4 Hyped technologies of 2009!

The Times of India
Research firm Gartner Inc recently published its annual `Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies’ report. Like earlier years, the 2009 Hype Cycle Special Report aims to chart out what's hot or not at the cutting edge of hi-tech jargon.

The report evaluates the maturity of 1,650 technologies and trends in 79 technology, topic and industry areas for how likely the terms are to make it into mainstream corporate parlance.

Below are four technologies and trends that are either at the Peak of Inflated Expectations or have just tipped Peak of Inflated Expectations.

Cloud Computing

As enterprises seek to consume their IT services in the most cost-effective way, interest is growing in drawing a broad range of services (for example, computational power, storage and business applications) from the "cloud," rather than from on-premises equipment.

The levels of hype around cloud computing in the IT industry are deafening, with every vendor expounding its cloud strategy and variations, such as private cloud computing and hybrid approaches, compounding the hype.

E-Book Readers

Sony's e-book reader and Amazon's Kindle have attracted a great deal of attention during 2009. However, the devices still suffer from proprietary file formats and digital rights management technologies, which along with price, are limiting their adoption and will drive them into the Trough of Disillusionment.

Social Software Suites

Awareness of social technology is high because of the popularity of related consumer social software and Web 2.0 services. Within businesses, there is strong and rapidly growing evidence of experimentation and early production deployments. The movement from point tools to integrated suites has brought broader adoption but also high expectations.

Disillusionment is beginning based on the realization that, even with a suite, much work must be done to build an effective social software deployment.

Microblogging

Microblogging, in general, and Twitter, in particular, have exploded in popularity during 2009 to the extent that the inevitable disillusionment around "channel pollution" is beginning.

As microblogging becomes a standard feature in enterprise social software platforms, it is earning its place alongside other channels (for example, e-mail, blogging and wikis), enabling new kinds of fast, witty, easy-to-assimilate exchanges