From the Editors: Looking back at 2009
By SD Times Editorial Board
January 1, 2010 —
(Page 1 of 2)
The year that just concluded was a historic year of change. On the world stage, 2009 began with a new president of the United States and ended with the major United Nations Climate Change Conference. Throughout the year, wars raged around the globe, while the worldwide economy began to recover from recession.
While the software development world saw continuing innovation and evolution, there were no seismic revolutions, there were no drastic changes of paradigm or emerging models of corporate computing. Instead, change was incremental, with the three biggest stories representing continuations of changes that started in 2008 and earlier: cloud computing, mobile applications development, and the future of Java.
The emergence of the cloud as a serious enterprise development and deployment platform in 2009 was precipitated by a perfect storm of economic necessity and technological innovation. The recession made cloud computing desirable for CIOs who preferred to rent storage and computing power instead of investing in capital-intensive infrastructure. The platforms themselves were evolved mainly by Amazon.com, but with strong supporting roles played by Google and Salesforce.com. Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Azure gave the cloud additional legitimacy. If 2009 was the year of anything, it was the Year of the Cloud.
While the cloud thought big, mobile computing thought small, thanks to the rise of the “mobile app” as a viable business model. Just when we thought that the full-featured portable browser would become the hub of the mobile Internet, local apps—popularized by the runaway success of Apple’s iPhone and App Store—became the preferred way to access data on small devices.
The iPhone inspired rivals, from the open-source Android to a resurgent Palm. Meanwhile, apps flew off the electronic shelves, enthusiast programmers became millionaires, and the micro browser became irrelevant.
And then there’s Java, and the rest of Sun Microsystems’ impressive software portfolio. For years, Sun has been ailing. For years, the company struggled to find a moneymaking business model. However, the company also was the owner of vital platforms, such as the Java Community Process (and of Java itself), the SPARC processor, Solaris, OpenOffice and, most recently, MySQL. Sun’s collapse was inevitable.
Related Search Term(s): agile, cloud computing, Java, mobile development
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