Meet Zora Ball. She’s a lovely seven year old girl from Philadelphia, who’s quite similar to all her school friends – with one small exception. She is currently the youngest kid to have created a fully working mobile application.

She had managed to do that using the Alice 2.0 software suite customized by her science and technology teacher. According to Philadelphia Tribune, Zora’s game involved a ballerina looking for her lost jewel in a hair saloon haunted by vampires. It featured basic gameplay and graphics.

When Zora presented her app on “Bootstrap Expo” at the University of Pennsylvania, some questioned if her older brother or teacher didn’t do most of the work for her. But girl proved naysayers wrong – in style. When asked to modify her program, she reconfigured the app on the spot, raising many eyebrows.

Zora is of course just one of many IT prodigies. Even before her, we’ve heard stories of 8-year olds getting Microsoft certifications, 10-year olds becoming Sun Certified Java Programmers or 12-year olds earning money by developing iPhone apps.

I could fill this article in with a long list of children coders, but the real point is – we’re witnessing a rise of a generation that learns to code just as naturally as it learns to write and do math.

It’s about time, as software development world is now hungrier for their talent than ever before.

The quest for talent in software development 

Consider PGS Software. Since last year, we’ve grown significantly, increasing our team, number of projects and – as a result – raising our revenue by 30%. Still, we know that at some point the number of available talent might become a limiting factor, just like for other successful IT Outsourcing companies. We hire constantly, we offer internships, we partner with local technical universities, but the needs are growing just as fast as our teams.

We know that even now there are plenty of coders looking for work. But if you start looking for someone with specific skills, some real experience, and – on top of it – if you want him or her to become a good fit for your team… Well, that’s where problems starts.

The supply of IT personnel is growing nowhere near as fast as the demand. According to most predictions, in 2015 the EU will need around 250 000 additional workers with strong IT skills.

There’s only one way to combat this shortage. We need to get kids to program.

Of course I don’t suggest we should simply push young people into IT jobs. Choosing a career for your children quite often backfires, and you also run a risk of feeling quite bad if the reality of the market suddenly shifts in ten years’ time.

But consider this – the natural curiosity of first graders, the way they now start to understand tablets, input methods and abstract UIs before they even read well makes programming a very attractive educational proposal. More and more often coding becomes part of the early school curriculum.

The largest move so far came from Estonia. In 2012, this little country that aspires to become a hotbed of technological skills included programming lessons into regular school activities for… 6 year olds. Of course, no one forces first graders to delve into intricacies of C#. They use tablets and special software, and they seem to like those new lessons very much.

I’m sure their parents are just as happy, because – despite of what many jaded developers think – programming is one of the best careers out there. In a recent comparison on a popular website Career Cast Software Engineers achieved the 3^rd place out of 200 vocations. This aggregate score took into account several aspects, including salaries, stress levels, working environment and hiring prospects (by the way: editors, authors and journalists came close to the bottom of the chart).

Of course not every kid will have a natural affinity for programming, and some don’t even like tablets and computers that much (shocking, I know). But you won’t know that until you try, right?

So, without further rambling, here’s a toolbox you can use to guide your young Mark Zuckerberg in his or her first steps:

Age 5+

At first glance, teaching programming skills to a kid who has just learned how to read is a bit too ambitious. Fortunately, there are many simple and beautiful tools that achieve just that, while using only a handful of words. One of those is Daisy the Dinosaur for iPad. If you’re in your thirties, you probably remember the LOGO programming language that taught children how to control an animated turtle. Here, kids control a small dinosaur and solve basic problems by writing programs for their pet.

Age 8+

Older children might want to try something more complex. A new crowdfunded app called Hopscotch builds a great graphical environment where they can expand their IT skills.  They get more commands to play with, more objects on screen, more logical operations. And if you don’t have an iPad, there’s also a popular alternative: browser-based Scratch.

Age 10+

At the age of 10, a young programmer is usually ready to see his or her first lines of real code. And there’s hardly a better way to do that than by showing him CodeMonster – a simple, Web-based tutorial where a blue creature guides you through some basic Java commands in 59 free lessons. For children more focused on fun and gaming, there’s also Kodu. This beautiful and powerful creation suite from Microsoft Research allows children to build their own simple games.

Age 12+

The next logical step is Codecademy. It’s an extremely rich online tutorial that boasts it can teach ANYONE to code. That might just be true, as the comments and interactive guides make it very easy to get some rough knowledge of Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript and JQuery. Professionals are encouraged to build their own courses on any programming topic, so the number of the covered technologies is sure to expand.

Age 15+

Here’s where the real deal starts. There’s really no need for hand-holding a 15 year old youngster, and there’s nothing stopping him or her from creating real software with real tools. Who knows, maybe they’ll become the next start developer? At this age, Nick D’Alosio created his first popular news aggregation application called Summly that quickly passed 200 000 downloads. He managed to gather a venture capital of over a million dollars, and by the age of 17 he sold Summly to Yahoo for $30 million.

All of that came before he even went to college.

An investment for the future

Only a handful of young programmers can ever hope to become a star of the same caliber as D’Alosio. Maybe that’s a good thing – there’s something scary about young teens pursuing full-time careers before they leave high school. Still, there are some benefits that might be enjoyed by all of them. According to most research, programming improves logical skills, reading skills and cognition. It also teaches patience and analytical reasoning.

Of course, we must also remember about the dark side of technology. Today’s young people are often too fond of tablets and game consoles, which results in many health problems. But that’s where a bit of parental responsibility comes in hand, and with some diligence, benefits may outweigh the costs.

PGS Software has always been very interested in influence of new technologies on kids. After all, many of us are at the same time parents and technology aficionados. We know from experience that 6 year olds are eager to use the latest tech, and we want their contact with technology to be a healthy one. To facilitate this, we’ve created a line of interactive fairytales, education books, health software and puzzles. Who knows, at some point maybe we’ll also promote programming for kids?

It seems a sound investment into the future, and we certainly plan to be around in 10-20 years to see those programmers grow up and start put out amazing works.

There’s just one important thing to watch out for. Let’s not get lost in a mad quest to make every kid the next Mark Zuckerberg. Let them remember programming as something fun and exciting. Happy children with good “play-learn” balance often turn into happy adults with a good “work-life” balance.

And that’s more important than any prospective career out there.

Aristotle Onassis claimed that the secret to successful business is to know something others don’t know (and his business proved to be quite successful after all). That’s the main reason why research papers and business surveys are always an important focus for us. Today, we bring you some fresh and interesting data regarding IT spending predictions for major Western companies.

The data itself comes from Barclays Research that has recently asked around 100 successful CIOs a series of questions. One of those questions was especially interesting for outsourcing companies like PGS Software – CIOs were asked what they were going to spend their IT budgets on in 2013.

Here’s the result, coupled with a previous survey from September 2012 for comparison’s sake.

Buzzwords that don’t buzz anymore

One important thing to notice is that both Big Data-related investment plans and Cloud Computing adoption rate have declined slightly since the last survey. The decline is notable, considering that Big Data market is supposed to be one of the main growth vectors of the entire IT sector in the upcoming years.

Still, both spending categories occupy a prime place in the minds of the information technology leaders. Just like our article predicted some time ago, almost a fifth of the queried CIOs realize that managing and interconnecting their huge datasets might bring a lot of additional value to their companies. And last year proved that the Big Data problem is getting more urgent than ever. According to this Wired story, in 2012 we collectively generated 2.8 zettabytes of information, the bulk of which comes in the form of business e-mails, social content, various databases and indexes.

So, why the decline in Big Data plans? The answer is simple: we’re witnessing an end to yet another tech media fad. The recent public interest in Big Data and Cloud Computing was mostly fueled by press and online publications. It peaked, at least for now, but strong business interest still remains.

Virtualization – a breakout trend

So, we know which spending trends are weakening. But where’s the growth? One look at the chart shows two spending categories that have expanded most since 2012: server virtualization and storage virtualization. Server virtualization is an especially hot topic – the number of companies planning to spend big in this area doubled in just a few months!

You might be surprised, as virtualization is essentially nothing new. But hold on, there’s a good reason for many businesses to be interested in IT today. It can be summarized in just two words: technology improvements. Last year brought us many new products that make virtualizing business-critical applications easier and more risk-free than ever before. VMware released an updated 5.1 version of vSphere, Microsoft launched virtualization-friendly Windows Server 2012, and there was an influx of virtualization-based startups, third party services and monitoring metrics.

There are also many businesses that successfully dipped their toes in virtualization by moving their low priority applications to server clouds in recent years. Now they seem to be ready to move critical services as well.

No wonder that virtualizing core applications brings several advantages, as outlined in this paper by vmware:

• Consolidation – virtualizing your core systems reduces the hardware overhead. Some companies needed 50% less physical hardware after they moved all services to virtual servers.
• Dynamic scalability – new servers are created faster by cloning, it’s easier to scale up certain services.
• Optimal availability – virtualized environments are better guarded against host and hardware failures.
• Disaster recovery – automatic recovery and easier remote access work in favor of virtualized solutions.
• Enhanced management – virtualization often allows to reduce complexity of the IT infrastructure and makes it more transparent.

And just to drive the point about virtualization further – here’s the result of the IDC survey that asked hundreds of system administrators a simple question: what percentage of your workload currently runs on virtualized hardware, and what will that percentage be 12 months from now?

Within a year, 41% of queried admins plan to virtualize over 75% of their workload. That’s a big move.

Other points

The thing that doesn’t even register on Barclays chart is mobile. It seems that big businesses are not that much interested in spending on the mobile part of their business model – either they already have the necessary apps and workplace solutions, or they don’t want them. Of course, things might be completely different for medium and small companies, as they are always a bit further back the technology adoption curve.

What’s a bit more worrying is a drop in the planned security spending. While many companies might think that after years of security audits and investments they are safe, that’s not the case. Recent data, like the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Volume 18, shows a 42% increase in online targeted attacks (mostly aimed against medium businesses) and 30% increase in Web-based attacks. There’s also a worrying increase in both iOS and Android malware, which might be one of the things that turns CIO’s away from mobile solutions.

PGS Software remains committed to offer its clients systems and applications that adhere to the strictest security standards. Unfortunately, not every company out there thinks the same, and growing botnets and large number of infected systems are now a threat to everyone. If anything, businesses should think about security more than ever.

What does it all mean for us?

And if we’re talking about PGS Software: what does it all mean for IT outsourcing world and for us in particular? Well, the most important thing is that big business wants to spend mostly on complex data solutions and high-tech virtual systems. That’s not something you can code in your garage – a jump only larger and more experienced outsourcing companies can make. Fortunately, we have several development teams that earned their stripes working on large database projects and online business applications. We believe we can offer those high-complexity services. And if, after seeing the survey, you think technology is ripe enough to convince you to update or replace your critical business applications, just give us a call.

In the meantime, we’ll keep an eye on further research. Knowing what people want now is fine, but it would be better to know what will their needs look like in two or three years’ time. As usual, we want to prepare for what’s around the corner of the enterprise IT.

Any clairvoyants with crystal balls looking for hire?

Business growth is measured not only by increased profits and new hires. An expanding network of partners and business contacts is just as important. That’s why we’re happy to announce a cooperation deal that was recently struck between PGS Software and the renowned consulting company Goldenberry.

At PGS Software, we’ve always believed that we should concentrate on things we’re best at – i.e. creating IT solutions  – and that all other tasks should be taken care of by the best outside experts. The latest step in this direction is a recently announced partnership with a top consulting company Goldenberry.

This deal gives PGS Software access to excellent staff with broad experience in business consulting and analysis, program management, setting up business processes and practices. Goldenberry, on the other hand, will now be able to offer their clients tailored IT architectures and custom software, thanks to two large PGS Software’s development centers in Wrocław and Rzeszów.

This makes it possible for both companies to offer a comprehensive service: from defining general direction and vision for the client’s company, through drafting necessary structures and processes, to delivering specialized software tools. More information on the joined offer can be found under Management consulting.

“The Goldenberry consultants always work on the site, together with the client’s team, while we specialize in remote work for major institutions all over the world. By acting together, we can offer our business partners an access to the best analysts and the best IT solutions at the same time,” said Wojciech Gurgul, CEO of PGS Software.

He also points to converging markets of both companies. After securing a respectable position in Poland, Goldenberry moved on to capture Western clients and set up an office in London. That’s the same direction PGS Software has been heading in, while also trying to expand its local business in the meantime.

But similar directions and vision are not the only common trait for PGS Software and Goldenberry. Both brands also share their devotion to quality, and determination to offer world-class service. Thanks to this approach, their clients often come back or recommend the companies to their partners. This resulted in a rapid growth – PGS Software raised its revenue by 30% last year, while Goldenberry achieved an astounding 70% growth.

We wish both companies even better results next year, and we want to extend warm greetings to our new friends at Goldenberry!

When Windows XP debuted in October 2001, no one expected that twelve years later it will hold one third of the OS market. At the time, that was something unimaginable, just like expecting Windows 2.0 to still be around on Windows XP launch day (hint – it wasn’t).

How the things have changed! Today, Microsoft is literally giving money away to get people off Windows XP. Recently they have offered an 84$ discount for everyone who drops an aging platform and embraces bright-colored squariness of the latest installment. Why? Because, despite Microsoft’s best efforts, 38% PC users have decided they’re OK with old software and have shown no interest in any new products. Things look even bleaker in the enterprise, where Windows XP’s market share sits at a staggering 60%.

Faced with this fact, Microsoft is not only using a carrot, but also employing a stick. In this case, the stick is a death clock that started ticking away somewhere at Redmond offices last week. We’re now one year away from a moment when Microsoft finally drops the entire support for the system.

So, let’s get this straight: a company actively tries to combat its own product. How has it come to this?

Setting the recent slow-down in the PC evolution aside, it happened mostly because a product is only good if you can sell it to consumers each and every year.

I’m sure you’ve noticed this trend. Big software publishers are looking at various ways to increase revenue, and those always include shorter cycles, paid upgrades, limited lifetime. Many developers dream about annualized life cycles. Let’s take Electronic Arts as an example. Every major IP in their portfolio needs to have at least one installment a year, even though this practice, among other things, recently earned them a reward for the most consumer-unfriendly American company. Apple is also trying to sell regular MacOS updates, instead of a boxed version every couple of years. Windows is slowly heading in the same direction.

If you’ve ever wondered why Microsoft tries to subscribe home users to annually paid Office 365, by making the “boxed” license as expensive and limited as possible, here’s your answer.

Consumer electronics sector faced the same problem many years ago, but it developed a solution: engineered failure. No, I don’t want to talk about conspiracy theories involving products that are built to fail after a certain period of time. The real “engineered failure” comes in the form of a simple technical term called the reliability analysis. This means a product is designed to be sturdy enough to not fail within the warranty period. No one cares what happens after. If you can cut the cost while maintaining the same reliability window, you do that. Nowadays, the reliability analysis rarely reaches more than one or two years into the future. Do you remember a time when electronics often came with a 5 or even 10 year warranty? Today in US, Apple offers only 12 months as a standard, and its warranty practices were criticized by both EU and China, since they require longer warranties for consumer products.

The thing with software is that it has no moving parts, no grinding gears. It never brakes, it never wears out, and if it does, you simply reinstall a fresh copy. Despite the marketing efforts, it also remained almost entirely fashion-proof. If it wasn’t for various incompatibilities that accumulate over time, a piece of software could run indefinitely.

That’s a nightmare scenario for any business.

No wonder many companies try to actively dispose of their own legacy products. Some even try to incorporate engineered failures into their software. The rise of software-as-a-service (SaaS) made this a very enticing possibility. If your application depends heavily on a remote server, you can disable the server, and I bet Microsoft wishes they could do this with all the Windows XP copies out there. This is exactly what’s happening in the games industry right now. More and more recent releases, such as Sim City, are dependent on a remote cloud even when they run a single player campaign. This is not only a powerful DRM system. It also allows companies to “sunset” titles that have outstayed their welcome, and make place for new products.

This direction brings some new and unique challenges, especially in the field of culture. You can still play the original Space Invaders (a 1978 game) if you care to. But you can’t play the City of Heroes (a 2004 title) anymore – the servers were killed, the entire virtual world was erased. A long time ago multiplayer games allowed you to set up your own servers in order to play with friends. That’s not the case anymore.

Can you imagine a publishing house “sunsetting” Harry Potter in order to make a place for a new children’s classic? Of course not, yet that’s what’s happening in the software world!

It’s hard to shake a feeling that we’ve gotten worse at innovating, but way better at creating forced product cycles.

Personally, I’m in a peculiar situation. I work a lot with developers and I know how easier their lives would become if not for all the legacy systems, browsers and protocols they need to stay compatible with. I know they die a little bit inside when they see requirements for a Web app that include compatibility with IE6. I am also an Android fan, and I know how much it’s held back by enormous Android 2.3 user base that’s not going away any time soon.

On the other hand, PGS Software as an outsourcing company is happy enough to work with every solution or framework suggested by the clients, and to maintain their old platforms, even though we always try to suggest creative ways to bring old software up to date. In software development outsourcing, you don’t think about creating fake product cycles. You want to deliver a platform that will keep a customer happy for years.

I am also adding my bit to the old software problem. I have a small music rehearsal room down in a basement of my parent’s house. Over the years, I played there with many bands and the one sole piece of equipment that was always there was a Windows XP machine with some music editing software. It’s currently around 10 years old, and it has a pasty white CRT monitor. It’s there to record tracks, play samples and occasionally put on a YouTube video. It works just great in this regard.

This fact got me thinking whether software is more like personal electronic devices that I replace every two years or so, or maybe more like a car that usually stays for a fair bit longer than that? Or maybe good, stable software is more like a musical instrument? Like my Turkish-stamp “Avedis” cymbal, that’s at least 20 years old, and will be used for next 20 years?

Do you think my example – an offline, single purpose system – is a fringe case? Maybe, but I’ve seen machines like that in many small businesses. My local auto garage has a PC they use only to check e-mail and print invoices. And yes, it runs Windows XP. What will convince THEM to change it, short of hardware failure that might be years away?

If you take all of this into account, it’s hard to wonder why PC market is stalling at the moment. After reaching a technological plateau, there’s not that much functional difference between the Windows Vista machine from 2007 and a Widows 8 machine from 2013.

Consumer electronics industry tries to push clients to adopt new platforms every other year. Shortly after smartphones, we had netbooks, then tablets, and now insiders bet big on smart watches. But software is more impervious to fads, and that’s why developers try to give us other reasons to pay more often. The thing is, so far all of their he reasons sound more or less artificial. And, judging from the weak adoption of Windows 8, and by the huge outcry about “always online” games, the transition is not as smooth as IT businesses would have liked. Many developers also overestimate the “connectivity” of today’s world. While most people have access to a stable internet connection, the “always online” software and systems still cause trouble when on the road, on a plane, or on a vacation. For many buyers, having an option to run important software locally, without being dependent on the internet provider, is simply a must.

Next years will be very interesting in this regard. Either we, customers, grow to accept that in the  future software will be delivered to us only as a service, and that it will come with a hard-set expiration date, or the developers will discover that their dream business model is a bit detached from reality.

Either way, my small Windows XP machine loaded with legacy software will keep humming away in my rehearsal room, far beyond the next years’ expiration date. I doubt it even knows about this big doom clock somewhere at Redmond.

Everybody wants a perfectly working software but often it is difficult to compromise between the tight budget-and-time frames and the requirement for a truly in-depth testing. However, at PGS Software, we recognize this crucial need very well and so we have invited a world-class software testing expert, Hans Schaefer, to a special lecture in Wroclaw. What should the software testers focus on? How to plan an effective test series? All that (and more) was answered at the special event on March 8.

Hans Schaefer is a leader of the Norwegian Testing Board and has been consulting to such companies as Nokia, Statoil or Bombardier for over 10 years, as well as teaching and giving lectures worldwide. He is also… a certified steam locomotive fireman and specializes in railway signaling. You may wonder what one has to do with another but the meeting point is security. Invited by SJSI (the Association for Software Systems Quality) and PGS Software, Hans agreed to visit the Wroclaw Technology Park to shed some light on the art of efficient software testing.

The lecture, entitled “Test Prioritization Based on Risks and Benefits,” covered two complementary testing models. The first one, risk-based testing, is a well-known method prioritizing testing the endangered application areas. Another approach discussed was benefit-based testing whose main focus is on those elements of the system that are key for the users.

As Hans Schaefer himself admits:

Testing is usually the last step in software development. All delays from the previous stages accumulate to that point so tests are run under severe time and budget pressure.

This forces accurate prioritization of the tested areas. The first step is carefully identifying the biggest risks and the top benefits for the user. The apt combination of those two contrasting approaches seems to be the key to success. With each new iteration, the tests have to be evaluated and re-thought as regards the influenced areas.

The lecture was received with uncommonly high interest, since Hans Schaefer turned out to be a ravishing speaker and encouraged a lot of questions from the audience, eagerly answering all of them.

If you would like to learn more, check our YouTube channel for a complete video recording of the event in 3 parts (it will work great as an audiobook because of its full lenght):

Test Prioritization Based on Risks and Benefits by Hans Schaefer, part 1. PGS Software and SJSI

Test Prioritization Based on Risks and Benefits by Hans Schaefer, part 2. PGS Software and SJSI

Test Prioritization Based on Risks and Benefits by Hans Schaefer, part 3. PGS Software and SJSI

With approval of Hans Shaefer, we are also able to offer you his presentation in the original format as published by SJSI:

Test Prioritization Based on Risks and Benefits

PGS Software itself has a well-developed testing unit – TestBenefit – that is able to apply a tailored test series for a given project. We offer support in acceptance testing and information system acceptance, as well as automated tests based on dedicated tools and scripts. Thus, the Hans Schaefer lecture was for us not only a way to address and entice promising testing adepts but also to build software testing awareness.

The event was held under the patronage of Testerzy.pl, the c0re Magazine and QualityIn.it.

There’s a great deal to be said about the Scrum methodology and how it’s useful in our everyday IT outsourcing practice. We believe this is the best possible project management technique as it allows for apt coordination of big projects with international teams involved. One of our Program Managers, Krzysztof Rolak, gave a lecture on Scrum-based project management during Project Management Session at the Technical University of Wroclaw.

Scrumming with PGS Software

The lecture, entitled “Scrum – Agile Software Development Management”, was designed as a thorough introduction into the art of “scrumming” and included four parts:

1. Agile Philosophy – how is it different from the classic project management approach?
2. Process, artifacts and roles in the Scrum methodology
3. Cost evaluation and quality assurance in Scrum-managed projects
4. Practical aspects of Scrum implementation in IT projects

The event was open not only for the beginning and future project managers, but also developers and testers. Apart from theoretical part packed with information, Krzysztof Rolak introduced a practical task that turned out to be a success and moved the crowd, literally. Having given away some of the anti-stress balls to the audience, he asked them to pass the ball as quickly as possible in a short time span. And look what happened:

Looks like there is an alternative way to raise the Scrum spirit, but let’s also have a look at the theoretical background. Following are the basic details.

Scrum Tactics

Scrum, in short, is an Agile methodology oriented at delivering fully working functionalities in successive iterations before the final product is ready. It allows for elastic project management and forces frequent communication between all the team members and the client.

The Scrum process features a couple of agents. Product Owner represents the client before the team, while the Scrum Master facilitates the Team’s work.

One of the crucial artifacts making the Scrum Process come to life is the Product Backlog, which is used by Product Owner and Team to prioritize the tasks. This way, the project gets divided into small manageable chunks with goals to deliver certain functionalities. This makes the product develop in a logical and elastic manner. With over 600 successfully completed projects, our experience proves the power of Scrum.

Wanna learn more? Watch our PGS Software’s Guide to Scrum posted below!

We have always believed that PGS Software is a gem in the Polish IT outsourcing market. What made us unique was our business model – we focused on quality, communication and customer experience. This approach has been greatly appreciated by our clients. Thanks to their continuous support, and our growth, this year Forbes Poland awarded PGS Software a Forbes Diamond intended for best Polish businesses.

We are proud to announce that out of one hundred companies in the rating, we have earned a second place in the category of IT Outsourcing. We are also the top IT company in our home city.

While we appreciate this award and many others, we believe our biggest achievement to date is the fact that most of our clients decide to return to us with their next projects. That’s why we want to thank all of them in this happy moment.

We’d also like to announce that PGS Software’s website received a separate award. Since we always pursue higher standards, it won’t stop the complete re-design we are currently putting in place.

We hope to see you back soon – in a more modern and user-friendly version of our site.

“We’ve struggled for a few years figuring out how to make a decent phone. [Apple is] not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

Ed Collingan, Palm CEO, in 2006 – one year before the iPhone launch, five years before Palm disappeared from the market.

In 1930s, millions of women across the world worked long shifts hunched by the imposing boards chock-full of plugs and blinking lights. Their labor fueled a rapid growth of the telecom industry. The America’s largest telephone company of that period, AT&T, employed 350 000 switchboard operators alone. Manufacturing, maintenance and installation of switchboards was an important part of the economy. Fast-forward fifty years. Today, this sector – one of the most important technology markets in the early 20^th century – is all gone.

It was not the only one. Copy boys were replaced by e-mails, typesetters by DTP software, pinesetters by complex machines…

But this article is not about long-obsolete careers. In the last decade, we’ve seen many modern business models go the way of switchboard operators, as the time from one market disruption to another kept getting shorter.

Consider video rentals. This huge business occupied a period of time even shorter than the age of lamplighters or manual switchboards. It started in the early 1980s, when VHS players became mainstream, went on through the age of DVDs and ended abruptly when cloud streaming took over. In 2002, a market cap of the video rental chain Blockbuster was around $6 billion dollars. Netflix had a market cap of zero. Today, Netflix sits at $6.8 billion dollars, and Blockbuster was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010. This huge shift happened in less than a decade.

The brick-and-mortar electronic stores are another good example. Ten years ago huge Western chains like Best Buy, Circuit City or Comet (UK) posted record profits. Today, they desperately fight for survival, slowly smothered by a practice show-rooming. Smart buyers pop into a store to look at physical wares, then take out their smartphones, check prices and go for cheapest Web-based vendors. Best Buy is now fighting back promising to match the Internet prices, but time will tell if this strategy is economically sustainable.

Even the world’s largest companies can be caught by surprise. Nokia was left pants-down by the rapid shift towards the smartphones. It barely survived. Palm, as mentioned in the opening quote, didn’t. And Microsoft? In 2010, Microsoft saw its future in bright colors and tried to severely downplay the tablet market (as seen here). It supported Windows-based netbooks that were  supposed to become a 100 million market this year. Where are netbooks now? Gone. A huge category of devices, created just several years ago, is officially extinct.

Bookstores are taking a beating from Amazon. Expensive AAA games market is shrinking in favor of casual and mobile. Newspapers are dying by the hand of Internet publications.  Those are only the most obvious examples everyone can see. If you’re into a business of any kind, you certainly know about technologies in your specific sector that have been replaced in the last 10 years.

Considering all of the above, it’s safe to assume one thing.

Sometime in the next decade, the business model YOU rely on will change – or go the way of a dodo.

It’s not just my conclusion. Last year Ricoh performed a large study on 567 business executives from large and respectable companies. The whole report, a highly recommended read, can be found here. The common vibe was that until 2020 the technology will shift, changing businesses forever.

Of course, it won’t happen due to mobile / social / cloud / insert another buzzword here. That’s the technology wave we feel right now. What you really should think about is the NEXT wave, that’s still beyond the horizon.

And to help you with that, here are some predictions of technologies that loom just around the bend, and might in many surprising ways unhorse business leaders of today.

Here’s the thing about Google Glass – the sci-fi looking eyewear from Google – everyone who tested it so far loved it. In the beginning, the idea that people will voluntarily wear something that makes them look like they escaped the trekkie convention seemed a bit of a stretch. But so far, Google does a remarkable job at making it appear cool.

Video after video, they show how a cheap, widely available AR can change our everyday life. At the same time, they’re distributing developer models to the best and brightest software creators around the globe. With people eager to pay exorbitant prices just to grab an early version of Glass from e-Bay, it looks more and more like an upcoming disruption-in-the-making.

Of course, the headwear by itself won’t disrupt much. The apps for it will.

Sure, smartphones have already seen the first wave of AR city guides and other software that displays data in the Augmented Reality layer. But there’s a huge difference between having your arm stretched all the time with your smartphone in front of your face, or having an AR display all the time, effortlessly, in the corner of your eye. A display that can feed you with contextual information, stream what you see, or even show you what someone else sees.

My prediction? Just like a couple of years ago EVERY company wanted to tap into social networks and Web 2.0, in 2014-2015 EVERY company will want to have an Augmented Reality component of their business model or strategy.

Shops will want applications that show visitors special promotions and info-pop-ups when they look at the wares. The first social network that allows you to see full profiles floating over your friends will become a new winner. Business applications that feature virtual progress bars and timers hovering over people’s heads or support coaching by tapping into someone’s eye vision are going to boom.  And if your business model depends on satnavs, tour guiding or contextual info of any kind, this might rock your boat hard.

Meet MakerBot Replicator 2. With downloadable schematics and some basic knowledge of 3D design, it can do pretty much everything. Even another copy of itself that’s only lacking some electronic components. But electronics are not out of reach for cheap manufacturing robots anymore. A true Von Neumann machine is still quite a bit away but printing your own handy gadgets is very much possible. In fact, as I write these words, hundreds of people download CAD blueprints of real items from Thingverse, just like they downloaded music in the brave new era of Napster.

I realize 3D printing will never be as popular as inkjets or laser printers. The entry barrier is higher. It requires some very basic knowledge of 3D software, though clever companies have managed to make the process much more consumer-friendly.

But even if an average Joe won’t be able to print an assault rifle, the hundreds of tech savvy guys with a knack for business will. 3D printing and home manufacturing is just one of many improvements that should allow micro-entrepreneurs to do things previously reserved to large companies with more resources.

In fact, the RICOH report states that in the upcoming years micro-entrepreneurs will thrive thanks to new technologies. This will happen at the cost of less adaptable mid-sized companies.

Who will be most affected? Most certainly businesses that produce overly expensive replacement parts, gadgets, vanity items, memorabilia, toys, smartphone accessories and other plastic trinkets. As the power of home manufacturing solutions increases, small electronic gadgets could be next in line. Who will boom? Services and businesses that incorporate 3d printing into their strategies.

Facebook bets its own future on new Open Graph social search. The idea is alluring and elegant: search for sushi bars in your city that your friend liked, buy games that your best gamer buddy recommended, see what movies your friends saw and enjoyed in the last week… The possibilities are endless, and it’s not hard to imagine why Facebook wants to embrace them. Sure, the company was wrong many times, but if the largest social platform in the world decides to do something, it’s safe to assume they did their homework and analyzed the idea well.

Right now, the Graph search is a bit underwhelming. The biggest problem is the dated dataset, corrupted by many “like to win” contests. Coupled with the Facebook fatigue that resulted in less legitimate “likes” floating around, this leads to poor search results.  It’s very possible that the Open Graph Search will die. But there are also scenarios where it may iron its kinks to become “the next big thing”.

Just think what would happen if Facebook partnered with Microsoft, turning Bing (that already has 16% of the search market) into a full social search engine. Google could be in trouble, the whole search structure could change.

Why am I talking about this? Because it will affect every business on the planet, just like the arrival of crawler-based search engines did. Whatever your business is, you most likely rely heavily on search traffic, SEO, , AdWords. Even if you’re a market leader in your segment, and your company pops up in the first 10 Google Search results, you might be eclipsed by a company that will position itself better in the world of social search. Soon everyone might be forced to start again on even footing, and all this time and money spend on SEO might go down the drain.

If Open Graph Search becomes the big thing, companies that embrace it have a good chance of becoming our new market leaders.

In the early 19^th century, English Luddites burned textile machines all over the country, afraid that steam robots will replace every single working class employee. It never happened – so far. But with recent breakthroughs in the field of Artificial Intelligence, the process of automation accelerated quickly. Today, even companies that rely on cheap Chinese labor are switching to fully automated production models. Info booth staff is becoming just as obsolete as switchboard operators. Armies fill up with autonomous robots. Self-driving cars spread from California.

Increasing automation was a trend that stayed under our radar. It was something obvious, acontinuous process that took two centuries, but we might feel its biggest impact soon, in the next decades.

The production staff, as mentioned before, was first to go. Now, technology might soon replace thousands of taxi and delivery drivers. Yes, that nice guy behind the wheel of your kid’s school bus is probably going where all the photocopy repairmen went before him. We should see more automated vendors, info desks, bank branches. Less humans – everywhere. Just check this list of 9 trades that might be soon replaced by automation.

Should you care? After all, your business is most likely a high-tech one. Still, even if you think your model can’t be invalidated by automation, you might be surprised. In 2004 analysts claimed driverless cars are just a mad sci-fi vision, that’s never going to happen, just like robot maids and antigravity shoes. In 2012, first driver licenses were issued to fully automated cars by the state of Nevada.

Automation has a way of catching people by surprise. My wild guess is that price comparison services, shopping services, content search and entertainment might become disrupted by Artificial Intelligence in the next few years.

As you can see, our technology horizon changes every day. A month ago, the idea of investing in a company making high-tech geeky watches seemed smart. Then, Apple decided that it wants to disrupt this sector. Do you hear the rattle in the distance? That’s the watch maker stock prices tumbling down. It’s important to add that technology shifts usually can’t be predicted. I shared some of my guesses above, but I fully expect to be surprised, just as much as you might be. After all, attempts at futurology from past decades read like comedy fiction today, just like this vision of life in the year 2000.

One thing is certain. Unless you’re one of the largest companies in the world, it’s impossible to employ teams that could keep up with every new and emerging technology. It’s much better to leave that to IT companies experienced in doing just that, like PGS Software.

It may look like a shameless plug, but keeping a hand on the pulse was always important for us. In 2006, when we were starting our software development outsourcing business, no one really spoke about social, mobile or cloud yet. We watched as those trends filtered into mainstream technology markets, and we helped many companies to embrace them.

I remember a big social networking project we had before the wave of VC-backed social startups. We also had a very interesting Big Data analytics application, before the term “Big Data” went mainstream. We started to develop applications for mobile devices just as iPhones and iPads became popular, and were able to create mobile apps that reached top spots in the Polish AppStore.

With two hundred technology fans in our office keeping a close eye on the headlines, we’re quite sure no upcoming disruption will surprise us. We are going to jump into new technology fields just as they emerge, so that PGS could continue to provide the most modern, future-proof solutions.

So if you feel that you should indeed get your business model up to speed; if you need a mobile app, an API, some code refactoring, a data analytics suite – or if you plan to jump into any upcoming technologies, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Seeing what’s around the bend is one thing. Being prepared is quite another. The history of economics is full of businesses that failed to act until it was too late.

Take a page from the Ricoh report instead. Assume your business model will go extinct at some point and find a way to iterate.

For example, did you know that Central and Eastern Europe currently offers IT outsourcing rates comparable to ones in China, with a lot of added small conveniences? Maybe that’s why, according to recent data, most EU companies prefer nearshoring to offshoring. Did you also know that one eastern European city is in top ten out of hundreds of outsourcing locations assessed worldwide by Tholons? It’s higher than Shanghai, Beijing, Kalkota and Bangkok! Wrocław, our main operating location, also got great marks and ended up in the global top 100.

If any of this sounds interesting, we have something special for you. Last month, we wrote an extensive feature about the eastern European IT outsourcing market – it was published by ComputerWeekly. Since then, we have decided to also provide a white paper version of this article.  It’s free to download and use for everyone interested.

Just click the button below to get your copy:

This white paper contains our selection of information from other reports and recent publications. We wanted to take a synthetic approach and gather all the small, interesting bits of information about CEE outsourcing in one place. The data itself comes from reputable sources such as Jones Lang LaSalle, Gartner, Reuters, Paysacle, Parsons and Tholons.

We hope you’ll find it interesting!

Download our CEE IT Outsourcing White Paper

I’ve been in PGS Software for two years now. In this time, I had a chance to see a lot of talented and hard-working people do their best in software development projects of all shapes and sizes. I’ve always enjoyed learning about tricks they come up with to manage their day better. When surrounded by almost 200 developers, you’re bound to see some unique productivity ideas. 

Of course, there are global methodologies we have adopted across the entire company – like Scrum. It worked great for us, and it’s here to stay (if you want to know why, just watch this Scrum Guide video). But it doesn’t stop people from finding supplementing and personal productivity systems.

In fact, one of the first things that caught my attention after coming to work here was a pomodoro timer on a desk next to me.

Being a busy person who does two jobs with a splash of freelancing, I was interested in everything that could help me stretch the 24-hour-a-day limit. To me, PGS office was a petri dish of clever life hacks.

Now it’s time to share my observations. Here’s a list of some nifty solutions I picked up in the last months.

Gamify yourself

There’s an idea, common in sci-fi fiction, that we’re all living in a state-of-the-art computer simulation. So how about turning your real life into an actual game with rules, rewards and quests to complete? While it might sound ambitious, that’s what a humble free web app called HabitRPG aims to do.

The key is to put down everything you enjoy in life – and I mean EVERYTHING – as a reward you have to pay some virtual gold for. The only way to earn this gold is via quests. Just like in any proper cRPG, you can have your repeatable quests, daily quests, and you may even convert your “To Do” list into a quest journal, where tasks become the more valuable, the more time you need to invest in finishing them.

Should you fail your dailies, your character will lose life points. If you don’t do your “pushups” quests many weeks in a row, and you score negative points for your “avoid junk food” quest, your character will die (and you might too, by the way). If you don’t earn enough gold pieces from hours of productive work, forget about watching that next “Walking Dead” episode.

Now there are many other small features in HabitRPG,  both implemented and upcoming. You have your pets, vanity items, party system. Soon you will be able to challenge others to do quests, import and export data from popular calendars, run the mobile app… But all of this is just an addition to a simple, but very effective mechanism.

You agree to pay for all the small, enjoyable things in your life with your hard work. If that sounds reasonable, and if you’re into the 8-bit aesthetic of old computer games, give it a go!

Personal experience: The link to this app was first shared by someone in PGS Software over Skype. Since I started using HabitRPG, I spend less time loitering around in the Web. I mostly do actual work that earns me gold, or I spend this gold on my self-appointed fun stuff, without the bitter guilty-pleasure aftertaste. Be warned, though! The first thing my wife asked, when she saw this app, is how to appoint quests to other players…

Work, rest, work, rest, work, rest a bit longer

Does it sound familiar? If so, I guess you already know the pomodoro technique. And if you don’t, here’s the basic version: first pick a task. Then set your timer (analogue encouraged) for 25 minutes. Start working. Don’t look at any websites, don’t check your e-mail, don’t even move, unless you really have to. If you do, you need to start all over again.  When 25 minutes are over, just drop everything as it is and go on a short break.

This might sound artificial and silly, but there’s some serious neuroscience behind all of this. The human mind works best in a state of deep concentration. Unfortunately, we are only able to achieve this state over short periods of time, and then we have to rest a bit, or just think about something else instead.

Pomodoro technique tries to build around this limitation – and there are many who found it useful.

But I didn’t want to talk about pomodoro itself, but about Pomodroido – a popular and free smartphone app that eases you into this method of work. It has a thin layer of gamification, with pomodoro counters and levels, but otherwise it’s simple and easy to use.

It ticks like a real timer, buzzes to let you know it’s time for your tea, and then summons you back to the keyboard when you should start cracking again. Oh, and it forces you to adopt a healthier work pattern. If you use your break to let your eyes rest for a moment and simply walk around, you feel much better after a day’s work.

Too much sitting is killing us!

Personal experience: Learned about it from a fellow developer. It’s been my go-to method ever since (I achieved level 8 using it for my freelance work; that’s hundreds of pomodoros). I really like the cycle of half-an-hour stretches of work, broken up by short intervals of rest. This way, I can work longer without getting tired. I also think it’s better to take breaks at set intervals, instead of “when I feel like it”. This way, I don’t end my work when meeting a roadblock, or a difficult part. This makes it easier to pick it up after the break.

Let the big brother watch

All the methods I mentioned above have one flaw. They rely on your manual input. In theory, nothing stops you from wasting your pomodoros or clicking quests you didn’t complete. For most, that’s a question of discipline. But there are people who would rather have someone watch them like an overly attached girlfriend.

That’s what DeskTime and RescueTime do. Thanks to deep integration with your Windows task manager, they can see what applications and pages were active at any given moment. They know that between 9:32 and 9:56 you were on Facebook, and that on 13:41 you have started a Minesweeper session. Of course, you can select which apps are productive for you (in an unlikely event where Facebook is your actual work, and playing with Excel is your pastime).

Both applications offer graphs, notifications, reports and a full suite of things that have just one single purpose: to make you feel sorry about wasting your time.

Of course, real world is their notorious blind spot (phew!). You can keep your project open on your PC screen and simply scroll the wheel from time to time, while reading news on your iPad – and DeskTime will be none the wiser.

Still, using those applications is an experiment I’d recommend to anyone – you might be surprised at how much of your day simply slips by.

In the ghastly world of the future, our bosses will have software like that running on all the PC’s all the time. It’s better to get used today, while you still have a chance.

Personal experience: The first time I installed DeskTime, it caused a serious shock. I thought I had just spent a very productive day (I finished all my daily Scrum tasks). But then, DeskTime slapped me in the face with a paltry 73% productivity. By seeing where exactly the remaining time went, I was able to improve.

Other methods

Of course, not everyone likes “productivity apps”.  In fact, during my time in PGS Software I’ve seen quite a lot of people giving 105% without any of those, relying only on classic tools or even post-it notes and our agile methodology. Outlook calendar is big among many developers. I’ve also picked up a habit of using OneNote and keeping it synchronized across different computers at work and home via SkyDrive. Some of my friends swear by Evernote, some by little-known planning apps and time trackers.

In the end, it always comes down to strong will and determination to do the actual job. None of the tools can replace it.

Still, it’s much easier to discipline yourself when you have the data; when you reach an Argentinian level of debt in HabitRPG due to overindulgence in video games, or when your DeskTime shows that during your 8-hour work day you only actually worked for 4.5h.

Having personally evaluated all the tricks I’ve seen around in my company, I managed to make myself a little bit more effective.

Hopefully, some of the tools mentioned above will help you too.