Ten Information Technologies Changing the World
- Transfer
In the past few years, an explosion of new technologies has occurred in the market. These technologies have a huge impact on how we work, have fun and communicate. We can communicate with other people and interact with computers in a way that we could not even imagine a few years ago. Let's look at some of the most famous new technologies that have already changed the world.
If there was one such device that could radically change our style of using computers and electronic devices, it would be an Apple iPad. But before the iPad can claim this title, it must first prove that it can be an effective replacement for laptops, netbooks and tablets. One of the unique features of the iPad (at least for now) is the use of a touch screen. The iPad has the potential to support multi-point input in the future, and then possibly completely abandon the familiar mouse-oriented interface that has been in use for decades.
What the iPad has to do is prove that it is not a specialized product that only fans use or who want to be ahead of the rest. The iPad also has to overcome the problem with its inferiority - it lacks many familiar features, for example, a physical keyboard, USB ports and a webcam. If Apple can do this, then the iPad will truly become the IT product that has changed the world. Currently, however, many people see it as a rather exalted iPhone or a replacement for the Amazon Kindle, but not a full-fledged laptop replacement.
In a simple sense, when they talk about cloud computing, they mean the provision of Internet equipment and application services on demand. Clouds are an alternative way to host and maintain your own servers and application software. Using cloud computing, an enterprise pays only for consumed resources, just as when paying for electricity, you pay only for what you used. Enterprises that host their services and applications in the cloud improve the overall efficiency of computer use, since in the cloud the load on servers working with remote clients is more optimally distributed. Cloud computing is implemented in several models:
We live in a world with a lot of connections (at times, perhaps even too big) with numerous communication technologies that fight for our attention. All these diverse communication technologies have been developed and become universally recognized independently of each other. In order to use these technologies, we need to have many accounts: one for conferences, another for e-mail, one for instant messaging, and another for voice mail, etc. So, most likely in each of these systems we will have a separate username and password, which we must remember (or write down somewhere). And network and telephony administrators must maintain these systems in working order, often with great difficulty, but not always with great success.
A unified communications system integrates all of these heterogeneous systems into a single communications platform. Now your telephony system can not only process your voicemail, but also send a mail notification of a new voicemail. You can establish a conference call by simply clicking on the contact's email address. You can see if a colleague is currently busy or online. You can also receive messages from external chat directly in your internal instant messaging system. A single communications platform helps users connect with each other and makes life easier for administrators.
Virtualization is both a science and the art of forcing a single physical server to perform multiple virtual server roles. Server virtualization is becoming increasingly popular as IT executives realize the economic benefits of reducing the number of physical servers (and therefore the cost of electricity, cooling, deployment, environment, and software development). The range of virtualization products is quite wide and includes, in particular, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware.
The infrastructure (or interface) of virtual workstations is another way to centralize the management and deployment of user workstations. Having a permanent connection to the network, users can work the same way as on a regular personal computer, but in a remote mode. This increases the flexibility of using workstations, gives IT staff the opportunity to integrate management and helps ensure the continuity of business processes. All this IT infrastructure is of course connected with virtualization and cloud platforms.
Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony Reader, ... - choose for yourself. All of them can keep in themselves hundreds, and even thousands of books and documents. The average user with their help mainly reads books, newspapers and other periodicals. E-books with large screens can also be used as technical references. These wonderful devices have earned the right to be included in this list for the amount of memory, battery life and modest size. At business meetings, you can now transfer not a pile of paper documents, but such an e-book, and the product description in the store can also be read on it. Although they do not yet portend the emergence of “paperless companies,” they have changed the way we read and store documents and books.
At the moment, there are three smartphone platforms that have occupied most of the market: Apple iPhone, BlackBerry and Google Android. Smartphones represent the fastest growing variety of mobile devices - everyone wants to have a smartphone (and whether they will fully use its capabilities or applications is another question). What is the decisive factor when choosing a smartphone by users is ease of use, flexibility, and applications (programs downloaded and installed on the phone to improve its functionality or settings). The introduction and use of smartphones in a corporate environment is determined by factors such as security, ease of messaging and e-mail, document management, navigation and web conferencing. Smartphones are developing and continue to change our outlook on communication and communication.
Do not underestimate the potential of social networks (be it chat, twitter or correspondence of classmates). Social networks were needed to help people separated by distances, to organize large-scale social or music events, or even just not to lose touch with friends and family. Social networks have tremendous power and influence - much more than many understand (or want to accept). The traditional workplace is changing rapidly - more and more people work at home or outside the office and want or even need contacts. This does not mean that communication in a traditional work environment is a thing of the past - no, it just changed. If you want, tweet to a friend and ask him.
People contact on Facebook or on social networks and blur the line between work and society. Using Microsoft Office Communicator, users can communicate with both work and personal contacts in one interface. Businesses and IT executives have yet to learn how to use this to speed up the decision-making process and maintain unity with employees. Customers will continue to expect an immediate answer to their questions, and your employees can give them using these means of communication.
What comes to mind when talking about a computer with a touch screen? Of course, an iPad. However, this year other manufacturers will begin to compete with the iPad, and a number of such devices will be released. In some implementations, gestures, not touches or mouse movements, will control computers. In the fall there will be new game consoles (Microsoft Kinetic, for which you will be the controller). They are focused not on the movement of the device in the hand, but on your gestures and movement in front of the sensor. Such technologies will help people with physical disabilities, as well as allow to compress all computer equipment in a smaller physical space.
Familiar hard drives (as well as other storage devices) are undergoing radical changes today. The capacity of hard drives increases, but the principle of operation does not change; they essentially have the same motors and magnetic disks. But today, SSDs are reaching the capacity with which they are quite suitable for most laptop users. A solid state drive is a large capacity flash memory device that does not have moving parts. Thanks to this, such devices consume much less energy, heat up less, weigh less and work faster.
Tablets / iPad.
If there was one such device that could radically change our style of using computers and electronic devices, it would be an Apple iPad. But before the iPad can claim this title, it must first prove that it can be an effective replacement for laptops, netbooks and tablets. One of the unique features of the iPad (at least for now) is the use of a touch screen. The iPad has the potential to support multi-point input in the future, and then possibly completely abandon the familiar mouse-oriented interface that has been in use for decades.
What the iPad has to do is prove that it is not a specialized product that only fans use or who want to be ahead of the rest. The iPad also has to overcome the problem with its inferiority - it lacks many familiar features, for example, a physical keyboard, USB ports and a webcam. If Apple can do this, then the iPad will truly become the IT product that has changed the world. Currently, however, many people see it as a rather exalted iPhone or a replacement for the Amazon Kindle, but not a full-fledged laptop replacement.
Cloud computing.
In a simple sense, when they talk about cloud computing, they mean the provision of Internet equipment and application services on demand. Clouds are an alternative way to host and maintain your own servers and application software. Using cloud computing, an enterprise pays only for consumed resources, just as when paying for electricity, you pay only for what you used. Enterprises that host their services and applications in the cloud improve the overall efficiency of computer use, since in the cloud the load on servers working with remote clients is more optimally distributed. Cloud computing is implemented in several models:
- Software as a Service (Software as a Service = SaaS) - Providing applications that customers can use over the Internet.
- Utility computing - When storage resources and server capacity are available on demand.
- Platforms and Web Services - Providing a platform on which developers can create applications available to customers over the Internet. This is not using your server infrastructure, but remote servers in the cloud. Microsoft's Azure platform provides just such an environment.
Unified Communications.
We live in a world with a lot of connections (at times, perhaps even too big) with numerous communication technologies that fight for our attention. All these diverse communication technologies have been developed and become universally recognized independently of each other. In order to use these technologies, we need to have many accounts: one for conferences, another for e-mail, one for instant messaging, and another for voice mail, etc. So, most likely in each of these systems we will have a separate username and password, which we must remember (or write down somewhere). And network and telephony administrators must maintain these systems in working order, often with great difficulty, but not always with great success.
A unified communications system integrates all of these heterogeneous systems into a single communications platform. Now your telephony system can not only process your voicemail, but also send a mail notification of a new voicemail. You can establish a conference call by simply clicking on the contact's email address. You can see if a colleague is currently busy or online. You can also receive messages from external chat directly in your internal instant messaging system. A single communications platform helps users connect with each other and makes life easier for administrators.
Virtualization
Virtualization is both a science and the art of forcing a single physical server to perform multiple virtual server roles. Server virtualization is becoming increasingly popular as IT executives realize the economic benefits of reducing the number of physical servers (and therefore the cost of electricity, cooling, deployment, environment, and software development). The range of virtualization products is quite wide and includes, in particular, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).
The infrastructure (or interface) of virtual workstations is another way to centralize the management and deployment of user workstations. Having a permanent connection to the network, users can work the same way as on a regular personal computer, but in a remote mode. This increases the flexibility of using workstations, gives IT staff the opportunity to integrate management and helps ensure the continuity of business processes. All this IT infrastructure is of course connected with virtualization and cloud platforms.
Electronic books.
Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony Reader, ... - choose for yourself. All of them can keep in themselves hundreds, and even thousands of books and documents. The average user with their help mainly reads books, newspapers and other periodicals. E-books with large screens can also be used as technical references. These wonderful devices have earned the right to be included in this list for the amount of memory, battery life and modest size. At business meetings, you can now transfer not a pile of paper documents, but such an e-book, and the product description in the store can also be read on it. Although they do not yet portend the emergence of “paperless companies,” they have changed the way we read and store documents and books.
Smartphones
At the moment, there are three smartphone platforms that have occupied most of the market: Apple iPhone, BlackBerry and Google Android. Smartphones represent the fastest growing variety of mobile devices - everyone wants to have a smartphone (and whether they will fully use its capabilities or applications is another question). What is the decisive factor when choosing a smartphone by users is ease of use, flexibility, and applications (programs downloaded and installed on the phone to improve its functionality or settings). The introduction and use of smartphones in a corporate environment is determined by factors such as security, ease of messaging and e-mail, document management, navigation and web conferencing. Smartphones are developing and continue to change our outlook on communication and communication.
Social networks and network life - or power on Twitter.
Do not underestimate the potential of social networks (be it chat, twitter or correspondence of classmates). Social networks were needed to help people separated by distances, to organize large-scale social or music events, or even just not to lose touch with friends and family. Social networks have tremendous power and influence - much more than many understand (or want to accept). The traditional workplace is changing rapidly - more and more people work at home or outside the office and want or even need contacts. This does not mean that communication in a traditional work environment is a thing of the past - no, it just changed. If you want, tweet to a friend and ask him.
People contact on Facebook or on social networks and blur the line between work and society. Using Microsoft Office Communicator, users can communicate with both work and personal contacts in one interface. Businesses and IT executives have yet to learn how to use this to speed up the decision-making process and maintain unity with employees. Customers will continue to expect an immediate answer to their questions, and your employees can give them using these means of communication.
Touch screens.
What comes to mind when talking about a computer with a touch screen? Of course, an iPad. However, this year other manufacturers will begin to compete with the iPad, and a number of such devices will be released. In some implementations, gestures, not touches or mouse movements, will control computers. In the fall there will be new game consoles (Microsoft Kinetic, for which you will be the controller). They are focused not on the movement of the device in the hand, but on your gestures and movement in front of the sensor. Such technologies will help people with physical disabilities, as well as allow to compress all computer equipment in a smaller physical space.
Solid State Drives.
Familiar hard drives (as well as other storage devices) are undergoing radical changes today. The capacity of hard drives increases, but the principle of operation does not change; they essentially have the same motors and magnetic disks. But today, SSDs are reaching the capacity with which they are quite suitable for most laptop users. A solid state drive is a large capacity flash memory device that does not have moving parts. Thanks to this, such devices consume much less energy, heat up less, weigh less and work faster.