The trends, which were revealed at Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo in the US this week, look to a post-PC, mobile centric era in which no single platform or technology will dominate. Mobile applications must be multiplatform ready.
The trends include:
- Actionable analytics to support decision making and business intelligence
- Enterprise app stores becoming more mainstream
- Big data moving to virtual data warehouses
- Increased importance of social and contextual user experience
- Growth of the personal cloud replacing PCs as for personal content storage
- Internet of Things enabling new applications - and raising new challenges!
- In-memory computing to support business innovation
Key trends in education technology
Meanwhile, New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative have identified six trends that will impact innovation in the education sector over the next five years. These include the prediction of a change in the role of universities seeing them evolve from ‘providers of information' to an increased focus on preparing students for careers. Other trends include:
- Interactive learning
- Mobility - students expecting to be able to study and collaborate wherever and whenever they wish
- Cheaper hybrid and online learning as face-to-face rises in cost
- Collaborative and interactive learning designed to be real world relevant