From agile robots to micro-scale 3D printing to ultra-private smartphones, 2014 was full of technological breakthroughs. Once futuristic ideas, these technologies were quickly adopted by a mass consumer, thereby becoming milestones of technological progress. However, as 2014 is now history, it is time to take a peek into the future. 

Among some of last year's technological landmarks is the development of Gigabit-per-second broadband service by BT G.FAST that gave broadband a facelift and free-of-charge Wi-Fi in the majority of public places like the London subway, train stations and local coffee shops, including global chains. Good news is that technology will continue to evolve and revolutionize our lives. So what are the hottest tech trends for this year?

It's getting cloudy

Benefits of the cloud are undeniable, including massive savings. By digitising information-intensive processes, costs can be slashed by up to 90 percent and turnaround times improved by several orders of magnitude. This year will see the rise of hybrid deployments in which some information and applications reside in the cloud and the remainder resides on-premise. Data security remains priority number one. The hybrid model enables businesses to keep their workload in balance. They fulfill every data sovereignty requirement, at the same time tapping into the cloud's huge potential.

Jetson-esque reality kicks in

Will IT specialists share the sad fate of floppy discs and become obsolete? Rumours of automation are not exactly unfounded. Today everything gets upgraded, people included. It is not entirely unlikely that an employee 2.0 will be an artificially intelligent robot.
Are robots a real threat? According to Microsoft's predictions, a small percentage of skilled tech workers will drive innovation for a highly internet dependent world. "In 2025 there will be nearly five billion people online and more than 50 billion connected devices," reads Cyberspace 2025: Today's Decisions, Tomorrow's Terrain. But there is more. By 2025 emerging economies will produce 16 million science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates per year - nearly five times as many as from developed countries.
Experts predict a shift from transactional jobs to tacit jobs. The latter require data analysis, judgement, and problem solving skills, as well as the ability to think creatively, communicate effectively, and collaborate in teams. Tacit jobs are expected to grow 2.5 times faster than the transactional segment. That means that CEOs will soon identify the skills gap around tacit jobs for technology.

Digital meets physical

According to techradar.com, 2015 will see a growing number of whip-smart startups outrunning seasoned market players when it comes to TTM. Thanks to such technological achievements like 5G networks, more processing power, advances in storage, and cloud and mobile computing, the line between the physical and the virtual gets thinner and thinner. People and their technologies merge into one.
Eager to embrace new business models, startups operate on the basis of a rapid product development cycle. Over the next several years, we shall witness a development cycles speed up from sprints to hyper-connected gallops. Innovation will become faster, too. CIOs and business leaders who do not want to lag behind in a digital world will have to adopt startup strategies to build adaptive enterprises that can proactively create opportunities for growth.

Wanted: Chief Data Officer, Chief Digital Officer

To guide an organization through its journey to digital transformation, Chief Data Officer and the Chief Digital Officer will join the ranks of C-level executives. Their role will consist predominantly in focusing on the strategic importance of information in a digital economy.
An executive advocate for the digital customer, the Chief Digital Officer will oversee both the strategy and the technology for a seamless and satisfying digital customer experience. According to Gartner, 25 percent of firms will appoint a Chief Digital Officer by the end of 2015.
The Chief Data Officer will concentrate on data management by using volumes of data and analytics to enhance the decision making process as well as identify new revenue opportunities. The CDO will also enable all functions across the organization to access data and insights about their operations. It will be possible due to the optimization of data management and implementation of the Enterprise Information Management (EIM) strategy.

Source: http://www.techradar.com, Photo: http://blogs.microsoft.com/