD-race, a one-night competition for developers to show their skills on their favorite development platforms. The technology used by our developers is listed below:

1. Microsoft C# .Net using Centric proprietary software factory
2. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 + NinTex
3. Pronto / Bre4all: Centric proprietary software factory, model driven, 4GL-like
4. Microsoft LightSwitch
5. Grails, high-productivity web framework based on the Groovy language
6. <m_twize>: Centric proprietary software factory, model driven, 4GL-like
7. Mendix, see website, agile application development without coding
8. Microsoft C#.Net + NuGet

The assigment consisted of 3 parts:

1. Develop an application for registering software components
1. All CRUD functions
2. Additional processes like alerting owners, requests for change
2. Add multi-tenancy to the application
1. Security is important
3. Add connections to Twitter, Yammer or Facebook

The winning team used SharePoint 2010 with NinTex. Second team used...SharePoint 2010 with NinTex. Third team used Mendix. These teams didn't produce a single line of code!
Our proprietary software factories failed to integrate with social media, but did well for the remainder. The teams using LightSwitch and Grails finished last.

As the one who created the assignment I was really surprised. Can coding no longer keep up with modern development frameworks? We did not perform scientific research nor did we try more complicated tests. But the results made me think.
Let me add a pred-ICT-ion: within 5 years application development will be a practice performed without coding. Coding will be needed to build the frameworks application developers will use and programming will become a high-level profession only a few will attain.

The future of the Cloud is offline storage, at least for mobile devices

An interesting thought of Jeff Belk in an article at gigaom.com: The future beyond the cloud is in our hands. In, let's say 2020, mobile devices will have a capacity of many many terabytes offline storage. Bandwidth and capacity of the mobile carriers will still be a problem according to Jeff. So many companies like Google and Amazon will make use of local storage to put lots of their online content making it available offline. Synchronizing will take place at moments when devices are in reach of local area networks.

To me it is plausible, although it contradicts with one of my own pred-ICT-ions: 'future mobile devices will be small and with limited functionality'. Jeff's prediction might be the situation for rural areas with wide area networks with limited capacity, mine for urban areas where high bandwidth wide area networks like LTE are ubiquitous.

We'll see if our pred-ICT-ions will contrad-ICT or not!

Pred-ICT-ion: future personal mobile devices will be small and with limited functionality

In 2009 SIMYO and Ahead of Time presented the future of mobile media and communication. See this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FScddkTMlTc
This film is presenting a summary of key results of the open think tank MOCOM 2020.
It always surprises me what those predictors think of the future role of an hand-held device. It will be larger, smarter, faster, with more bandwith than ever and more powerful. But it will still be there!

My pred-ICT-ion is that the world around us will become smarter, always connected and adaptive to us: a user-centric world. So the need for such a super-device will diminish in my opinion. We might still wear an identification device, for security reasons, although the world around us should recognise us and determine our identity unmistakably. Identification, combined with communication facilities, especially for rural environments which world is less smart than in urban areas.

In short: instead of a super mobile device in 2020 the function of our personal device is limited to identification and live communication. That's it. The world around us will provide us the rest.

Next step is an implanted device....

Pred-ICT-ion: Cloud data will be separated to avoid vendor lockin at platform level

In an article 'Cloud interoperability: Problems and best practices' of Computerworld, June 1st, 2011, Bill Claybrook states 'As more applications find their way to the cloud, data portability and other issues are coming to the fore'.
Data portability, by nature, is a platform issue, for the technical data format is usually optimized for the software that manage that data. To solve this problem we already have seen many initiatives, like SQL and XML. However, we need a more semantic format that descibes data in a way that is technologically agnostic and rich enough to describe the peculiar differences of the many datamodeling techniques. No abstraction but a formal description. Business intelligence companies have the knowledge to define such a standard, because they have experience with a variety of technologies for their ETL-tools.

And when the standard is in place, why not separate your data from your cloud software provider? This will solve both the portability issues and the vendor lockin.
My prediction is, that before 2020 data is separated from applications and freedom of choice for Software-as-a-Service is no longer limited because of the data portability issue.

Robots in 2010 according to prediction in 2001

In http://www.cnet.com/4520-6022_1-102091-1.html Amber Ascot asked in 2001 several research institutes about their vision and predictions. One remarkable prediction is from Sony, inventor of the Aibo:

In 2010 advanced personal robots will appear, as will robot-assisted surgery. People will adopt robotics into their bodies.

I might have missed them, but where are the personal robots? There's a few: mowing robot, vacuum cleaners... Though convenient, not very "personal", for anybody can use them.
I predict that we have to wait another 9 years....