Outsourcing Toolkit

Outsourcing will bite in 2004

Published: 30 Dec 2003 13:20 GMT

Intimately related to automating IT is the emergence of Web services and service-oriented architectures (SOA). The benefit comes in the integrating of loosely coupled components into composite applications, resulting in more flexibility and, hopefully, improved total cost of ownership.

Over the next few years, the majority of business applications will be service-oriented. Based on that prediction, enterprises will be left behind the curve unless they drink the SOA Kool-Aid.

Wi-Fi and Wireless LANs
This year has been a great proving ground for Wi-Fi and the entire spectrum of wireless technologies. Between Intel's massive Centrino marketing campaign, hot spots, rogue Wi-Fi networks and home networks, wireless has fully entered the consciousness of IT professionals and tech savvy consumers. In 2004, the vast majority of notebooks will come with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity. Some of the nagging problems surrounding Wi-Fi, such as security, will be overcome as new standards, such as 802.11i for security, are approved in the coming months. Faster Wi-Fi-802.11a and 802.11g will become prevalent as the current slower standard 802.11b fades away in 2004, without much cost escalation.

Taking advantage of faster speeds, WLANs will also begin to carry more voice traffic as voice-over-IP adoption starts to ramp up in 2004. Mixing voice and data could cause some hiccups in performance, but VoIP will be one of the important areas to consider for both cost savings and improved productivity.