Cloud

Tech That Failed To Live Up To Its Hype In 2016

Tech

Hype is a term that’s not unknown to the enterprise technology world. From vendors to media and even from the tech pundits we often tend to believe that every new product or service in the market is the next big thing. Not so always, and one should not go by hypes. We recall some technologies that seriously failed to live up to its hype in 2016 and we may have to wait for a while for them to go become a commercial entity.

– Professional grade 3-D printing

3D printing has indeed become more professional than before, but still not the grade that the industry could use for more practical cases. A printer with plastic 3D printing is common, and can be found anywhere, even for office use. There are slightly higher grade printers that print in cure resin, and smaller custom made objects are an ideal fit, like headphones, etc. HP $140,000 multi-jet fusion also went into sale recently, but has capabilities to print nylon only. Therefore, the next big step for 3D printing would be for areas like printing ceramic, metal and carbon fiber or conductive inks, which would help build circuit boards and other components, something which just might appear in the coming year.

– Macs without Touchscreens

A lot of the Mac or Apple products specifically, have a peculiar logic behind their design. In terms of the Mac machines, it is noticeable that there has been no touchscreen edition yet, and from what the design ethos of the company, it is very unlikely to appear anytime in the near future. On probing deeper, it was found out that Apple thinks, and perhaps rightly so, that users wouldn’t want to buy a premium product like a Mac computer, and have finger prints all over it, which could be the case of Microsoft Surface PCs. For those that need a touchscreen to work around with, the iPad Pro ought to fill the need, which also has an accompanying keyboard in case one chooses to use it.         

– Replacement for passwords on a standard scale

By and large, the traditional password method of securing online assets continue, which is increasingly being seen as rudimentary, and less secure. Multi-factor authentication, biometrics, expiring passwords, document classifications, and information rights management are being used, and Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 are also being adopted for their security features. But by and large, passwords are still being used instead of the more advanced methods of authentication and security for online assets. The optimism is that the FIDO 2 Standards are currently in development, and being built into Windows, and Mastercard is indeed adopting those standards. There is also a good chance that passwords are going to be replaced token biometrics and context-sensitive authentication as well, but that’s all left for the future to be accepted.     

– The use of USB-C and universal docking

The USB-C ports and cables were a fad with their visibility on the latest Apple products. But apart from that, they saw little visibility on other devices, even though faster data communication and standardization were big time possibilities. The reason for that is the current economics which makes Type-C USB cables and ports more expensive to include in devices. A lot of the products still use the standard USB based peripherals, due to which even developments like universal docking technology is out of reach. In these case, Type-C is still seen failing. With the use of universal docking station, there would be less of cabling, and a single station would take care of the video, storage, and networking connections, unlike the standard USB cable.

– Better portability on hybrid cloud infrastructure

To this problem, OpenStack was going to be the answer, but with bigger names pulling their names out, things fell flat. HP and Cisco closed down OpenStack services, and Microsoft shifted focus of Azure Stack towards higher-value PaaS services on hybrid cloud, instead of the commodity IaaS services, which would allow users to shift between suitable infrastructures.

Basically portability in hybrid clouds would allow CIOs and other customers to switch between public clouds, private clouds, and personal data centers, as er their needs and cost feasibility. What is also seen a major issue, is that, the transition to bring in portability on cloud will result in a higher cost base than that saved by migration to a cloud infrastructure in the first place.

Leave a Response