- Virtualization : everyone has done it to the extent possible and nothing new to talk about by any vendor; be it storage or servers, or even desktop. This is a no-brainer, so stop !
- Unified Communication : we have been tying ourselves into knots telling everyone that beyond the IP phones, IM, Chat, Video-conferencing, tele-presence, web-conferencing, audio-conferencing, white-boarding, and combining all of this into one device (if such a device exists and can be deployed across WIFI, CDMA, GSM, WIMAX, 3G at one go), is there a big business benefit ?
- Security : yeah ! we all have UTM, at least in theory, and yes, we patch our servers, desktops, laptops, mobile phones and take backups everyday. So what's new ?
- Green Computing : it's fashionable to talk green; a speaker asks "Do you have green clothing ?". In the past every generation of computers doubled the computing power; in the future every generation will reduce power consumed by 50%. Green is not only about saving power in the data center and your end-computing devices.
- SaaS and Cloud : everyone has an opinion and with the exception of sales force automation, no new offerings worth talking about. Waiting for the cloud to form and the rain, the IT organization cannot be like the Indian farmer. IT has to continue delivering every day as business does not wait.
Every vendor who sponsors an event for CIOs believes that they can continue to offer the same old stale product presentations and numbers that do not make sense to most of us. I believe that if this were to continue, the participation in such events will continue to decline to a level where the opportunity will dry up for the vendors.
Are there other technologies you want to add to the list ?
