One of the things it's always fun to do at the start of a new year is to look at the coming 12 months and try to take a guess at what is likely to happen.

I'm certainly not a futurist, or blessed with the gift of foresight, but I've taken a look into my crystal ball to have a guess at 5 things in technology terms that will be big this year - with an angle on small business IT.

1 - Windows 11

It's probably a little naughty to put Windows 11 on the list, as it did officially launch in October 2021, but we're only just starting to see brand new hardware shipping with Windows 11 installed as standard - so most of you who are reading this blog are probably still running Windows 10 on your machines at present.

After a few months of niggles, Windows 11 appears to have settled in well for those who are using it on a daily basis, so I expect many companies to want to roll out Windows 11 over the first half of 2022 - especially as there is a free upgrade from Windows 10 for a limited time period.

At 1-Fix we anticipate up to 40% of the machines we support at present will be on Windows 11 by the end of 2022, with more to follow as equipment reaches end of life.

2 - Process & Workflow Automation

While "low code/no code" process and workflow automation engines have been around in the enterprise IT world for a while, it's looking like 2022 might be the year that these technologies break into the SME market place as vendors such as Autto release tools & pricing models that are affordable to smaller firms. The idea with these tools is that any user within a company who possesses a logical mind can created automated processes, workflows and forms which can span multiple tools and platforms.

This allows for huge efficiency savings when automating repeatable tasks.

For example, an new client onboarding automation might take the details of the company and automatically run a credit check, create the company in your CRM/ERP system, add their details to the company phone system, etc.

3 - Broadband Improvements

With home working looking set to stay at least a part of most of our lives for the foreseeable future, I'm hopeful that we'll start to see more premises enabled for full fibre broadband (FTTP - fibre to the premises) rather than just to the street cabinet (FTTC - fibre to the - you guessed it - cabinet).

BT have ambitious plans to have 22 million homes full fibre enabled by 2026, but there are a lot of areas that are due to be brought online this year. The roll out started in April 2021, and is in 3 tranches:

• To be built between April 2021 - April 2024
• To be built between April 2022 - April 2025
• To be built between April 2021 - December 2026

You can check the status of your home or office premises here: https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/where-when-building-ultrafast-full-fibre-broadband

Full fibre broadband promises to deliver speeds of up to 1Gbps (1000Mbps) which is a vast improvement on the fastest FTTC connections which are offering up to 80Mbps download speed.

Alongside this, many other rural and city broadband schemes are popping up to deliver better connectivity to underserved areas.

Finally for those who fall outside the provision of all these services, Space-X's Starlink satellite broadband service is an alternative option which is likely to get better and better throughout 2022 as more constellation satellites are launched.

4 - The metaverse

Or VR if you're not a Meta/Facebook fan!

While I'm not quite sold on the Metaverse concept (a whole virtual world we'll eventually live, work and play in) I'm pretty sure that 2022 is the year that VR will really hit mainstream adoption, rather than being a somewhat expensive plaything.

I say this with some degree of confidence as my father, a retired pensioner, has just bought himself an Oculus Quest 2 VR headset - and he's definitely not a tech early adopter!

When I asked him the reason he purchased it, he told me that he's learning to sail (in 'real life') but finds getting access to a boat to sail quite hard, weather dependent, etc. so he's using his VR headset to learn sailing techniques on a virtual boat. Wow!

I am an early tech adopter and have had a VR headset for a while. In the first few years I didn't use it much, but in the past 6 months there are many more games, applications and experiences being released which are making it much more of a 'must use' tool rather than a fun distraction.

2022 might be the year for you to consider how VR could help your business. The best commercial use I've experienced has been when visiting Wren Kitchens for a kitchen design appointment. They loaded my design into VR and I could see what my kitchen would look like. But more than that, I could see how it would *feel* - does opening that cupboard block the walkway? Can I reach the pan cupboard from the hob?

5 - Better team meetings

As we continue to work in a hybrid fashion, I see 2022 being the year that companies with fixed office premises invest in better conferencing facilities to bring the home and office workforce together in a more coherent fashion.



You may have already experienced the pain of getting multiple staff members within a physical meeting room to interact with remote colleagues. If you haven't, let me tell you - it's not fun. Tools like Zoom and Teams are great when you have physical separation, but if you're all in a meeting room on your own devices you get feedback/echo unless you're very good at managing the volume and mute controls. If you drop down to a single device, you're all huddled around a single camera, so typically the device is moved back and then the microphone works less effectively.

In short - it's a bit of a mess.

The answer is Teams Rooms or Zoom Rooms - which are essentially properly video and audio enabled meeting/breakout rooms which are designed to allow the in-office team to work with colleagues in another location, be that home, abroad or on another floor of the building.

They are certainly an investment, both in the cost of the equipment and the installation, but with the future offering more hybrid and flexi-working, and companies able to save budget on office expansion by staffing on a hybrid model, I see Teams and Zoom rooms being a key fixture in the 2022 IT budget for many companies.

So that's my thoughts - but what about yours? Do you agree or disagree with me?

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