SOFTWARE PARK'S 10TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE
SASIWIMON BOONRUANG
Leading Thai IT executives and researchers stepped back to look at the long-term future of software development in a panel discussion during Software Park's annual conference that also marked the organisation's 10th anniversary last week.
Their predictions offered directions on where to look for inspiration, as well as warning of fundamental changes ahead as computing platforms evolve to embrace molecular and quantum computing, while computers will no longer be tied to desktops.
Speaking in the panel discussion entitled "Beyond Tomorrow," National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) director Dr Pansak Siriruchatapong said ICT would play a role in more critical matters while applications would belong to users.
Hardware development would progress dramatically and would be totally different from how it was in 1975.
In the future, hardware might no longer be silicon-based, but would be based on molecular and quantum computing; molecular computing would emerge over next 10 years, coming sooner than quantum computing, he said.
Molecular computing focussed on the computational power of molecules and aimed to achieve faster and more cost-efficient information processing with a lower consumption of energy, Dr Pansak noted.
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| Microsoft (Thailand)'s Patama Chantaruck. |
Nectec Director Pansak Siriruchatapong. |
"It's important because the fundamental equipment will be transformed and if a computer's structure is changed, the concept of writing software writing will also shift," he said.
Dr Pansak added that the connection between humans and technology would be based more on natural language processing and computers would not just be on desktops, but would become more robotic in nature and be able to function in many ways.
The look of operating systems and software tools would change and would become more intelligent.
As the tools became more standardized, users could exploit technology as soon as they were exposed to it, he said.
"The challenge to the industry is how to further serve users' requirements and benefits," the director said.
There would be a greater adoption of software applications and, as a research and development organisation, Nectec had to monitor the technology trends and be prepared for capacity building, he said.
President of ICT Solutions for the Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT), Chaicharern Atibaedya, encouraged developers to learn technology innovation from its implementation at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Human activities that created innovations were media-related, involved war or were about sport, he said.
The 2008 Beijing Olympics was a good model of innovation creation. Only 40 per cent of technology used to support the summer Olympics this year was the same as had been used the previous time, four years ago, and the other 60 per cent represented totally new innovations.
"Beyond tomorrow for us is not so far and I think the technology that is being used at the 2008 Olympics and the way they are managing the digital Olympics would be a major lesson that we at PTT should learn from," he said.
He added that there was much waste in the IT sector and this was generated both inside and outside organisations. Developers sometimes created more features than their users required and that was waste, he said.
Developers should be concerned about how to help mininise the waste in the industry, he said.
Microsoft (Thailand) managing director Patama Chantaruck said that software developers should also consider their global reach.
At Microsoft, she said, software development was based on the sustainability, scalability, flexibility of solutions that should be able to run on any platform. "Developers must be mainly concerned with the requirements of users," she added.
Meanwhile, according to the Thailand director of Oracle University, Kajornsak Sungchareon, the issue of "beyond tomorrow" would be more concerned about security and interoperability.
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