Franchise Update Magazine Issue III, 2012

By Tom Epstein Don’t Be Afraid Tame tomorrow’s technology today! C omputing in the cloud, mobile applications, and near field communication (NFC) have many IT people losing sleep at night trying not only to figure out what’s happening with these technologies, but also how to keep up. Changes in technology and how consumers use it are so overwhelming and fast-moving that many companies are paralyzed and not doing anything. And it is fast-moving: • Among the approximately 314 million people in the U.S., about 90 million smartphones are in use, plus another 17 million tablets. • At the end of 2011, more than 45 percent of adults in the U.S. were using mobile devices for Internet access. By year-end it will be 70 \

Franchise Update Magazine Issue III, 2012 | Page 41