As we start 2007, infocomm industry professionals share with us what they think will happen in the year ahead.

Altiris Inc
Dwain Kinghorn, Chief Technology Officer

With the release of Windows Vista, IT organisations are looking for solutions to enable business continuity through the transition in 2007. IT departments that want to quickly take advantage of the new features of Windows Vista, recognise that a well-planned, automated approach to deployment and migration is critical to optimise employee productivity.

Businesses will be looking for the right solutions to help streamline the deployment and migration of Window installations. These solutions should also be updated with support for Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit clients.

ASKnLearn Pte Ltd
Yee Jenn Jong, Chief Executive Officer

I expect the infocomm scene to be vibrant, especially with the improving economy, new government projects and the national wireless project spurring demand for new infocomm applications. In the education sector where we operate in, schools are well into the second MOE IT Masterplan. Most schools are now comfortably engaging greater usage of infocomm to integrate with curriculum. There could be exciting ideas being generated from the Future Schools Project too.

CA Singapore
Philip Chua, General Manager

Singapore has started its drive to centralise health records, and we expect this initiative to dramatically gather momentum in the new year.

Giving the entire country's doctors instant access to patients' medical records brings tremendous benefits and has the potential to boost efficiency, cut cost, and save lives during emergencies. Identity and Access Management (IAM) poses the greatest technological challenge in such a system, but recent advancements in the field, coupled with the government's determination to push ahead with this initiative, should see citizens and healthcare institutions enjoying many of these benefits from 2007.

IAM technologies today can already efficiently manage the administration, user provisioning, policy enforcement, and auditing of user identity and access to help healthcare institutions improve operational efficiencies and regulatory compliance, as well as cut administrative costs and security risks.

EMC Singapore
Richard Price, Country Manager

We expect that infocomm technology will become much more information-centric. This is a powerful development as it means that information will no longer be captive to a single application but can be leveraged across any number of applications. This opens up a vista of possibilities for collaboration and information sharing.

However, cross-application information lifecycle management will usher in a new level of complexity, while users are looking to vendors to mask that complexity. The solution lies in virtualization and, over the next three years, all information infrastructures, especially data centre infrastructures, will be virtualised.

We see a major new change coming and we believe that future interaction of information will occur at the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) layer. To manage this interaction, we believe that the future of information management is in model-based resource management, which allows customers to manage all of the resources in the data centre in a way that is much more cost-effective, much simpler, and frankly, much more optimised than any of today's framework-based approaches.

F5 Networks
Tuan Q Le, Country Manager for Singapore

Technologically, Singapore is in a hotbed where new technologies and developments are being tested and applied. We expect to see continued momentum in the need to deliver applications to the different end points or devices as more and more people start using intelligent handheld devices to help manage their day-to-day business functions.

Any type of device will need access to critical data/information any time at any place in the world. And this really puts more stress onto the infrastructure that is needed to provide this information over different networking conditions and types to different users. And, of course, there's the need to do all of this really fast, very efficiently and securely.

Hyperion Solutions Asia Pte Ltd
Suganthi Shivkumar, Managing Director, ASEAN & India

In 2007 and beyond, we foresee three trends driving businesses to invest in infocomm solutions:

Globalisation - Businesses are now competing in a ‘flat' world of increasing uncertainty. This has given rise to a whole new set of issues including risk management, sustainable development reporting, new measures of profitability management, and strategic modelling.

Transparency - With increased regulatory scrutiny and reporting of non-financial value drivers that account for much of the value in corporations, and balanced reporting, these pressures are heightening the need for greater transparency so that management can truly understand their business.

Alignment - There is a rising need to align infocomm tools and business strategy to achieve the business objectives.

These market dynamics are creating tension for companies in ASEAN. As such, ‘empowerment' will be the buzzword for the year as these companies will be quipping themselves with predictive analysis solutions to give them a business advantage.

Juniper Networks Singapore
Beni Sia, Country Manager

IPTV has been a hot topic in the telecom world for quite some time. The question is if there is real customer demand for next-generation TV services via broadband. Some observers are sceptical about IPTV's prospects in the unique Asian environment. Given this, how can telcos make money from IPTV? For starters, you don't have to look far to see that IPTV, despite these hurdles, is taking off and Juniper feels that it will continue to take off in the coming years.

IPTV service is not unique to Hong Kong. Taiwan, Thailand and Japan also now have video services over broadband, with differing levels of penetration and success. In 2007, we will see countries like China, Australia, New Zealand and Korea coming on board - some waiting for regulations and others are in field trials.

This momentum is building in the face of strong competition from broadcast and cable television. And the momentum is built on a number of clever strategies and considerations in the network architecture. So 2007 will be an interesting year to see how IPTV takes off.

Nokia Singapore
Chris Carr, General Manager

We expect more organisations to mobilise their workforce. As information moves to the edge, the issue of mobile enterprise security becomes pertinent to organisations.

More organisations will need to rethink their security policies to ensure mobile devices are treated with the same level of security as laptops. Device management will also become increasingly important to manage the mobile solution lifecycle from initial device provisioning, device and security policy configuration, through to application deployment/configuration, and continual device software and policy enforcement updates. To successfully embrace business mobility, organisations also need to look beyond technology and consider the people and processes aspects.

Web 2.0 sites reflect the intrinsic need to share common interests, to look for support, obtain information and interact using text, voice and video. Today, mobile broadband Internet connections are available on a wide variety of mobile devices, making it possible for consumers to enjoy web browsing similar to that they would experience at home or in the office. Advances in mobile web browsers are also driving mobile Internet usage, offering customers an enhanced experience while surfing on the move.

In addition, we see location-based experiences - such as mapping, routing and navigation - to be a fundamental platform for many applications in our devices going forward.

Sterling Commerce
Woo Peng Keong, Director, Software Development

Web-conferencing will become increasingly common with the widespread use of broadband and IP Telephony. Businesses will increasingly start to deploy RFIDs for tracking goods in their supply chain, starting from 2007.

We see more businesses adopting Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services to promote multi-enterprise collaboration, as they become platforms of choice for businesses. By 2007, most of the large organisations will have implemented some basic Web Services, as they converge to adopt SOA.

As businesses become more connected, the demand for multi-enterprise collaboration will increase. The challenge will be to manage the growth of multi-enterprise business processes without the cost and complexity with integrating multiple applications. Security will continue to be a concern, as more businesses becomes connected and inter-networked.

Symantec
Bill Robbins, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific and Japan

In the coming year, Symantec expects to see threat activity emerge in Microsoft Vista, through Web 2.0 adoption and within youth technologies.

With the new features and changes to Windows Vista's code base, in conjunction with increased scrutiny from security researchers and malicious code authors, previously unseen attacks may be on the rise.

Interesting security trends using Web 2.0 technologies indicate that attacker interest and motivation can be expected in the coming year. User-created content, through blogs and social networking sites, can host browser exploits, distribute malware/spyware, most unwanted ads (splogs), or host links to malicious websites. As adoption rates for Web services and syndicated content models increases, Symantec has observed the beginnings of security issues as well.

The technologies embraced by today's youth - such as instant messaging, text messaging and gaming - will likely become a new battleground for online threats. Multi-player online games have an escalating problem with threats that are specific to stealing gaming assets within the game community.