Top 10 technology predictions for SMBs in 2012

For small and midsize businesses, 2011 was an eventful year for the owners and managers tasked with innovation decisions. The year's highlights range from the arrival of new technologies just as the introduction of Intel's Thunderbolt peripheral interface to the release of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Microsoft looks set to single-handedly up the ante on the virtualization front with the release of Windows Server 8, which will incorporate a in all seriousness beefed-up hypervisor. Hyper-V 3 will come with substantial improvements in the areas of network, storage, scalability and live migration capability. Its significance for SMBs and SMEs that have but to deploy virtualization is substantial, allowing them to create a full-fledged virtualization setup with minimum capital outlay with regards to software licensing fees.

Hyper-V 3 will exert significant pressure on market leader VMware by delivering "good enough" virtualization at a fraction of the cost of a full vSphere implementation. More importantly, Hyper-V 3 will recast the capabilities that businesses expect in a free virtualization product. Expect cheaper, more powerful virtualization to materialize as virtualization vendors react with price cuts and more advanced capabilities at lower price points. No date has been announced for Windows Server 8 then of writing, even though it's anticipated to debut in 2012.

Network Attached Storage appliances have been growing progressively more powerful over the years, narrowing the gap with entry-level SANs. In actual fact, many new NAS products released today are certified for virtualization platforms just as VMware, Hyper-V and Citrix, with more advanced models capable of replication between NAS or even supporting cloud storage just as Amazon's Simple Storage Service as an additional tier of data backup. Expect this trend of powerful NAS to continue and even accelerate in 2012. For SMBs, mid- to high-end NAS models have attained a sufficient level of performance and features to effectively serve as the primary storage for smaller businesses, or in branch offices of larger organizations. As such, small business and enterprise will deploy more NAS in 2012, and possibly even using them as SAN-replacements in certain cases.

Despite the criticism that Intel has attracted over its execution strategy for the company's Ultrabooks, the chip maker is serious about taking on Apple's increasingly popular MacBook Air with a new generation of thin and lightweight laptops. More than 60 models of Ultrabooks will be available in 2012, during rival chip maker AMD has as well recently indicated that it is working spontaneously ultra-thin laptops.

Ultimately, it is clear that a fundamental shift is taking place to the laptop's form factor. By stripping out the venerable optical disc drive and moving towards more advanced materials, computer makers are shifting from thick and bulky laptops to a computing future in other words both thin and light. With a longer battery life and lower prices than conventional laptops, we suspect that many SMBs will buy into Ultrabooks for use in the office.