Top 10 technology trends for 2010

The following are 10 most significant technology trends for 2010, based on a survey conducted by Ziff Davis Enterprise Research with almost 1,200 technology and business managers.

1. Green Computing and Energy Efficiency
It is observed that commitment has been greatly increased from 2009 to 2010 across IT manufacturers (in producing Green IT products), data centres and end-users.

2. Public and Private Cloud Computing
IDC expects spending on IT cloud services to grow almost threefold, reaching $42 billion by 2012.

3. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
Beside server virtualization, VDI has begun to make inroads into the enterprise, but it is found to be more complex to implement than server virtualization. 2010 might be a turning point.

4. Mobility, Telecommuting and Virtual Meetings
With the vast penetration of mobile computing devices such as BlackBerrys, iPhones, netbooks, etc., concerted with the availability of higher wireless bandwidth, business nowadays has become more and more mobile in nature. Control and security are the main concerns though.

5. Centralization, Standards and Governance
This is something new in the list from 2009's, resulting from the alarm triggered from the “Great Recession” and increasingly fragmented computing resources.

6. Knowledge Sharing, Business Intelligence and Social Networking
No doubt Web 2.0 has transformed the landscape and made knowledge sharing a reality. Organizations start to recognize the tremendous value in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other services.

7. Security, E-Discovery and Business Continuity
There are growing need in this area, but cost remains a big issue.

8. Advances in Application Infrastructure
Open source has made its way and sustain its momentum, playing a more and more important role in today's computing world.

9. Investments in Hardware Infrastructure
Virtualization has brought the impact to hardware infrastructure consolidation. It is believed that Intel’s Nehalem processor (1st CPU optimized for virtualized environments) will accelerate the servers refresh cycle. Beside virtualization, Fibre Channel over Ethernet and solid-state drives are also stimulus to this trend.

10. Collaboration, Workflow and Productivity
The extension of productivity and workflow to the mobile environment is a huge trend. We are rapidly moving beyond e-mail into content and collaboration applications.

* The top 10 IT trends above are referenced from an article written by Samuel Greengard in the Baseline Magazine.

You might be interested to explore how the above have progressed from the Top 10 IT trends for 2009 I posted here about a year ago.

I observed that this 2010 trends is organically evolved from the 2009's list, and come closer to actual adoption, implementation and usage, as the technology matured.

Winter Solstice - the important festival day right before Christmas

Every year right before Christmas, there is an important oriental festival day fall on the Winter Solstice (冬至) which pronounced as Dong Zhi and directly translated to "extreme of winter". The Winter Solstice in 2009 is 22 December.

In Northern Hemisphere where China is located, the Winter Solstice is the day with shortest daylight (about 10 hours) and longest night (about 14 hours), which is the critical day of "Ying", when the solar celestial longitude reaches 270 degree and the sun has the lowest position in the sky. After this day, the daytime will become longer and longer, as more and more "Yang" re-entering. In Chinese saying is "阴极之至，阳气始生，日南至，日短之至，日影长之至".

After this day, the weather in the Northern Hemisphere will become cooler and cooler, until 9 x 9 = 81 days later, which is the last day of winter when the Chinese farmers start cultivating their farms again.

The Winter Solstice is an important festival to Chinese, which has equal significance with the Chinese New Year.

Similar to Chinese New Year, the Winter Solstice Festival is also a time for the Chinese family to get together, and eat the balls of glutinous rice named as Tang Yuan (汤圆) symbolizing "reunion". The Korean also practises similar culture too.

Traditionally, all the family members will make the Tang Yuan together using glutinous rice powder. Nowadays, ready made Tang Yuan is also available in the supermarket/hypermarket, and modern family just buy instead of making themselves. The Tang Yuan is boiled in water (with some brown sugar or salt, and pandan leaves) before consume in bowl.

Beside celebrated by oriental people, the Winter Solstice is celebrated globally, and the festival day might differ a little bit from the Chinese. Some Western Winter Solstice Festival fall on the Christmas Eve, and celebrated together with the Christmas Festival.

In fact, the celebration of Winter Solstice in mankind has longer history than Christmas, and people like Isaac Newton believed that the date of Christmas was selected to correspond with the Winter Solstice.

Taxable amount from company car, petrol card, driver, etc.

If your employer provides you a company car, petrol card and/or car driver, you will notice that an amount will be treated as Benefit-In-Kind (BIK) in your EA Form, which is taxable.

The following table shows how the value of such taxable BIK value is calculated.

The annual BIK value of driver provided is RM7,200.

For example, if you are provided with a Honda Accord 2.4 which its cost is fall under the range of RM150,001-RM200,000, and you are also provided with a petrol card but no driver, your taxable BIK income will be RM7,000 + RM1,800 = RM8,800.

If your tax rate is 27%, then you will need to pay RM8,800 x 27% = RM2,376 for this BIK in your income tax. (Note: the maximum personal income tax rate will be reduced to 26% from assessment year 2010 onwards.)

This amount is normally already divided and deducted in your monthly PCB deduction.