Well, 2012 starts in just a few days and as I sit here in my study looking at a wooden Mayan calendar I can’t help but notice that it ends on December 21, 2012 – exactly one year from today. All the end of the world prophecies from the Mayans lead people to do some really crazy things, but the majority of us just think that the dude that chiseled out the rock for the calendar just ran out of space. In any case, it behooves us to pause at the end of this year and ponder the next as to what we think will happen. Just a few short years ago we were all still watching TV on huge boxes – and now LCDs less than an inch thin are adorning our walls. Face it – technology moves fast and waits for no man; and its a great thing to watch as humanity screams into the next year at full steam.

As a professional in the technology sector, it has been an exciting career for the most part. This past year we have really started to see the dream of affordable computing for the masses continue to gain steam all over the world (think one laptop per child). I primarily work with larger “Enterprise” types of companies and massive changes have occurred there as well. Economic stress, pricing pressures, competitive advantages of the cloud, and problems with enormous amounts of data all create a really interesting mix of differing challenges that will make any company think strategically about the year ahead. Below are the top 5 things I think we’ll see in the coming months – all of which would leave the Mayans thinking that we commanded nothing short of magic….

1. The world will *not* end on Dec 21st next year – the stone just wasn’t big enough.
2. More and better mobile computing!! Mobile devices are hitting a stride like the PC did 10 years ago. Bigger, better, faster – in mind numbing time.
3. Big data will just get bigger and more relevant to the enterprise. People will find more ways to mine their data and need better analytics tools and ways to move that data around.
4. ODBC will continue to gain ground. With many of the world’s largest analytics programs choosing this tried and true technology for the past 20 years there’s a refocusing on this technology as we find that standards are still preferred even among cloud based data sources.
5. The Cloud remains the great equalizer. Small companies benefit from the low barrier of entry for much better computing while large companies try and turn their large ships to take advantage – but face internal politics, transferring huge amounts of data and security trust issues. The larger companies need help managing their data that will reside in both places; requiring software that will bridge the gap between on premise and off premise data.

All ‘predictions’ aside, 2012 will prove to be another great year for all aspects of technology, engineering, and science and I for one am looking forward to that journey.

Merry Christmas to all…..and to all a good night!

-J