Scanning Computing’s​ Decades And Looking Toward The Future

This last decade in the world of technology was exciting, innovative and turbulent, all at the same time. I would argue that in the last forty years of computing, these last ten years had the most technological advances of any decade. We saw tremendous innovation, the spectacular good and bad influence of social media, the significance of smartphones in personal and business lives and a mad dash for all enterprises to begin a digital transformation. Businesses began to move completely from an analog and client-server past to an all-digital and cloud future. 

In the last decade, it became clear that companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and others became gatekeepers of tons of personal data from their customers. Today those entities are under major governmental scrutiny over the true ownership of that data and the privacy and security issues surrounding that data. And they are now being pressured to breakup some of these companies to keep their total position of influence in check. 

The last decade also made it clear that technology would play a major part in powering a phase of economic growth that dwarfs any other period in history in terms of technology's role in global GDP.

The first two decades of personal computing began in 1977 when Apple introduced the Apple II and followed shortly thereafter with IBM’s PC, laid the foundation for the PC industry’s growth. The PC had a major impact and redefined business productivity around the world. By 1999, the PC industry was selling close to 350 million PC’s a year worldwide and the computer and IT industry overall was bringing in about $900 billion in total revenue. 

Starting in 2000, that decade saw the birth of the iPod and the iPhone. The IT industry began a bigger shift to client/servers becoming the backbone of IT shops. It was also the decade where companies like Oracle, SAP and similar back-end software firms accelerated their role in providing the client/server software to run all phases of a company's business and shifted IT away from localized software. It also saw the rise of CRM-based software used to manage customer sales and customer services and accelerated the growth of companies like Salesforce. By 2008-2009, all of these back-end software behemoths began shifting their software away from client/server applications and launched the IT world towards cloud-based architectures and solutions.

While the decade of 2000-2009 saw tremendous growth of tech and its far-reaching effect on the world, this last decade from 2010 to 2019 extended its reach even further. Although Facebook started in 2004, it was only in the last ten years that it grew to have over 3 billion users and became one of the most influential tech companies in the world. 

Likewise, Twitter started in 2006, but its real growth and influence were felt in this decade. 

If you were a fortune-teller in 2009, could you have imagined the following things that would happen in the next decade of tech?

• - Facebook and Twitter would have an impact on a presidential election? That by the end of the decade Facebook, Twitter and Google would be the targeted interest of governments around the world regarding their management of customers' data, privacy and security?
• -Smartphones would enable brand new services like Uber, Lyft, food delivery services, etc. 
• -Smartphones as navigation tools, which allowed companies like WAZE to be born and the major smartphone vendors making GPS and maps a central tool that a smartphone could deliver. 
• -Smartphones' impact on the camera industry. Although Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, it did not take off until Apple began populating their website with iPhone apps in 2010. At that point, the demand for Phones grew and during the last decade, cameras on smartphones became better and better. Now smartphones are the primary way people take photos. The iPhone camera in 2007 was minimal at best while the iPhone cameras today are verging on DSLR territory. 
• -Streaming music, video, VOD and its impact on the cable, cellular, music and movie industries. For the cable business, streaming has caused cord-cutting in droves and has threatened the cable industry. On the other hand, it has been a boon for the music industry and Hollywood. And the cellular industry has benefited greatly since their customers need more data for streaming services. This allows them to bring in new revenues they did not have in the last decade.
• -Tesla and electric cars. Although Tesla started in 2003, the previous decade was more for R&D and setting up Tesla's supply chain and manufacturing. The Tesla Model S arrived in 2012 and over this last decade, demand for electric cars and electric hybrids has skyrocketed. In 2009, most bets were that Tesla would not survive. Now it is leading the entire auto industry into the era of electric cars.
• In the auto industry, we saw advances in back-up cameras, in-car navigation, automatic braking, and adaptive cruise control. In the next decade, they hope to bring us self driving vehicles and vow to make their cars smarter and safer. 
• -Smartphones as a ubiquitous pocket computer. 
• In 2009, many were still on the fence about the importance and impact the iPhone and smartphones would have in the future. But by 2010, when Apple opened its App store and began greater innovation on the iPhone design and functions, along with the introduction of smartphones from Samsung and others using Android, smartphones became the one digital device we all carry with us today. Its domination on our mobile computing capabilities and the way it is used to call a ride-share service, order food delivery, make mobile payments, navigate to a designated location, etc., make it the most valuable personal computer we have today.
• -Mobile payments. Enabled by smartphones and in China today, it is the way most people pay for just about anything they purchase. 
• -Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin and Blockchain - These emerged mid-decade and picked up steam over the last five years. 
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning-These technologies have been around for over 30 years but only began to be used in broader applications and services over this last decade. 

These are just a few of the major evolutions in tech that were developed and influenced our world over this last decade. 

Given my propensity to make my predictions for tech in a new year, I was tempted to do a piece on my forecasts for the next decade. 

But as I looked at this list shared above, I think it would be difficult for anyone to forecast the next decade, other than to suggest that we most likely will have self-driving cars by 2030. Or that AR, VR and Mixed Reality could play a major role in delivering the next major personal computing platform. 

Instead, I have decided to reach out to the CEOs and top leadership from some of the major companies in the tech world and ask them for the visions and goals for their companies over the next decade.

I will soon begin a series called “Looking Back, Looking Forward” where I review specific companies' successes and even failures over the last ten years and ask these firm’s leadership what they hope to achieve in the next decade.

I have two criteria for when I write these articles. The first is that I have covered them as part of my job over the last decade. Since I have been covering most tech companies as an industry analyst since 1981, most of the companies I will profile easily fit into that bucket. 

The other thing I want for these articles is to accurately portray the leadership of these companies' vision, goals and challenges for the next decade. To that end, I plan to interview these leaders personally to get their views and ask them directly about what they want their companies to accomplish over the coming decade.

Being at the end of one decade gives us a chance to reflect on what happened in the world of tech over the last ten years. It also allows us to evaluate where the world of tech is today and what it might have in store for us over the next decade. During the next month or so I will be speaking with key leaders in tech and hearing what they think the next decade of computing will hold for them and what key trends will dominate the next ten years.