Intel's predictions for 2011

Employees will want to use their personal solutions for work productivity and employers will want to augment the corporate environment with the devices to drive productivity. Virtualisation, anti-theft innovation, remote management and security will contribute here.

Technologies we foresee in 2011 will be smarter, more powerful and more useful. Below are a few of Intel's predictions for some research trends expected in 2011.

Laptops sales will continue with strong growth thanks to Intel's upcoming 2011 Intel® Core™ processors that add new HD and graphics-related features for consumers, including wireless display, to beam content to TVs. With improved business-class capabilities just as Intel Anti-Theft Research, IT spending on server, PC and laptop upgrades should as well increase.

Tablet computing, in a multitude of form factors and operating systems, will inundate the market. Expect to as well see hybrid tablet/netbook products just as an Intel-based Dell* prototype unveiled at the Intel Developer Forum, or the new 11-inch Macbook Air* that looks and feels like a combination of the best of netbooks with the best of tablets.

New innovations and manufacturing techniques will continue to defy the sceptics who claim Moore's Law is dead. This means that in the coming years, as billions of new devices acquire computing capability and Internet connectivity, they will be substantially higher performing with more features embedded in silicon, during also dramatically cutting power consumption and extending battery life.

Increasingly complex threat landscape

As IT requirements change rapidly due to an increasingly complex threat landscape and new usage models, including clouds and numerous CE devices connecting to the Internet, security will remain one of the highest priorities for the IT industry.

Over the then year, the industry will focus on foundational capabilities for infrastructure protection and maintaining both personal and business secrets. The Intel® Core™ vPro™ processors, Intel's McAfee acquisition and numerous projects inside and around Intel silicon chips will play roles here.

Consumers are bound to fall in love with the first wave of context aware or perceptual computers that leverage hard and soft sensor technologies. For instance, a mobile device called the Personal Vacation Assistant uses context-aware computing technologies to help get the most out of the travel experience. The portable device uses “hard sensors” and “soft sensors” to make on-the-spot recommendations for sights to see, places to eat, and more.

We saw it in 2010 with iPhones* and Droid* phones brought inside the corporate firewall. Employees will want to use their personal solutions for work productivity and employers will want to augment the corporate environment with the devices to drive productivity. Virtualisation, anti-theft innovation, remote management and security will contribute here.

With sophisticated technologies acting as central nervous systems in today's cars, new in-vehicle technologies are attracting tremendous interest whether it's new entertainment features, hands-free voice control of smart phones, other safety technologies or driver functions performed automatically by the vehicle.

The enterprise cloud will take off as more cloud-based services are recast for business use, including social networking. With most large corporations plowing through the virtualisation of their respective environment in 2010, straightway year will as well see build-out of internal cloud solutions. Just in case, cloud-based rendering will be done in the cloud and streamed over broadband networks to devices with modest graphics horsepower.