I will write a post soon on a process to monitor emerging technology.  The key benefit of proactively monitoring emerging technology is to uncover unknown business problems and associated technical solution and to go faster to market with technology.  It also provides architects greater time to design and prepare for potentially disruptive technology.

The best known and potentially disruptive emerging technology is “block chain” (especially bitcoin).  This topic deserves several discussion by itself.  Please see a good summary of blockchain at ZDnet.com.  For example, I found this description of blockchain and bitcoin useful: think of blockchain as the ‘operating system’ upon which different ‘applications’ (such as Bitcoin) can run.

The Takeaways

1. Develop a service/product that delivers recommendations on either ignoring, monitoring, testing or adopting emerging technology
2. Continue to monitor and develop use cases for blockchain.