CIOs: What tech will be running your organisation in 2020?

As IT manager for my company

I can say that we'll probably be running much the same tech as we are running now, and have been for the last 10 years.

Our main office server box is 2006 vintage, and had a motherboard and CPU upgrade in 2010. The office machines date from 2004 - 2009, the art room roughly the same period, albeit they had motherboard/CPU upgrades in 2012, and only one new art/design machine (an AMD 8-core) was purchased last year.

On the mobile front, we're using Toshiba laptops and Samsung Slates with Windows 7 circa 2012ish, and Galaxy S4s with Android circa 2013. (And we have one Apple iPad I'm ashamed to say, but that's solely used for testing to make sure our websites and ebooks work on iThings. We do have an elaborate office cleansing ritual for those forced to use it! ;) )

All of it does everything we need it to reliably, and everything is a known quantity that everyone knows how to use effectively.

With the flattening of Moore's law over the last several years (CPU power and storage sizes have stopped increasing exponentially), unless some earth-shattering new technology like holodecks or transhuman consciousness-uploading tech appears in the next 5 years, I can't see us using anything vastly different to what we're using today. Probably there'll be a few more minor hardware upgrades but that's abut it.

If it ain't broke, why fix it?

Agree pretty much the same stuff as got now. Everyone will still be driving cars powered by petrol and diesel so why would computing change so much.

iPhone and iPads will still be being used, Apple may have fixed their iOS to actually propertly work with Exchange and those activesync issues may have been ironed out.

A department within my company may have a VR headset or 3 to use to visualise upgrades and refits that we conduct to properties we own.

I think/hope the cost of printing will come down in the future as technology gets better.

Some newer PC's

upgraded servers,

newer windows,

facebook will be dead.!

apple will own the moon (and have apple logo in the night sky)

and some things will be easier, and some harder.

there will be new toys, but the basic working infrastructure of most businesses will be the same.

'if' things like quantum / AI did surface (doubtful) and be affordable (doubtful), then that's just server grunt / analytics, but the general stuff on your and my desks will be generally the same.

we may be 21st century and getting lots of new tech daily, but implementation of ground breaking tech, is slow and gradual, and usually held up by cost.

do I as a developer need anything other that good servers / machine / dev environment / tools / time / effort..... not really, why would any other user require anything other than a new toy / feature or 2.

longer term, I guess the main change could be : siri / cortana / (google one) to be actually useful, and interaction could evolve at a push.... maybe surveillance.... EVERYthing is tracked, so more people going off grid..!

We're projecting a few ways in our company in the next two years, which is pretty progressive. As warranties end we buy new equipment, which is industry standard.

Dual 24 inch LED monitors. Touch screens are only $100 more so we're going for them. It's still up in the air if it'll be very useful, but quick swiping will work. A keyboard mouse is still more precise, so it's still standard. The standard workstation will shrink so small that it'll be affixed to the back of a monitor, so more desk space and less cable clutter. There will always be a need for the typical high end workstation.

All laptops are going to the ultra light ultra thin. We're demoing HP's super thin laptop. It may not be as thin and light as Apple's new MacBook,but it's comparable. Portable optical drives when needed, and most of those can be hidden away behind a monitor or in a dock, etc.

We're already VoIP phones, so we're sticking with that.

Of course wifi AC,N,G everywhere, and Citrix for many apps hosted internally and Internet accessable so the work experience is the same in or out of the office.

BES server for Blackberries, iPhones and a few Androids that are ordered. Androids have to be encrypted to be safe I our industry, so it's an added pain to setup. Essentially we have to support everything that comes our way.

We'll be switching...

We'll be switching from binary to trinary computers.

Seriously there are only few things you can say for certain in 2020.

In 2018 the telephone network will be turned off in Germany so everyone will go VoIP. Unless you are an idiot, this will greatly decrease your costs while greatly increasing your flexibility and quality of phone calls. Just avoid the obvious traps.

Systems that (kinda) work will stay, and companies will cling to those solutions however they can. Bad systems might stay or will be replaced randomly by some other system.

Unless you switch away from Windows, you'll probably pay for a subscription model. We might soon see the year of the end of the Linux desktop when systemd takes over and Linux systems just won't work any more.

At first I had misread the title, and it probably would have been a much more fun article if it had been "What tech will be RUINING your organisation in 2020"....

Windows XP of course

We will be upgrading from 98 SE in the next couple of years.

Will also be swapping those 38400 for 56k modems too.

With the current mindset nothing is going to change.

Until the business-type-people actually realise what productivity gains can be made from IT(not just converting existing paper based processes to digital ones) then we'll all be wondering why all offices still look the same as they did in 2003.

Policies need to change, and the way we think about doing business needs to change. 9-5 is a 20th century working ideal, that works well if you're dealing with local businesses, which doesn't work with our global economy. Paranoid about storing data in public clouds, and off premises? Trust needs to be built in these new technologies, but the only way is through putting trust in these areas. IoT and Big Data can only work in a society where we are happy to share our data.

Nothing is going to change without a radical change in thought.

By then people will have stopped talking about this 'cloud' nonsense.

And terminology will go back to 'server' and 'dumb terminals'... probably.

there is no choice

We are nailed to the cross. It doesn't matter if it rains or there's a sand storm.

The people who came before hammered those nails in so hard that decapitation is the only option if we desire true freedom.

I traded in the cattle prod for a chainsaw last week in readiness...

4K finally(?)

And the same old shitty software, with more eyecandy and bugs.