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i-Technology 2008 Predictions: Where's RIAs, AJAX, SOA and Virtualization Headed in 2008?

SYS-CON's Annual i-Technology Predictions Round-Up
By Jeremy Geelan
Article Rating:
January 17, 2008 10:00 AM EST
Reads:
 87,621

Enterprise UX . Software Testability . Companion Applications

BRAD ABRAMS
Group Program Manager, Microsoft

Brad Abrams was a founding member of both the Common Language Runtime, and .NET Framework teams at Microsoft  where he is currently the Group Program Manager for the UI Framework and Services team which is responsible for delivering the developer platform that spans both clients and web based applications as well as the common services that are available to all applications. Specific technologies owned by this team include ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX, parts of Silverlight, and Windows Forms.


1. User Experience Reaches the Enterprise. In 2008 we will see several major enterprises start efforts to build UX centric applications that increase worker productivity, reduced transaction costs and increase pull through as the UX meme of the consumer facing world leaks into the enterprise. The days of the battleship gray, forms of data application as the king of the enterprise are numbered because of an imperative towards richer visualization of complex and interconnected data. While there will always be a need for the traditional sort of application, by the end of 2008, it is no longer the only element of the corporate landscape.

2. Testability Becomes a Requirement for Software Development Frameworks. No longer satisfied with simple reductions in costs for initial development, a growing community demand frameworks and tools that facilitate sustainable and agile practices. 2008 is the year that frameworks and tools take notice and start to deliver solutions that are testable out of the box. Technologies such as Test Driven Development, MVC/MVP patterns, and frameworks that support moching become mainstream. After seeing this year’s cool demos at software development industry conferences a common question will be: “...And how do you test that?” Let’s hope the presenters have an answer.

3. The Companion Applications Become Practical. While RIA and AJAX application categories continue to grow, many consumer facing web applications and enterprise applications developers realize there is a need for desktop exploitive applications as well as reach web applications that work everywhere. What meaningful application wouldn’t benefit from a pairing like that of Outlook and Outlook Web Access? In the past it has been prohibitively expensive to build these applications, but with the circa 2008 technology such as .NET Framework 3.5 and Silverlight, it is finally becoming practical to have a single codebase that fully exploits the desktop and offers a rich web experience.

 

See next pages for predictions from: Kevin Hoffman, iPhone Developer's Journal; Ian Thain, Sybase; Yakov Fain, Farata Systems.

Published January 17, 2008 – Reads 87,621
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By Jeremy Geelan

Jeremy Geelan is Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events. He is Conference Chair of the all-new International Cloud Computing Expo series, of the International Virtualization Expo series, of AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo series, and of the long-running SOAWorld Conference & Expo series. He's founder of Cloud Computing Journal, Web 2.0 Journal, AJAX & RIA Journal and other leading SYS-CON titles. From 2000-6, as first editorial director and then group publisher of SYS-CON Media, he was responsible for the development of all new titles and i-Technology portals for the firm, and regularly represents SYS-CON at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" on SYS-CON.TV.

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Most Recent Comments
Don Babcock 01/08/08 10:40:10 AM EST

The one technology that didn't even get mentioned in this list of "the next big things" and prognostications is rules engine technology. Rules engine technology is to "M" and and to some extent the "C" parts of MVC (which was mentioned in several ways) what the word processor is to writing and the database engine is to information storage and retrieval. The potential for "mashups" and the like is HUGE. Writing code with meta descriptions and code generators can only get you incremental improvements in productivity. Rules Engines can deliver (they have for us) order of magnitude productivity/reliability improvement. I guess they are still below the radar of the pundit prognosticators for 2008.
Ruslan 01/02/08 03:17:14 AM EST

Extra space in this URL

http://www.w3.org/ 2001/tag/

produces 404.
Alessandro Stagni's Weblog 12/30/07 07:09:08 PM EST

Trackback Added: Sarà il 2008 l'anno della "Unifed Communication"?; Nel mare magnum delle previsioni per l'anno nuovo segnalo (per il momento) queste pubblicate dal .NET Developers' Journal. Where's AJAX, SOA and Virtualization Headed in 2008? — 2007 was the undoubtedly the year of Social Networking, but what of 2008?