5. Cloud computing assurances
Experts say that 2015 will be the year when cloud computing becomes more viable and assured for companies who have not wanted to test the waters, mostly for fear that storing data in the cloud could cause a disruption in services – or worse. This year, cloud providers will provide tighter assurances (and even insurance) to make the cloud less of a risk.
"Production applications and workloads running in the cloud will increase by 50% in 2015," says Marc Olesen, SVP and general manager of cloud solutions at Splunk, a tool for analysing machine data in the cloud.
"Enterprises will need a cloud-based service assurance platform to drive transparency, security and performance. What happens in the cloud, stays in the cloud. Data that originates in the cloud will stay in the cloud for processing, monitoring, analytics and visualisation. Cloud providers will increase the availability of their machine data delivering transparency and control to their customers."
6. Better social media analytics
In 2014, social media analytics took centre stage. Businesses started hiring data scientists in droves, forming teams of number crunchers who wanted to understand social media chatter and put the data into a dashboard to help with key decisions. As with any new advancement, there was a tendency to feed in too much data like the number of new followers to a corporate Twitter account without really being able to act on the data. In 2015, that will change.
New data analytics companies like ThinkUp are not just trying to put reams of data into a nice pie chart; they want to make the data more actionable. It's not technically a business tool, but can tell social media experts at a company if they are posting too often about a product, sharing links and retweets on a regular basis, and targeting influencers enough.
7. Expanded airport quick pass
2015 will finally be the year when you can pass through airport security in minutes instead of an hour or more, saving precious work time. The new CLEAR pre-screening system uses biometrics like your fingerprint or an iris scan to speed up the process. It's now rolling out to many more airports in the US such as San Francisco, San Jose, Denver, and Orlando, but will start showing up at even more during the course of the year. Expect to see these advancements at an airport near you in 2015.
