Navigating your desktop on a display monitor without a computer tower in sight is becoming easier and easier to imagine. It can be a strange sensation to realize that the base units that have defined the experience of purchasing a new computer is slowly becoming a feature of the past, but the implementation of virtual desktops suggests a movement in this direction. The greatest question in this context, however, asks how far we are traveling in a direction towards a client device with no local computing power. As we migrate more and more components of computing processing to on-site servers and off-site clouds, what is left at our desk becomes less material. Even our laptops are requiring fewer physical features beyond the display screen. While network capabilities must remain integral, our understanding of the constitution of our “personal computer" becomes less static. Instead of purchasing a computer based on its processing power, storage, and ports, users will purchase a cloud package with particular storage and processing features as well as a client device with selected display and network traits. Of course, this is difficult to say with certainty, but the exploration of changes in client devices and cloud technology can be grounds for constructing reasonable expectations.

Mobile devices and smartphone technology are often taken for granted. While this notion can leave us feeling naked without our iPhone or Samsung Galaxy in our right pocket, it can also hinder our appreciation for the challenging development of these devices over time. Consequently, it is important to remember the primitive flip phones that we owned only five to seven years ago and to recognize the benchmarks that were reached through a taxing process of innovation. Furthermore, the consideration of the problems that were solved and the novelties that were implemented by progress within the field of mobile devices permits us to create a realistic image of what we can expect from our future smartphones. Mobile device technology should not be understood in an isolated context. Instead of simply reflecting upon what we can and will be able to do with our smartphones, greater value is extracted from contemplating how mobile device technology will interact with coinciding technological development.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is arguably the most revolutionary step within industrial progress since the development of computing technology. Not only has it changed the entire business network, but our understanding of social organization has been significantly altered. All individuals have the ability to share their ideas with the entire online community, and the traction of an idea is not necessarily limited by a content author’s authenticity. In fact, the IoT allows anyone to become the leader of a movement and to develop a strong reputation alongside the expansion of their idea itself. This is valuable to both the environmentalist trying to save the world’s ecology and the marketer trying to drive traffic to his or her business’s website. As businesses create new ways to take advantage of the Internet of Things, they encounter a greater need to understand how IT will support their online retail platform, customer and lead organization, content publishing, project collaboration, activity monitoring, and computer or device management. Smartphone devices allowed the IoT to become what it is today by giving users the ability to interact with the Internet at any moment in time, and it is this observation that demonstrates the importance of using mobile device technology to stay connected as a business. Ultimately, the IoT changes businesses’ approaches to operations by modifying the structure of their information systems and creating a demand for new IT solutions.

There is no better asset to an individual trying to reach a conclusion than a fact. The same is true for a decision maker within a business. Management, finances, marketing, sales, development, and other operational details require vital decisions to be made that will play a direct role in future success. Historically, facts have not always been fully available to business decision makers. As a result, they have had to reach conclusions founded on intuition. They have had to ask themselves what results they expect to see when influencing a business variable using solely their own previous knowledge and experiences. While this is a skill that can be developed, it forces assumptions to be made on the part of the decision maker. Fewer facts are utilized, and the context of a particular situation is never fully recognized. The results of an action taken become far less predictable. Consequently, as information supplies both fact and context, it is important for a business to develop a means of acquiring and distributing relevant information to all decision makers. Using facts, these individuals are able to make a stronger argument to themselves and their coworkers as to why a particular conclusion reached is also the most valuable. It is this acknowledgement that highlights the importance of a versatile information system and demonstrates the potential business value of actionable data.

With cloud services developing so rapidly that it seems as if every new application and platform is being sold “as a service”, it appears that business information systems are slowly being freed of the risk that is associated with keeping hardware and data on-site. As one might expect, disaster recovery is evolving as a result of cloud services to such an extent that disaster recovery itself has become institutionalized as a service. The driving movement of Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) coordinates well with a business that is using several cloud services while also allowing them to have their own applications and data integrated into the DRaaS providers system. Although this service is similar to life insurance in the sense that stakeholders likely hope to never have to take advantage of its function, DRaaS acts as a proof of concept that the virtual migration of a business’s information system to the cloud can change collective operations altogether. Furthermore, a service such as this that is truly effective may change a business’s understanding of what a disaster means.