Three More Trending Technologies
Cat 8 Ethernet, Mini PCs, and Platform Engineering
Continuing from last month’s five technologies to watch, Mike Riley talks about three more tech trends.
I always like to keep myself on the cutting edge of technology, seeking the latest emerging trends that have great potential for making my life easier and more automated and/or satisfying. While the following list of tech is different from my annual Tech Predictions, it does represent tech that I am keenly aware has significant impact to the IT industry and the overall interactive computing experience. Here are three recent trends that have grabbed my attention and continue to accelerate the pace of technological change.
1. Cat8 Ethernet
While fiber connectivity still offers faster speeds, the economy and availability of Cat8 cabling combined with faster switches and routers makes it the defacto cable category for new and retrofitted physical network installations. Even home labs are able to benefit from the 40Gpbs transfer speeds as national ISPs increase their throughput offerings and even low-end PCs are equipped with 2.5Gb LAN Ethernet ports.
2. Mini PCs
These remarkable boxes — roughly the size of a Mac Mini — pack in some serious computing power. Whether AMD or Intel-based, Mini PCs offer as much as 64Gb RAM to service top-of-the-line desktop processors combined with SoC discrete GPUs for less than $1,500. If you require only general computing tasks, you can find a competent system for as low as $300. Unless you need high-end graphics or other dedicated PCIe slot cards, the latest Mini PC powerhouses can address a majority of your desktop computing requirements. Mini PCs often run with a lower power draw as well, making them more environmentally friendly from both a energy and materials standpoint.
3. Platform Engineering
Platform engineering is the latest buzz phrase in the DevOps community. It further climbs up and abstracts the IT operations stack, offering you a self-service model for maintaining a sanctioned family of Dev tools. Authorized developers can access the tools and services on demand. Need a Kubernetes stack running an Istio service mesh? Select it from the maintained DevOps web page to spin it up. Need a Jenkins workflow to manage a CI/CD pipeline? Check that option as well and have an instance with a pre-generated pipeline ready to go. Need a tool or technology that isn’t on the list? Submit it as a wishlist item so the Product Engineering team can evaluate and certify it.
While the move to this new model will migrate slowly into the enterprise computing space, it will no doubt accelerate as more developers benefit from faster configuration deployments and removal of roadblocks toward achieving their application construction, testing, and deployment objectives.
📢 What are the trends that have captured your attention this year? If you actively engage in any of these trends, which system or approach do you prefer the most? I’m looking forward to seeing and interacting with your comments!
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