It’s the time of year when the media is awash with predictions for the year ahead. So the teams at CI-Net have put their heads together to come up with a list of the top trends that we think will make a difference in 2010 and beyond. Of course, our predictions are all about the world of communications and wide area networking.

 

The first ever online-only live streaming of England’s world cup qualifying group match against Ukraine last October marked the opening of the floodgates for streamed sports coverage.

The BBC Sport web site is promising live video streaming of all the South Africa World Cup matches the company owns the rights to. And because services such as BBC iPlayer have exposed the public to good quality online video content, it can’t be long before sport on the web is seen as common place. 

The downside may be the pressure on corporate networks as everybody in the country tries to tune in to yet another England team penalty shoot-out!

 

The hype around cloud computing will start to turn into reality as the early adopters prove to everyone else that it is safe to power your IT via the Cloud. Real life case examples will ‘put to bed’ the worries about security risks and loss of control that surround cloud computing. 

Having survived the recession companies will want to stay lean and they’ll continue to seek out intelligent cost saving strategies - with cloud based applications and services proving irresistible.

 

A number of factors will combine to bring about an increased demand for comms technologies that support home and flexible working. As we come out of recession, the numbers of homeworkers will swell as those who were made redundant re-train and enter self employment or start up new businesses.

 

Added to this, those businesses who’ve had to rationalise their workforce will turn to home and remote working to enable greater productivity, collaboration and flexibility from their existing smaller and disparate employee base. The trend will be backed by election manifestos which are likely to signal an even greater focus on work/life balance and the family.

 

Rising ‘green sentiment’ and the momentum behind carbon reduction initiatives created by the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, along with improving bandwidth availability, will drive greater adoption of webinars, video conferencing and virtual trade shows in place of business people travelling to face to face meetings and events. 

 

Of the more than 1.2 billion mobile phones expected to ship globally in all of 2009, nearly 190 million are expected to be smartphones according to analyst Frost and Sullivan. The rapid growth in sales and features of these sophisticated handheld computing devices means that for many ‘light’ computer users smart phones will eventually start to replace the laptop and desktop altogether.

 

We will start to see adoption of Ethernet-in- the-First Mile (EFM) to help eliminate broadband connectivity bottlenecks between subscriber sites and the public networks. This will mean faster, future-proof transport for data, voice and video to both residential and business broadband subscribers.

Ethernet provides a more scalable, affordable, global standard to replace the current complex infrastructure  - and support for its adoption in the ‘last mile’ is gathering momentum.  

 

Pretty soon there will be more mobile phone calls than landline calls. And with mobile phones getting cleverer and carrying more important business data, security is going to start becoming a big issue (think about how many mobile phone handsets get left on trains!). It will take a few significant mobile phone data leaks to get to the point where mobile phone security starts to be taken very seriously.

 

Trying to predict the future when it comes to Internet and communications technology is a tough call.  There are sure to be surprises that will bring both positive opportunities and challenges to business. Either way, our customers can rest assured we’ll be keeping track of any developments to ensure we’re able help them get the most out of 2010 and the new decade.