You Said: Hottest Technologies for 2015

A few weeks ago, we posted up a short poll, asking you about what you thought might be the hottest technology topics for the coming year. Between then and now, we've also provided some predictions of our own and you can find those in a couple different locations.

You can read the first set in what has come to be affectionately known as the Vegas list. In other words, in Microsoft Tech Predictions of the Blindingly Obvious for 2015, I submitted some sure-bet predictions for 2015. This is the insider's list you can take to Vegas and fill you’re your coffers.

Then, Paul submitted his own predictions for the technology world for 2015. Paul's are a bit more daring, and you can find those in his Tech Predictions for 2015.

And, I'm sure there will be many more predictions here and other places that you'll find worthwhile and interesting. But, to me, there's no better way to more accurately judge the coming year than to listen to the folks who will be implementing the actual technologies.

Here's what you said:

The results are interesting in a number of ways. First off, Cloud Security seems to be a hope than a potential possibility. As we've seen with the rise of the Cloud, security remains the number one concern for organizations, yet the big Cloud vendors have done very little to ease fears. We've seen a number of outages and security snafus over the last year that leave many wondering if a fully protected Cloud can ever be achieved.

And, this leads to the second top technology for 2015, Hybrid Cloud. The placement in popularity is important, I believe. A Hybrid Cloud implementation is a fallback and a security blanket, should the Cloud fail. The trust in the Cloud just isn't there – still.  By deploying the Cloud in a Hybrid scenario, companies can pull back anytime.

And most interesting (to me, at least) is that the Internet of Things and Automation tied for third place. Automation, to me, is the key to managing IT better and more effectively. IoT is a relatively new thing and it will be some time before consumer wearables take hold in companies. But, IoT sitting near the top of the list means that most of us expect to hear a lot more about it during the coming year.

It should also be noted that OpenStack sits at a dismal 6 percent, rounding out the list. Microsoft has been putting significant effort into integrating interoperability and management of Open Source technologies in Azure for the past several months, and touting its efforts with great fanfare. Granted this is from a poll on a Windows site, but it shows that Microsoft's work in this area may not be resonating with its actual customers. It wouldn't be the first time (and, definitely not the last) that Microsoft took off haphazardly down a rabbit hole of its own creation, only to look around a couple years later to see that no one was following.

Anyway, thanks so much for your participation in our poll and have a wonderful 2015!