PB | JAUNARY 2018 | OPEN SOURCE FOR YOU | www.OpenSourceForU.com

www.OpenSourceForU.com | OPEN SOURCE FOR YOU | JANUARY 2018 | 19

For U & Me

Overview

Top Tech Trends to

Watch Out For in 2018

A

t the start of a brand new year, 

I looked into the crystal ball 

to figure out the areas that no 

technologist can afford to ignore. Here 

is my rundown on some of the top 

trends that will define 2018.

Automation and artificial 

intelligence

Two of the most talked about trends 

are increasingly utilising open source. 

Companies including Google, Amazon 

and Microsoft have released the code 

for Open Network Automation Platform 

(ONAP) software frameworks that 

are designed to help developers build 

powerful AI applications. 

In fact, Gartner says that artificial 

intelligence is going to widen its 

net to include data preparation, 

integration, algorithm selection, 

training methodology selection, and  

model creation. I can point out so many 

examples right now such as chatbots, 

autonomous vehicles and drones, 

video games as well as other real-life 

scenarios such as design, training and 

visualisation processes.

Open source containers are no 

longer orphans now

DevOps ecosystems are now 

seeing the widespread adoption of 

containers like Docker for open source 

e-commerce development. 

Containers are one of the hottest 

tickets in open source technology. You 

can imagine them as a lightweight 

packing of application software that 

has all its dependencies bundled for 

easy portability. This removes a lot of 

hassles for enterprises as they cut down 

on costs and time. 

According to 451 Research, the 

market is expected to grow by more 

than 250 per cent between 2016 and 

2020. Microsoft recently contributed 

to the mix by launching its Virtual 

Kubelet connector for Azure, 

streamlining the whole container 

management process.

Blockchain finds its footing

As Bitcoin is likely to hit the US$ 

20,000 mark, we’re all in awe of 

the blockchain technology behind 

all the crypto currencies. Other 

industries are expected to follow suit, 

such as supply chain, healthcare, 

government services, etc. 

The fact that it’s not controlled 

by any single authority and has no 

single point of failure makes it a very 

robust, transparent, and incorruptible 

technology. Russia has also become 

one of the first countries to embrace 

the technology by piloting its 

banking industry’s first ever payment 

transaction. Sberbank, Russia’s biggest 

bank by assets, has executed a realtime 

money transfer over an IBM-built 

blockchain based on the Hyperledger 

open source collaborative project. 

One more case in point is a 

consortium comprising more than a 

dozen food companies and retailers — 

including Walmart, Nestle and Tyson 

Foods—dedicated to using blockchain 

technology to gather better information 

on the origin and state of food.

IoT-related open source 

tools/libraries

IoT has already made its presence felt. 

Various open source tools are available 

now that are a perfect match to further 

The technologies that will dominate the tech world in the new year 

are based on open source software.

By: Dinesh Kumar

The author is the CEO of Sedin Technologies and the co-founder of RailsFactory. He is 

a passionate proponent of open source and keenly observes the trends in this space. In 

this new column, he digs into his experience of servicing over 200 major global clients 

across the USA, UK, Australia, Canada and India.

the IoT challenges such as Arduino, 

Home Assistant, Zetta, Device Hive, 

and ThingSpeak. Open source has 

already served as the foundation 

for IoT’s growth till now and will 

continue to do so.

OpenStack to gain more 

acceptance

OpenStack has enjoyed tremendous 

success since the beginning, with its 

exciting and creative ways to utilise 

the cloud. But it lags behind when it 

comes to adoption, partly due to its 

complex structure and dependence on 

virtualisation, servers and extensive 

networking resources. 

But new fixes are in the works as 

several big software development and 

hosting companies work overtime to 

resolve the underlying challenges. In 

fact, OpenStack has now expanded 

its scope to include containers 

with the recent launch of the Kata 

containers project.

Open source is evolving at a great 

pace, which presents tremendous 

opportunities for enterprises to grow 

bigger and better. Today, the cloud 

also shares a close bond with the 

open source apps, with the services of 

various big cloud companies like AWS, 

Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure 

being quite open source-friendly. 

I can think of no better way to say 

this, but it is poised to be the driver 

behind various innovations. I’d love to 

hear your thoughts on other trends that 

will dominate 2018. Do drop me a line 

(dinesh@railsfactory.com).