David Fredh's Blog

2008 was a year of change - with Obama, the Olympic Games and the financial crisis; it was also the year when Yahoo said no to Microsoft. But 2009 will be all about Cloud Computing. The technological hype has started already but the commercial breakthrough will come in 2009 - driven by providers including Amazon, Google, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. The potential of the hype maybe will be clearer with the fact that Amazon's price for one GB in the cloud is only $0.150 at this moment.

It’s time to wrap up the year 2008. It has been a year of change with Obama, Olympic games and financial crisis.

• It is also the year when Yahoo said no to Microsoft.
  
  
• iPhone really rocked it’s way into the market and changed the focus from Hardware design into Software. The application store now contains more than 10000
  applications which is very unique and the os and ui is beautiful. The first iPhone competitors has been released from other vendors and they seems really cool.
  
  
• The commercial breakthrough for mobile internet. 3 Sweden has announced that they will gear up to 21mbit during Q2 2009.
  
  
• Small cheap $400-notebooks (so called netbooks) got really popular since Intel finally released it’s power effective atom CPUs.
  
  
• The small and cheep netbooks (above) originally came with linux (or a linux-option). Linux had to step back in favor of old Windows XP (Microsoft’s joker-card).

Maybe 2008 was the year when Technology finally became trendy? It’s not about the phone, it’s about the possibilities and user experience. It’s not about having the internet in your computer, it’s about how!

So, finally, what about 2009?

• Cloud computing - Basically, the cloud is the internet-architecture itself. There is a lot of cpu-power left in all the servers out there and new technology makes it possible to share servers based on the needs. An entertaining guide is available here (youtube video) and here (article) The technological hype has started already but the commercial breakthrough will come in 2009. Cloud computing is being driven by providers including Amazon, Google, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. The potential of the hype maybe will be clearer with the fact that Amazon price for one GB in the cloud is only $0.150 at this moment. The next amazing web services are in the Cloud. Already now, we have services like Dropbox (file synchronization) and Mozy (providing unlimited backup for only 5$ a month). More of your data will move out on the internet. Many people already have all their mails in their gmail inbox instead of in their harddrive. The same will probably happen with documents, images and music. It’s convenient, but watch out.. .who owns your data?
  
  
• PC OS fight again! - Apple will relase Snow-Leopard 10.6 in january, Microsoft will release Windows 7 in october. Both releases are polished versions of the previous releases. Linux won’t step back again :). The latest versions of Ubuntu really give me a Wow-impression. This will be interesting.
  
  
• Mobile TV and Mobile Payment in Europe? I don’t really believe in this, but i want it  Maybe.. . maybe…
  
  
• Video conference tech will make it already tough times tougher for the airlines that will lose business-travellers.
  
  
• Mobile internet will grow further and this year it will lead to Web 3.0 that will make internet look better on mobile phone screens. Mobile version of firefox will be released and the mobile phone vendors will start to compete with the small netbooks with more advanced and great looking smartphones.

Happy new year!

• i-Technology Predictions for 2009
• Who Should Be America's First CTO?
• The Future of Cloud Computing
• The Future of Virtualization: Six Predictions
• Ten Cloud Computing Predictions for 2009 - From Appirio
• Review of 2008: A Developer's Perspective