What the Smart Organisation will be wearing in 2006

Technology is an embedded part of our daily lives - we've Wi-Fi'd the airwaves in our house and garden (and part of the neighbour's garden); iPodded our favourite tracks; podcasted yesterday's football match to listen to on our way to the office; and over-blogged the minutiae of our existence onto several websites.

Our relatives in other parts of the world are awash with our email photo albums; our children MMS us pictures of the first meal they've cooked at university (pasta); and we're surrounded by new high tech mobile phones and gadgets.

On the personal front, for many of us making use of the latest gizmos and gadgets is easy, fun and, like fashion, can be picked and discarded at will.

However, for organisations that rely on technology to help them run their businesses, adopting new technology is not a matter of fashion or whim. Mention the terms 'new technologies' or 'future trends' to any CIO and they might groan with concern as any new project may involve disruption, retraining of staff, many sleepless nights and quite possibly a great deal of expense for what could be variable returns.

But today there is a move lead by Oracle to make enterprise IT simpler, with easier transition paths, and measurable gain. Some 'trends' can be painless, easy to adopt and low cost. Key amongst these is the move to consolidation.

Consolidation - data, servers, software

2005 has been a year of integration and consolidation - data consolidation, server consolidation, and consolidation of vendors. The level of mergers and acquisitions across many industries was substantial, the highest level in five years according to analyst reports.

In the technology arena, mergers and acquisitions have been noticeable. In the late 90s it was the hardware industry. Now, it's the software industry's turn. Why is software consolidation happening at this time?

Well, over the past few years, particularly during the 'dotcom' explosion, we saw a dramatic increase in the number of new, often niche, software products brought to market. Many of these offered narrow point solutions, with hundreds of features, all using different data models.

The choice was confusing; sometimes choosing one product meant sacrificing some features that a customer really wanted. Many large organizations and government agencies that have to deal with dozens of software vendors are finding it difficult and expensive to maintain these different software products and to keep them working together.

These pressures have made customers request fewer strategic partners who can offer a richer and broader portfolio of products and ensure those products work together from the get-go. As a result, we are seeing a period of consolidation of software solutions, as customers demand reduced complexity, less customisation and lower costs.

Hot for 2006

Hot-pluggable architecture is another trend that is helping to make IT easier is the move towards common standards particularly in the area of middleware. If one word could encapsulate the trend in 2006, it would be hot-pluggable. This is the answer to the CIO's concerns that new implementations would be disruptive, as the hot-pluggable trend promises to take out most of the pain of making things work together.

Basically, a hot-pluggable architecture allows organisations to mix and match current and new technologies from a range of software vendors. This approach lets them connect and extend their existing heterogeneous systems and maximize the return on current and future IT investments. Hot-pluggable is part of the overall trend towards standards-based interoperability and in 2006.

Grid Computing grows up

Grid computing is coming of age, as seen in the latest Oracle Grid Index with Europe scoring 5.1 on a scale of 10. The adoption of Enterprise Grid Computing to fully utilise under-used server capacity is growing and it will approach mainstream status in 2006.

And again, going Grid can be achieved without much effort. Oracle Database 10g dynamically allocates processing power and storage space where it's needed most. Thanks to a greater understanding and acceptance of how today's virtualisation technologies and service oriented architectures can help create a more flexible infrastructure, companies are realising that effectiveness and efficiencies can be obtained by underpinning this with Grid. Grid is moving rapidly from the niche scientific and financial areas to more mainstream clusters.

Packages, People, Plants

Sensor-based technology spreads its vibes
RFID (radio frequency identification) is part of the 'pervasive' technologies that saw a veritable explosion of growth in 2005. Today, it's chips with everything.

Leading companies of all sizes are deploying sensor technologies to track assets and automatically detect changes in temperature, motion, location, and other physical conditions. The real benefits kick in when sensor data is fully integrated with enterprise applications-such as inventory management, warehousing, and manufacturing systems to deliver real-time business intelligence.

And RFID is moving beyond commercial applications. For example, mobile sensor devices can be implanted into patients to enable doctors to monitor chronic conditions minute-by-minute from miles away. The sensors detect tiny changes in metabolism and transmit data, via a mobile phone, to the patient's doctor.

Other pilot projects include the identification and localisation of people in the operating theatre; the tracking and tracing operating theatre materials, such as implants, and of blood products using temperature-sensitive RFID tags. This will enable compliance with the legal requirements relating to implant traceability and it will also aid compliance with standards relating to the traceability and quality of transfusion blood bags.

It's all Semantics

One trend that will come to fruition over the next five years is semantics technology. The Semantic Web aims to create a universal medium for information exchange among machines. Sometimes referred to as master data management (MDM), IDC predicts that this market will grow to $10.4 billion by 2009.

MDM aims to give businesses a single, accurate view of customers, partners or suppliers, by drawing data from separate stores of data scattered across an enterprise. Again, common standards-based technologies are key in making this happen.

Overall, for 2006 the key trend is towards making enterprise IT simpler and cost-efficient - through consolidated, integrated solutions; dynamic storage sharing; and real-time information from sensor-based chips.

At the heart of this is interoperability - something that technologists have been striving to achieve for years. But today, with Oracle's hot-pluggable architecture, 2006 seems set to be the year that it all comes together.