Featured Article: Top 5 Hot Technologies for 2008

by Alex Ciacci

The new year is finally upon us and I hope everyone enjoyed a safe and happy holiday season. With all the celebrations and resolutions out of the way, I thought this would be a good time to look forward at some of the hot new technologies for 2008.

1. Virtualization

Virtualization may be applied to several infrastructure technologies such as servers, disk drives and even operating systems. However, the goal is always the same: better utilization of hardware to help rein in costs.

While this is not quite a new technology it is one that looks like it will gain some traction in the marketplace in 2008. Virtualization gets some extra credit for its green, environmentally friendly nature.

2. Integration

Best of breed application selection strategies have left many organizations stranded with islands of information. While integration technologies have existed for many years, adoption has been slow. With demands for timely data and the volume of business data increasing rapidly there has never been a better time to ensure that all your mission critical applications are tightly integrated.

3. Real-Time Collaboration

Real-time collaboration has seen phenominal growth in 2007 with users quickly adopting a host of free solutions now available on the web (such as Google Docs). RTC will remain at the forefront in 2008 as organizations struggle to develop policies to ensure sensitive data are not stored on outside servers.

4. Unified Communications

Unified communications is the tying together of traditional telephone services, Fax, desktop video-conferencing, CRM, Email and more.

The Gartner Group is predicting that most organizations will adopt unified communications over the next 3 years, making this a front-burner issue for many IT organizations.

5. Ideation

Developing good ideas is critical in todays knowledge economy. Thankfully there is are several new solutions that allow users to post and collaborate on each other's ideas. While this is usually a line of business concern, IT needs to get involved because most innovations today have a significant IT component. Developing a strong Idea Management platform will help users to pose the right questions and to ultimately drive innovative thinking.

Top Emerging Threat for 2008 : Malware

There are also some emerging threats to take note of in 2008. Of particular concern are emerging security threats that behoove IT organizations to look more closely at security and virus protection. Many IT organizations take comfort in the knowledge that their networks are protected by market leading anti-virus and anti-malware solutions. However, new studies have shown that these applications fall short when it comes to protecting against unknown threats. One recent test of leading security suites found that they were only able to detect 1 in 4 previously unknown malware infections. Additionally, the bad guys are now scanning and testing their malicious software to ensure it can pass through undetected before releasing the wares onto the Internet.

What this means is that IT organizations will have to ensure that all security suites are updated more frequently and to adopt stricter security policies for users accessing the public Internet.

I hope you enjoyed our brief look forward to 2008. From all of us at SDC we wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2008.

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Did You Know?

Starting this January there are new federal banking requirements in effect.