Trends 2011: Apps and skills rule

As bandwidth gets cheaper in SA a whole new set of application opportunities will open up. Applications, Android, skills and the ever elusive silver lining will be the key trends for 2011, says MALCOLM RABSON, MD of Dariel Solutions

Healthy competition in the handheld device space will likely emerge with Android based devices giving current popular platforms a real ‚run for their money’. The open nature of the Android platform means that someone will soon cotton on as to how cheaper tablet technology can be used to integrate to the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Think of the possibilities and visualise portable stock take, portable ward rounds, portable systems centre operation management, dash-boarding of all sorts ‚Ķ no keyboards ‚Ķ no wires ‚Ķ yet full access and interaction with enterprise data. And I am not talking about phones: I am talking about touch tablet devices ‚ very exciting indeed.

¬∑ There will be a continued decrease in people entering the industry at the software developer level. The ‚job’ is getting harder and there will be more attrition of those ‚not suited’ to the task at hand. Unfortunately going into 2011, technology SITA training (which offers an array of short courses) will still not be sufficient for ‚budding’ technologists to learn the in-depth skills needed for ever-complex software development. Disappointingly, real empowerment will not come from this avenue.

¬∑ Having said that and on the topic of skills, enterprises will continue to hire the ‚wrong’ kind of people. CTOs will not disappoint and will continue to seek the proverbial ‚silver bullet’ in the technology. After-all, it is easier to deal with inanimate things rather than people.

They will ignore the quality of the human resource as a critical success factor ‚ and although rather cynical, it is nevertheless the truth.

· Lastly, there seems to be an increased interest in integrated solutions for data warehousing, enterprise content management and BI.