Happy New Year from sunny San Diego! It’s really hard to complain about 70° days in December. I don’t know what happened to our weather the last few weeks but Christmas was more like a summer vacation than the start of winter. Hopefully everyone took some time off got a chance to spend time with friends and family.

The horizon brings exciting new developments from a business and social perspective. Looking into the crystal ball for 2012, we expect to see major changes in mobility, IT infrastructure as a monthly service, virtualization, adoption of cloud technology platforms, and increased “consumerization” of IT in the workplace.

Mobility – Access to information from anywhere you can find internet access has become a reality: information, people, and the office – anywhere, anytime and anyplace. This will grow exponentially as more devices enter the marketplace. Had a video conference meeting from Starbucks lately? Look for improved feature sets on tablets, smart phones, ultra books and other smart devices. Think where you would be today without your iPhone.

IT Infrastructure as a Monthly Service - Why invest large amounts of capital to replace existing business server and infrastructure when you can get the latest and greatest technology for one low monthly fee that can scale to meet the changes your business demands? This will eliminate the 3-5 year hardware refresh cycle while recovering some office space and lowering utility costs.

Virtualization – Server virtualization has been around for a few years now and companies have been adopting this option to reduce capital expenditures and do more with less physical hardware. It’s provided huge savings to companies that have deployed this technology. Now we can look forward to virtualizing the PC desktop and business applications while connecting with our smart devices. Please see the article below titled ‘Six Reasons Small Businesses Need Virtualization’ for a more extensive list of benefits.

Adoption of Cloud Services – “The Cloud”, as it is referred to, is going to see a lot of traction in 2012 as companies look for ways to reduce IT costs, improve profitability with technology solutions and reduce IT risk exposure. “The Cloud” comes in many flavors and will require a different skill set than IT has needed in the past to take advantage of all the benefits this technology can provide.

Increased “Consumerization” of IT in the workplace – Many companies are seeing staff use personal electronic devices to access corporate resources like email, the internet, lines of business systems, etc.; and this will only increase throughout the coming year. While this is a great benefit, it also comes with considerable risk to the company: security, viruses and potential for theft of corporate information.

That is what our technology industry crystal ball shows for 2012. TNCC has invested in these areas throughout 2011 and will also do so in 2012 so we can continue to be a leading IT and business resource for San Diego businesses.

Fred Harrah, CEO
760-744-0442 x 208