As usual, the start of the year has seen journalists and pundits making predictions about 2012. From Gartner to the Daily Telegraph, the range of opinions is a bit bewildering. Cloud computing, integration and the continued push from consumer technology all seem to be predominant business IT trends. Of course they all impact upon the business of an offshore software development company like Future Processing.

A big driver in the consumerisation of IT is mobile technology and several journalists have written about operating systems, devices and trends that they believe will be big news this year. As the phenomenon has been working its way through the IT ecosystem we have seen increased demand from customers for mobile applications and consequently we have been investing in increasing our expertise in this area.

My prediction is that this will continue this year and grow to become an important part of our business within the next five years. The battle between Apple and Android will continue, hence our focus on both of these, but also Windows Phone which I believe will eventually become a force nearly as big as iOS or Android. We haven’t written RIM off and still do some Blackberry app work for clients. Mobile development is exciting and very creative area for us and one we are definitely planning on doing more of.