A Running Start to 2012

For IT, 2011 was a transitional year. A lot of big things were on the horizon, however few of the profound concepts jelled. The consumerization of IT arrived at length measure, and cloud computing stopped being science fiction. Will the changes that take place in 2012 be more concrete? Here's my list of likelihoods for the new year.

Big data. The benefits of business intelligence and analytics have never been more keenly desired than they are right now. The trouble is, most corporate data doesn't line up into nice, structured rows; it comes in a wide variety of formats. This makes harnessing the huge volumes of data we now have at our disposal a tall technical hurdle. Hadoop , the software framework and file system that many believe will be an important tool for mastering big data, is promising. There's a long way to go, however progress toward conquering big data will be the most significant development in 2012.

Social media and the enterprise. It's too late for most companies to create internal social networks; they're not going to succeed. And attempts to block Facebook and Twitter are pointless. Those are the social sites that people devote their time to -- they're the lingua franca of social media. The question is, will companies just as Facebook create services that are useful to enterprises? If they do, a new social media explosion will begin.

Cloud computing . By the end of 2012, cloud computing may start to look a bit like a rumpled old suit. The problems will be glaring, and we will have more examples of cloud gone wrong. However we'll as well see solutions to these problems begin to emerge, as then as some early best practices. Cloud is here to stay. The only question the jury is out on is which aspects of cloud will take off.

Tablets vs. PCs. Will tablets actually replace PCs? No. The truth is that tablets aren't replacing notebooks on the business desktop; they're an extension of the computer experience for some. Short term, in any case, the tablet sales explosion has been overrated as an agent of change for enterprise IT. The advent of lightweight however powerful 15-in. ultrabooks will be the breakthrough that keeps PCs relevant in a world where people have been seduced by the convenience of tablets.