Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 10. 2010 to 2019: Clouds, Crowds, Blogs,
Big Data, and Predictive Analytics
This topic was started in the middle of 2012 and finished in the spring of 2013.
Therefore, only a little more than two years of actual history were available to dis-
cuss for this decade. Using trends from prior decades, I could make some predic-
tions of things that might occur between 2013 and 2019. Of course, knowing the
future can be difficult.
The early years of this decade witnessed a rapid growth of companies providing
services for the
cloud
(applications and data stored remotely on the web but avail-
able for local use). There was also a remarkable increase in new companies that
want to use
crowds
of possibly thousands of people to focus on common goals.
The World Wide Web is a necessary enabling technology for crowd actions.
An interesting social phenomenon that is accelerating in the current decade is
the widespread use of
blogs
, or collections of personal web articles that are pub-
lished by individuals who have facts or opinions to share. Some blogs have be-
come famous, are syndicated, and have millions of readers. Others are obscure and
probably read only by personal friends and family members of the authors.
The emergence of
big data
has come about from hundreds of disparate data-
bases that are analyzed together. The natural partners of big data are predictive
analytics and intelligent agents. Predictive analytics use big data to examine large
and complicated problems. Intelligent agents are extensions of search engines that
include artificial intelligence to analyze findings and generate useful information
based on dozens or hundreds of websites.
Agile development is expanding rapidly. While Agile is popular, there is a dis-
tinct lack of quantitative data that show real progress compared to other leading
methods such as the team software process (TSP) and rational unified process
(RUP). All three seem superior to the older waterfall and “cowboy” methods.
Predicting the Future
Predicting the future is always tricky and usually unreliable. But there are obvious
trends based on current software levels of technology and the results of recent past
decades.
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