Investing in technology requires a lot of forethought and research. Successful business owners know that it isn’t just seeing an ad on your sidebar and signing up for untested services or solutions, it’s about making an educated decision. What better time is there to sit down, review the current state of technology, and decide where to place your bets for 2017? When you’re ready for that, take a look at our insider projections on where web services will be heading for the coming year.

Google is out to make the user's experience more secure and efficient with its recent announcement that it will disable Flash and implement an HTML5 default browsing protocol. This change won't be implemented all at once, but will start by changing the settings of 1% of Chrome users in December 2016 before eventually expanding that number over the next year.

Users of Amazon Web Services (AWS) will notice a difference in the price they pay for cloud storage as the company rolls out yet another price drop. Additionally, AWS has made changes to its Glacier “cold storage” plan in an effort to optimize customer data retrieval time.

Artificial intelligence (AI, or “machine learning”) has quickly transformed from science fiction to reality, and is currently on track to become an integral part of the corporate business environment. According to experts, by 2020 eighty five percent of all customer interactions with a business will occur via machine learning programs.

In a world full of fresh options, there is no reason for you to be bogged down by outdated methods. It helps to have the latest web browser tools to improve your online experience. Exploring other options always brings out revelations about how you can improve your business.

The process of moving particular elements of the iTunes Store, Siri and Apple News to a secretive service known only as Pie has already begun, with more services such as iCloud and Project McQueen getting the same treatment in the coming years. Apple has said that bringing these teams together can improve its current cloud services, and ultimately, benefit customers.

SEO is meant to increase traffic to a website so that more users interact with its content. However, there is more than one way to approach SEO. The right approach should also account for users who already know your brand, and make it easier for them to access your website and share it with other users.

Everything is wirelessly connected nowadays. If you can purchase a refrigerator that sends you a message when your vegetables are going bad, why can’t you stream the audio and video of your phone or desktop to your TV? It turns out you can, and Google just made it a whole lot easier.

Despite a relatively no-frills platform, Dropbox has remained one of the most recognizable names in cloud storage. Apparently after nearly ten years in the market, it’s ready to move on to bigger and better things. Titled ‘Paper,’ the company’s newest service will take direct aim at Google Docs and Office 365 by offering real-time document collaboration and editing.

In order to gain a competitive advantage, you would need to gain clarity before everyone else does. Of course, that’s a lot easier said than done. Similarly, chatbots initially stir up excitement, but they eventually fail to deliver the interactiveness many envisioned them to have.