 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
What’s Hot for 2004
by The EDI Staff
Business technologies are continuously evolving, but with a multitude of innovations available, how do we know what will truly help us to become more efficient and successful? How do we distinguish between hype and reality? We’ve developed a list of hot technology trends worthy of attention and research. Trust us, you’ll be hearing more about these topics during the next year.
- Data Integration: Although it seems like common sense, most organizations do not have one central database housing all of their pertinent information. Rather, there are several systems storing different data on the same subjects. This generates complications and a substantial amount of redundancy when divisions within companies or organizations need to share information. As a result, a significant amount of attention is being focused on integrating data systems to make them more proficient at sharing information, whether it is a simple address change or a more complicated court or medical record that needs updating.
- Data integration will play an especially important role in the healthcare and law enforcement arenas. In healthcare, for example, systems are needed that will allow hospitals, doctors and insurance providers to share claim details, scheduling information and medical records. Law enforcement agencies, including police stations, jails, courthouses and cities, which need to share information on a regular basis often find themselves at an impasse due to disparate systems. These issues can have significant impact on matters such as court hearings, outstanding warrants and criminal investigations.
- Platform and Application Integration: Similar to data integration, lack of compatibility between computer platforms and applications is a growing problem companies face. Steadily, we are seeing platforms such as Macintosh and Windows become more seamless, allowing for increased communication between systems. This will also impact any hardware that is connected to a computer network. Soon, cell phones will communicate with PDAs which will communicate with scanners which will communicate with fax machines, and so on, and integration will be a premium need.
- WiFi Security: Security in general is a major technology trend for the future, with wireless options steadily becoming a focus point given today’s on the move society. Currently, the wireless standard is not strong enough to offer the same security as wireline options do, but protocols and standards for mobile security will soon be a reality. Benefits of wireless security will include the ability to access computer data anywhere, using any type of equipment with no threat of an information security issue. Essentially, it will be as if you were at a “wireless desk.”
- VoIP Telephony: Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Telephony has been a focus for several years and is almost ready for primetime. This technology, which provides fully-digital telephone service over your computer network will be encroaching more and more into the traditional telephone system. Currently, large companies and organizations have been the primary users of VoIP but there will be a large migration of this service to smaller organizations as it becomes more affordable and accessible.
- Spam Smashers: Every company today is barraged with unwanted e-mail or “spam” and measures are being developed to help eliminate this time consuming nuisance. “Spam smasher” technology ranges from developing whitelists of verified recipients, software services that filter messages and ISP lookup-verifying programs. Whatever the process, there are sure to be more solutions to conquering spam cropping up in the future.
