ABSTRACT
It is hard to imagine anyone handing out heavy Wintel monsters to employees in five years. Devices will get smaller, faster, and smarterfinally killing off the “fat clients” of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Wikis, blogs, mashups, social networks, RSS filters, crowdsourcing, virtual worlds, automated pricing, and intelligent supply chains will define the future. Many companies, even the largest ones, will move toward open-source software solutions. Business intelligence (BI) is a strategic investment everyone will make. e era of fixed-location computing is over, and just about everyone is already renting software over the Web. Ultimately, we will all move to the cloud.*
How will these and related trends define our technology future? Figure 2.1 provides perspective. e range of ready technologies within these trends is formidable.
