2009 Horizon Report Economic Development Edition

Technologies to Watch

The six technologies detailed in the Horizon Report: 2009 Economic Development Edition are placed along three adoption horizons that indicate likely timeframes for their widespread adoption by small to medium businesses — defined here as penetration rates of greater than 16-20% both within and among organizations. The first adoption horizon assumes the likelihood of broad adoption within the next year; the second, adoption within two to three years; and the third, adoption within four to five years.

Both technologies on the near horizon are in common use among consumers, even if they have not fully penetrated smaller businesses as yet. Cloud computing already underlies many of our online transactions, whether we are aware of it or not. Mobiles are carried by employees and customers alike, and their use for business transactions is growing. Those in the middle horizon, augmented reality and location-based services, are in use by leading businesses and in other sectors. Those on the four-to-five year horizon, semantic-aware applications and smart objects, have naturally been the least adopted and are still in the early stages of deployment. In the case of all of these technologies, business opportunities exist both in offering these services and in putting them to use internally.

Specific examples of each technology are included in the body of the report, but these become rarer and more experimental as we move out along the horizons toward the far term. The research of the Advisory Board indicates that each of these six featured areas will have significant impact on small to medium-sized businesses within the next five years.

• Cloud Computing. The promise of cloud computing is that it will free workers and consumers from the need to maintain files and applications on a private computer. With almost infinitely flexible storage and processing capacity, the cloud is ideal for hosting services, documents, records and data.
• Mobiles. Handheld devices of all kinds, from specialized tools to mobile phones, allow us to work, socialize, and keep up with daily tasks anywhere we may be. Applications designed for mobile devices range from games to applications for organization and productivity, providing a host of ways to get things done while on the go.
• Augmented Reality. There are myriad ways to layer digital information onto the real world, from complete immersion to the most subtle of virtual annotations. Virtual realities, technologies that enhance our view of the physical world, and applications for handheld devices that increase our understanding of our physical location are all forms of augmented reality.
• Location-Based Services. Increasingly, consumers are interested in services targeted at their current location and interests. From environmental advertising to applications that suggest discounts, venues, and activities in the immediate area, location-based services supply a growing demand for personalized service.
• Semantic-Aware Applications. Relationships between concepts, people, and events are embedded in the wealth of content on the web, but they are not always easy to see. Semantic-aware applications assist us in seeing those relationships by determining the context in which information exists; such applications can aggregate related information much more quickly than it could be done by hand.
• Smart Objects. The “Internet of things,” or the idea that physical objects can be connected to one another and to information, is supported by the proliferation of smart objects. Smart objects can sense one another and their surroundings and can reveal information such as where they have been and what environmental conditions exist around them. Some smart objects can also take action based on their measurements or on commands issued remotely.

These six key emerging technologies were selected by the Advisory Board from over sixty technologies and practices identified during the process of preparing this report. They are presented here as they appear within the context of business practice, particularly in California, but also in other markets.