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Zeichick's Take:Looking forward, looking back


By Alan Zeichick
December 1, 2008 — 
Today is the first day of December, and although the year’s not over yet (there’s still more than 8% of 2008 left on the calendar), the start of this month always puts me into an odd mood. On one hand, it’s natural to look back on all that happened in the year that’s about to end. On the other hand, it’s equally natural to look forward to what’s coming in the year ahead.

The fact that I’m starting to work on an 2008 retrospective article for the Jan. 1, 2009, issue of SD Times may also explain my temporal mood.

In this week’s column, I’m going to discuss some of the things that have changed over the past 11 months. Next week, I’ll look at some of the things that might change in the next 12 months.

The biggest change is macro, as in macroeconomic. At the beginning of 2008, the global economy seemed strong. Today, stock markets are down, house values are down, banks are failing, automobile manufacturers are struggling and everyone is uncertain.

What can this mean? You might believe that things are going to bounce back soon. Or your might believe that the next year or two are going to be difficult. Who knows? Certainly I don´t.

We’ve seen a huge shift towards mobility. Sparked in part by unquestionable success of Apple’s iPhone 3G, and its new rivals from Google (Android) and BlackBerry (Storm), the impact is being felt everywhere, including in the enterprise.

We’ve seen a huge increase in awareness of the issues of threading, thanks to the proliferation of dual-core and quad-core processors. We’ve seen the industry looking past Windows Vista toward Windows 7. We’ve seen the acceptance of an “application life-cycle management” approach toward development. We’ve seen that agile adoption has increased, particularly of Scrum. We’ve seen that collaboration platforms, like SharePoint, are coming on like gangbusters.

Tell me: What do you see as the biggest changes in technology and software development in 2008? Write me at alan@bzmedia.com.

Alan Zeichick is editorial director of SD Times. Read his blog at ztrek.blogspot.com.


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