Twelve Emerging Technologies to Watch in 2012

At about the half way mark for the year, here's a quick look at 12 emerging technologies that are about to go mainstream in a big way at about the beginning of 2013.

• Software-Defined Networking

  

  The $1.26 billion that VMware just spent to acquire Nicira is only the tip of the iceberg

• Next Generation Servers

  

  Servers that recognize application workload patterns are required for the cloud.

• Programmable Data Centers

  

  IT organizations want to manage the data center at a much higher level of abstraction.

• In-Memory Computing

  

  From processors to distributed cache to entire databases, there is a crying need for speed.

• Event Driven Architectures

  

  Systems that sense and respond to events in real time need EDA.

• Predictive Analytics

  

  Business leaders want to know what will happen rather than just what already occurred.

• 40Gb Ethernet Switches

  

  Between mobile and the cloud, the network has become a bottleneck.

• Windows 8 Tablets

  

  Lots of Pent Up Demand for a Good Windows Tablet

• Mobile Device Management

  

  Given mobile mania, this is likely to become the next big managed service.

• Intelligent Desktop Virtualization

  

  The route to how end points will soon be routinely managed.

• Cloud Orchestration

  

  It's no longer about going to cloud but rather how to manage it.

• IT Automaton Engines

  

  Internal IT can't keep pace with rate of scale anymore.