2010 was an interesting year for IT and Telecoms technology. The realisation and general acceptance that Cloud as a Technology was here to stay has created some interesting propsitions in 2010 and this will follow through to 2011.

It’s about client (laptop, tablet, smartphone) connecting to the cloud software service. So with this in mind, I have compiled my top 5 technology products for 2010.

Apple’s iPAD must be on this list as it has single handily revived the Tablet form factor. The amazing thing is that it was primarily not as a corporate device however
businesses have been quick in embracing this consumer device, showing the consumerisation of IT at play here. The war of the Tablet’s is yet to play out, but 2011 will be the year to decide the winners and losers. Still with Apple, the launch of the utterly gorgeous MacBook Air shows just how far ahead Apple are in terms of hardware design.

Microsoft’s Phone 7 should be worthy of a mention, it’s a great phone and even though it has come in late to the party and has a few niggles (backgrounding), it should compete successfully with RIM, Apple and Android in both consumer and the business space providing Microsoft improves the quality and quantity of apps available in the Zune Market Place.

While on the Microsoft theme, the launch of Microsoft Lync 2010 Server should see Unified Communications come to the main stream and I’d even go further and say that this technology will be instrumental in re-defining business communications in the coming years plus further increasing the convergence in the IT and Telecoms sectors (Lync is also a PBX).

Microsoft’s Virtualisation technology Hyper V is now catching up with its competition – VMware – and their automated virtualisation platform called Dynamic Data Centre shows just how serious Microsoft are to win in this space giving service providers a fully automated and self-healing cloud platform.  We will see a number of Cloud providers launching DDC services in 2011 including Outsourcery.