Technology has had an immeasurable impact on the way we work. It’s incredible to think that up until the 1980s, schoolchildren and secretarial students learned how to type on manual typewriters. Compared to the word processors that were common by the mid-80s, and the slim line keyboards of today’s laptops, they were highly user-unfriendly.

Mobile phones of the 80s were huge and expensive and, as a result, not very popular. Home computers were picking up traction by the early 90s, but if you wanted to get onto the world wide web you had to use a dial-up modem – and when you did eventually get online, websites did not have a fraction of the visual appeal or usability that they do today.

While studying for my computing A-level I remember my teacher having to get permission from the head to use a computer. All he wanted to do was connect to the world wide web and send text messages to a friend of his, so we could see it in action. Nowadays we think nothing of sending emails with large attachments, downloading TV shows and movies, or streaming music.

This BBC article discusses how the web has evolved since its inception thirty years ago. It includes a great audio clip of the dial-up tone for accessing the web that those of us of a certain age remember fondly.

Organisations now have business processes which are much more highly integrated and streamlined.  Tasks are run more smoothly and performed better than ever before. Communication and collaboration have been made much simpler, and business information is far more secure.

Changes in technology and the way we work also leads to changes in the types of jobs there are within organisations. This video from the World Economic Forum includes jobs such as app developers, social media managers, cloud computing specialists and big data analysts. None of those roles had been thought of 30 years ago, but they are all essential for the work we do here at RDT. We also have jobs such as scrum masters and agile delivery managers, which not exist even ten years ago.

RDT is a forward-thinking company. Everyone here understands that we have to keep pace with technology or we, and our clients, will be left behind. It’s why we are proud to be a Microsoft gold partner, as this keeps us at the front of the technology wave.

With 28 years of experience behind us, we have already witnessed huge technological advances, and we relish the challenge that future changes will bring to our organisation.