Social and Context-Aware Computing, Pattern Analysis and Cloud. What's in it for you?

Gartner has identified four trends which will have impacts on both business and IT

1. Cloud
2. Business impact of social computing
3. Context Aware Computing
4. Pattern Based Strategy

While these trends will impact ICT investment, they should also impact the services in ICT. ICT organisations should consider how these converging trends will impact the services ICT can provide to their customers, whether that be within the organisation or whether these services could be expanded to become a profit centre.

How might social computing be used to increase engagement in ICT governance, planning, implementation and support? How can communities of interest assist in developing consensus on information needs and terminology to improve discovery?

Examples of Context Aware computing are the Mobile Transit Companion and new research at Ryerson is looking at building an intuitive application which allows mobile device users to set situation-specific business rules on when, how, where they receive voice and video calls. The situational information includes location, calendar information and their communications bandwidth. It is easy to see how this technology could be used to save ICT spend on communications by selecting the most cost-effective connection method, but what else could context-aware computing enable?

How will patterns in and between cloud computing, social networking, context-aware computing and transaction data be able to aid ICT decision-makers in refining the services ICT will provide?

We have been witness to and subjected to rapid change in technology and the way society has incorporated technology into its day-to-day functions at work, at play and at home. It seems with the convergence of social networking, context-aware computing and pattern analysis combined with new licensing and service delivery models offered by cloud computing, the rate of change is poised for acceleration. How are you going to take advantage of it?