What to expect in 2014

Hi All, I am back again after a self-imposed hiatus from the company blog. It is the beginning of a new year and everything has a feel of freshness and newness. With that spirit wish to share with you some interesting insights or predictions of what this year would shape up to be on the technology front. More importantly looking at the digital technology space with an eye on web technologies, web development and yes who can miss out the flavour of the month – the internet of things (or IOT in short).

The past year saw some interesting trends and crazy shifts from web development to search engine optimisation. On one side google updates made everyone in the SEO space jump up and on the other side we saw a higher degree of integration of responsive websites in the work being dished out from good web design companies across the world.

Now, talking about this year I think following are some of the key trends that are emerging and will gain momentum in the months to come are as follows –

1. Mobile web, apps and mobility all around

Not only in India but the world over mobile internet penetration is the talk of all summits, conventions and meets, its increasing and is growing faster than fixed line or broadband based internet penetration. The users with smartphones is increasing at a very healthy rate as well so if you combine the two, what you get is a rapidly growing segment of the world population that is consuming internet through their mobiles, phablets and tablets. So, for all businesses who are betting on the digital space for their businesses, need to look at models that factor in mobile devices and building experiences that are suitable for the mobile platforms

2. Be responsive, design responsive

The fact that this trend of mobile web penetration getting bigger and proliferation of various mobile/smart devices has been picking up momentum for the last couple of years, as a result what we saw in 2013 was the emergence of responsive web design and by the end of the year everyone in web design and development industry was aware (if not fully clued in). As far as the client side is concerned there is still lack of awareness about responsive web design however my prediction is that as the year progresses we could very well have a situation where responsive web design may become the default design approach for web design projects. What is also interesting to note is that there are these multiple approaches that are evolving, like ‘Mobile First’ which was a buzzword in 2013 and then there is ‘Off Canvas’ for using the non-visible area of the mobile screen. In addition to this there is this aspect of ‘Responsive Images’ for which I think we could see some credible solution emerging in the year 2014

3. Mobile apps to grow while applications to shrink

A Gartner report says that during the year 2014 there will be an improved use of JavaScript and its performance. This will lead to HTML 5 and the browser as an important enterprise application development environment. What I can see as a clear trend is the increased impetus on enterprise mobile applications and the approach of building niche apps that address specific functionality or need. Hence the statement that while app development will continue to grow, these apps will be designed for specific usage and the time for generalist work is going to slow down.

4. A toast…to Internet of Things

All big companies, consultancies, IT behemoths and anyone worth their salt in the technology space has toasted to The Internet of Things at their New year parties and gearing up for this new revolution in a big way.

For the uninitiated, what is Internet of Things – as per Wikipedia – The internet of things refers to uniquely identifiable objects and their virtual representations in an internet-like structure. This is a bit difficult to understand..? I know… so in simple terms – devices, gadgets and services that are meant for home or business use being connected to the internet to allow for remote access and usage is what it means. This is a long-awaited trend that is creating a lot of optimism in the tech space. From temperature monitors controlled through a smartphone to wi-fi equipped dog collars… there going to be a lot of action on in this connected devices space, watch out.

There is a lot of more share but the above mentioned trends stood out more than the others and keep coming back to blog for more on what is new and fresh in the year 2014… have good one.