We have seen the impressive opportunity for this technology. They must be some roadblocks to put aside before being able to deploy such a technology.

I foresee two main issues for the deployment of this new technology:

-          Mindset about collaboration tools

-          Technological limitations

5.1. Mindset roadblock

We are used to our toolset; it’s a change to have this new personal dashboard accepted.

It’s a technology that is going to be on the most upfront of the users: it will bring a fierce race among competitors and will tend to put in the background other user interface that used to have our flavors: the portal technology is an example. The “all user access from a browser” paradigm is aging with this technology and people having bet heavily on it are not going to let it happen…

So basically, we will have to get user acquainted with this new technology and we will need to have our technical groups buy-in. 

5.2. Technological roadblock

They the following issues with this technology:

-          Deployment of a client technology is always a problem, even if most of them are lightweight, they are still one more thing to take care: it’s an issue of support for IT deployment teams: Microsoft Vista will have an advantage compare to others.

-          Support of different platform due to lack of standardization is a source of cost and complexity

-          Network impact is also an issue: awarelets should minimize the workload on network and some server side developments can be needed to achieve that. Some architecture work will be needed in the future to have this technology even more scalable with use of digital broadcasting techniques to optimize network usage.