Our colleague, Ion Gireada, pieced the puzzle together in a comprehensive article about 2015’s most likely technology trends.
 
As year’s technological shape emerges, it is important to realize the trends taking off in the industry and the implications as well expected results. Being in a position to adopt and support new technologies, maintain service levels even in the face of declining budgets and reduced staff, and taking a proactive approach to the threats from the Internet will help companies maintain a high level of security and sanity.

New Devices
New devices are coming out from every major vendor, in every conceivable form factor. Tablets, phablets, phones, ultrabooks, wearable devices and embedded devices are flooding the market. Which devices a company will adopt, and how the personnel will support them, are questions needing an answer sooner rather than later. The ones that run the standard operating system you already supported will be easy to deal with.
BYOD
Many of those new devices are going to be connecting to a network, and the tech savvy users buy their own and then want to use them at work. BYOD is here to stay. Ignoring it, pretending it will go away, or refusing to permit it on your network are all strategies destined to fail.
Shrinking Budgets
There are three things one can count on: death, taxes and budget cuts. Every dollar spent is going to have to be stretched further, and that means a need to focus on what celebrity chef Alton Brown calls “multitaskers”. In both the staff hired and the applications purchaseed, make sure that everyone can do more than one job, and everything can be used for more than one purpose. When evaluating new hires, look for multiple and diverse skills that can either complement, or support, anexisting team.
Reduced Headcount
The other side of the coin is reduced headcount. Whether current staff is asked to do more, or someone on the team decides to move on, it’s unlikely a company is able to expand its team or even backfill existing roles if someone leaves. The best strategy is to do a skills assessment of each of the people in the team, figure out which skills rest with only one person, and start cross training.
Advanced Persistent Threat
There are always going to be bad guys on the Internet trying to break in a network, but Advanced Persistent Threats, or APTs, are the next big thing. First mentioned in 2005, APT has evolved from a rare exception to a mega threat. Rather than simply scanning for a target, the bad guys are scanning for you.
Cloud services
Everything is moving to the cloud, from email and applications to complete infrastructure solutions. The cloud has something to offer almost every business, from sole proprietorships to Fortune 10 corporations, and it’s no longer a question of if a company will use something in the cloud, but when. It’s all in the cloud, and means new solutions can be piloted in hours instead of weeks. Enterprise deployments can happen in days instead of months. The cloud is going to change everything, and in truth, the change has already started.