Top 5 enterprise technologies of the decade

The decade is about to end, and the enterprise has come a long way since 2010. Remember when you just thought of Amazon as a place to buy books? Let’s take the drawing of the close of the year as an opportunity to try to identify the top five enterprise tech of the decade.

SEE: Top 10 IT trends of the last 20 years (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

1. Group chat collaboration: The product popularized by Slack was once derided as “just IRC with some frills,” but has now taken over the workplace. It hasn’t quite killed email, and it may be causing some communication issues of its own, but imagine your enterprise running without Slack or Teams or HipChat.
2. Manufacturing Internet of Things (IoT): Like so many other things, everyone talked about IoT in the home, while sensors quietly revolutionized the workplace. Factory floors, shipping, and logistics all benefited from the increased use of sensors;  agriculture particularly is changing rapidly with IoT. The advance of blockchain and 5G is going to accelerate this sector and change it even more in the next decade. 
3. Video conferencing: Many of you still gather around the old multi-pointed audio star in conference rooms, but more and more of my remote meetings take place with video, whether its Skype, Zoom, or something else. Companies are even developing AI to make it look like you’re paying attention to the camera, even when you’re not. 
4. Project management platforms: Some of you might not put this in your top five, but your project manager and probably your product manager will. Basecamp, ClickUp, Trello, and more have made it easier to see who’s doing what and by when.
5. The cloud: Oh boy, the cloud. I could have done all five on examples from the cloud. AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Office 365, Salesforce, and the list goes on. The continuing debate of prem, off-prem, or hybrid shows we haven’t yet exhausted the potential of the cloud yet. It dominated this decade in enterprise and launched companies like Amazon into becoming the biggest in the world.

SEE: More Decade in Review coverage (TechRepublic on Flipboard)

That’s just my five–you may have a different five. Because man, MDM, containerization, the return of JavaScript, virtualization… those and more deserved, and got, consideration. It’s always subjective where to draw the line. But, what it does point out is that this has been a heck of a decade for enterprise tech. Here’s to a great next decade!

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