The creation of new technologies, their development and implementation in commercial products is a continuous and natural process. Without the advent of advanced technologies, technological progress would stop, and the market economy would inevitably collapse. However, each innovation has its own characteristics and a certain potential – one can only slightly improve existing solutions, while the other can make a real revolution in a particular branch of the IT industry.
Fortunately, new technologies do not appear every day. This leaves us a chance to sort them out before they become obsolete and leave the stage. An adequate assessment of the potential of technologies preparing to enter the market is important for everyone: users get an incentive to purchase products with fundamentally new capabilities, manufacturers to expand and diversify the range of proposed solutions, and businessmen to make profitable investments and get good profits.
It is quite difficult to understand all the variety of modern IT technologies on your own, and here analysts come to the rescue, summarizing the flow of data coming from various sources and presenting them in an understandable form. One of the most visual ways of systematizing data on the development of any processes is a graphical representation. Experts from the Gartner agency, one of the world’s leading centers in the field of analysis of modern IT technologies, have created a graphical model for presenting data on the development of new technologies. It was called Hype Cycle, which can be translated as “hype cycle”.
In accordance with the concept of this model, any technology in the process of its development goes through five stages, each of which corresponds to a certain area of the graph (see figure). Consider the features of each of these periods.
Rise of Hopes (On the Rise/Technology Trigger) is an area of conceptual technologies that, according to analysts and developers, has the highest potential. Their value is generally not in question, but they are not yet mature enough to attract large investments and commercialization.
Peak of Inflated Expectations (At the Peak / Peak of Inflated Expectations) – at this stage, a massive propaganda of the benefits of a new technology in the media begins, attracting the attention of the public, as well as potential investors and manufacturers.
It is worth noting that such information campaigns rarely do without outright speculation: analysts enthusiastically write rosy reports about the prospects (often silent about already known shortcomings and limitations) and predict the displacement of traditional technologies as the novelty is introduced everywhere. Investors.
seduced by the grandiose prospects, begin to invest in research and development and the creation of working prototypes; competitors, smelling the smell of money, offer their own clones of this solution. As a rule, there are indeed grounds for optimism in most cases.
but their scale is greatly exaggerated. Investments at this stage are risky, as the potential of the technology can be clearly overestimated. In some cases, a widely advertised solution turns out to be a dummy, deliberately inflated to receive large grants for certain studies that are of interest solely from the point of view of the development of academic science.
Sliding Into the Trough/Trough of Disillusionment – after a relatively short period of promotion, the novelty either leaves the stage or takes its place in the existing market infrastructure. Enthusiasm fades, unlucky investors count losses, analysts write reports about the reasons for failures, and in the eyes of end users, a well-publicized solution loses its appeal.
At this stage, a negative attitude is formed towards the technology, which, on the one hand, has already lost the status of a novelty, and on the other hand, has not yet demonstrated to investors and potential users its convincing advantages over existing solutions. In the process of testing the first prototypes.
a number of significant shortcomings are revealed that scare off interested manufacturers. The soap bubble, inflated by the press around a promising development, bursts. The number of publications and mentions is on the decline, and many have the impression that this technology has left the scene. However, this stage may turn out to be the most attractive for investors, as the prospects for using this technology are gradually becoming clearer, and the developer (or the owner of the rights to the invention), due to the decline in interest in the technology, becomes more accommodating.
Climbing the Slope/Slope of Enlightenment – a new stage of research begins, during which developers eliminate previously identified shortcomings, as well as optimize the technological process, taking into account the requirements of mass production. Begins
Many believe that in modern conditions the key to success is the primacy of entering the market with some new idea or invention. But in reality, very often the market niche for a new technology turns out to be too narrow, and manufacturing companies that have seized on a “promising” development and invested their funds in its development realize this too late. In some cases, potential customers and partners are simply not ready to implement new technologies.
Moreover, even if the niche is large enough and the market is ready to accept a new idea, developers need to repel the attacks of competitors working on the implementation of similar solutions. Companies that cannot constantly develop new ways to use their resources efficiently are pushed to the margins of the market, where they are left to compete only for rapidly shrinking market niches.
In this review, which consists of several feature articles, we will look at the technologies that were mentioned by analysts in 2010 among the most promising.
This section focuses on technologies and software used in the corporate sector and the changes in their development that have taken place during the past year. You can read more about these technologies in articles under the general title “Promising Technologies: Results and Forecasts” published in the January issues of the past and the year before last.