2013 Technology Trends: The Pace of Change Will Quicken (Opinion)

As we enter 2013, technology quickly is becoming a sector dominated by devices and services.

Desktop computers are becoming a subset of the market rather than the primary market. Mobile computing will dominate the market in 2013 and beyond. Android and iPad tablets quickly are becoming the “go-to” computing devices for busy businesspeople.

Apple’s iPhone business by itself is now larger than all of Microsoft. Google’s Android ecosystem will continue its path to overall domination of the device market in the world, while the Apple iOS ecosystem will continue to lead the U.S. market.

Microsoft Windows operating system, once at 95 percent-plus market share of computing devices, is now less than 50 percent of total device share, and falling rapidly as conventional desktops and laptops lose share to other devices. Rapid adoption of the various versions of Windows 8 doesn’t appear to be anywhere on the near horizon, and the Windows 8 phone market share will lag far behind Apple and Android’s overwhelming advantage gained from being available for years now. Sales of the Microsoft Surface tablet have been underwhelming.

The “Bring Your Own Device” movement has now invaded all businesses, including the largest of corporations, forcing IT departments to develop strategies and integrate all types of devices into their computing environments.

“Services” are what make the mobile devices so useful. These include a huge variety of cloud-based services, including apps provided with devices, purchased apps, apps provided by businesses and serviced from their private network, and software-as-a-service apps licensed and provided over the Internet.

The days of having to go to the office to use your computer are effectively behind us. Cloud-based storage options, such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Box provide sync services across all your devices, and are in wide use today even in major corporations.

This movement toward devices and services is sometimes described as a major trend toward “the Internet of things.” Internet availability is quickly becoming ubiquitous and devices of all sorts are being connected and related to services.

Technology expertise, which was once defined mostly by the ability to program computers and maintain file, application and data servers, is rapidly being redefined and expanded. Today’s technology experts also include those who understand the deployment and usage of a variety of devices, available cloud-based services and business software selection, and have the skills that integrate solutions.

Programmers are rapidly retooling to specialize in iOS, Android and Web-based development tools. Knowledge of the effective use of application programming interfaces and services layers for popular software packages is a highly valued, fast-growing skills market. Business process knowledge and systems implementation knowledge will be at a premium.

Small and mid-sized businesses will continue to have opportunities to simplify their technology footprint. The times of needing expensive in-house servers and technology staff to take care of them have passed for the clever new companies.

For companies that have servers, the challenge is to organize so that buying new ones will not be necessary. Even a very small company can realize savings in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Cloud-based technology, properly selected and implemented, can provide solid business solutions with quality and functionality that typically far exceed that implemented in most SMBs today. Plus, cloud-based solutions can bring immediately the world of mobile computing to a business with little additional effort. If you are not exploring how cloud-based solutions can save you money, you are probably missing an opportunity.

Expect the pace of change to quicken in 2013. If you think it has been hard to keep up with so far, just wait.

Steven Hankins is CEO and co-founder of Accio.us, a technology company providing advisory and management services for small to medium-sized businesses. He can be reached at [email protected].