Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends 2007-2014 - Gartner

FPT Online JSC
Top 10 Strategic Technology
Trends2007-2014
Dinh Le Dat – CTO of FPT Online JSC | Hochiminh, Jan 2014 | DatDL@fpt.com.vn
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Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends
2007-2014
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@dinhledat

Top 10 Strategic
Technology Trends
Source: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/530109
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Green IT. The focus of Green IT that came to the forefront in 2007 will accelerate and expand in 2008. Consider potential regulations and
have alternative plans for data center and capacity growth. Regulations are multiplying and have the potential to seriously constrain
companies in building data centers, as the impact on power grids, carbon emissions from increased use and other environmental impacts are
under scrutiny. Some companies are emphasizing their social responsibility behavior, which might result in vendor preferences and policies
that affect IT decisions. Scheduling decisions for workloads on servers will begin to consider power efficiency as a key placement attribute.
Unified Communications. Today, 20 percent of the installed base with PBX has migrated to IP telephony, but more than 80 percent are
already doing trials of some form. Gartner analysts expect the next three years to be the point at which the majority of companies implement
this, the first major change in voice communications since the digital PBX and cellular phone changes in the 1970s and 1980s.
Business Process Modeling. Top-level process services must be defined jointly by a set of roles (which include enterprise architects, senior
developers, process architects and/or process analysts). Some of those roles sit in a service oriented architecture center of excellence, some
in a process center of excellence and some in both. The strategic imperative for 2008 is to bring these groups together. Gartner expects BPM
suites to fill a critical role as a compliment to SOA development.
Metadata Management. Through 2010, organizations implementing both customer data integration and product integration and product
information management will link these master data management initiatives as part of an overall enterprise information management (EIM)
strategy. Metadata management is a critical part of a company’s information infrastructure. It enables optimization, abstraction and semantic
reconciliation of metadata to support reuse, consistency, integrity and shareability. Metadata management also extends into SOA projects with
service registries and application development repositories. Metadata also plays a role in operations management with CMDB initiatives.
Virtualization 2.0. Virtualization technologies can improve IT resource utilization and increase the flexibility needed to adapt to changing
requirements and workloads. However, by themselves, virtualization technologies are simply enablers that help broader improvements in
infrastructure cost reduction, flexibility and resiliency. With the addition of automation technologies – with service-level, policy-based active
management – resource efficiency can improve dramatically, flexibility can become automatic based on requirements, and services can be
managed holistically, ensuring high levels of resiliency. Virtualization plus service-level, policy-based automation constitutes an RTI.
2008

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Mashup & Composite Apps. By 2010, Web mashups will be the dominant model (80 percent) for the creation of composite enterprise
applications. Mashup technologies will evolve significantly over the next five years, and application leaders must take this evolution into
account when evaluating the impact of mashups and in formulating an enterprise mashup strategy.
Web Platform & WOA. Software as a service (SaaS) is becoming a viable option in more markets and companies must evaluate where
service based delivery may provide value in 2008-2010. Meanwhile Web platforms are emerging which provide service-based access to
infrastructure services, information, applications, and business processes through Web based “cloud computing” environments. Companies
must also look beyond SaaS to examine how Web platforms will impact their business in 3-5 years.
Computing Fabric. A computing fabric is the evolution of server design beyond the interim stage, blade servers, that exists today. The next
step in this progression is the introduction of technology to allow several blades to be merged operationally over the fabric, operating as a
larger single system image that is the sum of the components from those blades. The fabric-based server of the future will treat memory,
processors, and I/O cards as components in a pool, combining and recombining them into particular arrangements to suits the owner’s needs.
For example a large server can be created by combining 32 processors and a number of memory modules from the pool, operating together
over the fabric to appear to an operating system as a single fixed server.
Real World Web. The term “real world Web” is informal, referring to places where information from the Web is applied to the particular
location, activity or context in the real world. It is intended to augment the reality that a user faces, not to replace it as in virtual worlds. It is
used in real-time based on the real world situation, not prepared in advance for consumption at specific times or researched after the events
have occurred. For example in navigation, a printed list of directions from the Web do not react to changes, but a GPS navigation unit provides
real-time directions that react to events and movements; the latter case is akin to the real-world Web of augmented reality. Now is the time to
seek out new applications, new revenue streams and improvements to business process that can come from augmenting the world at the right
time, place or situation.
Social Software. Through 2010, the enterprise Web 2.0 product environment will experience considerable flux with continued product
innovation and new entrants, including start-ups, large vendors and traditional collaboration vendors. Expect significant consolidation as
competitors strive to deliver robust Web 2.0 offerings to the enterprise. Nevertheless social software technologies will increasingly be brought
into the enterprise to augment traditional collaboration.
Top 10 Strategic
Technology Trends 2008

Top 10 Strategic
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Virtualization. Much of the current buzz is focused on server virtualization, but virtualization in storage and client devices is also moving
rapidly. Virtualization to eliminate duplicate copies of data on the real storage devices while maintaining the illusion to the accessing systems
that the files are as originally stored (data deduplication) can significantly decrease the cost of storage devices and media to hold information.
Hosted virtual images deliver a near-identical result to blade-based PCs. But, instead of the motherboard function being located in the data
center as hardware, it is located there as a virtual machine bubble. However, despite ambitious deployment plans from many organizations,
deployments of hosted virtual desktop capabilities will be adopted by fewer than 40 percent of target users by 2010.
Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled
capabilities to consumers. They key characteristics of cloud computing are 1) delivery of capabilities “as a service,” 2) delivery of services in a
highly scalable and elastic fashion, 3) using Internet technologies and techniques to develop and deliver the services, and 4) designing for
delivery to external customers. Although cost is a potential benefit for small companies, the biggest benefits are the built-in elasticity and
scalability, which not only reduce barriers to entry, but also enable these companies to grow quickly. As certain IT functions are industrializing
and becoming less customized, there are more possibilities for larger organizations to benefit from cloud computing.
Servers — Beyond Blades. Servers are evolving beyond the blade server stage that exists today. This evolution will simplify the
provisioning of capacity to meet growing needs. The organization tracks the various resource types, for example, memory, separately and
replenishes only the type that is in short supply. This eliminates the need to pay for all three resource types to upgrade capacity. It also
simplifies the inventory of systems, eliminating the need to track and purchase various sizes and configurations. The result will be higher
utilization because of lessened “waste” of resources that are in the wrong configuration or that come along with the needed processors and
memory in a fixed bundle.
Web-Oriented Architectures. The Internet is arguably the best example of an agile, interoperable and scalable service-oriented environment
in existence. This level of flexibility is achieved because of key design principles inherent in the Internet/Web approach, as well as the
emergence of Web-centric technologies and standards that promote these principles. The use of Web-centric models to build global-class
solutions cannot address the full breadth of enterprise computing needs. However, Gartner expects that continued evolution of the Web-
centric approach will enable its use in an ever-broadening set of enterprise solutions during the next five years.
EnterpriseMashups. Enterprises are now investigating taking mashups from cool Web hobby to enterprise-class systems to augment their
models for delivering and managing applications. Through 2010, the enterprise mashup product environment will experience significant flux
and consolidation, and application architects and IT leaders should investigate this growing space for the significant and transformational
potential it may offer their enterprises.
2009

Top 10 Strategic
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Specialized Systems. Appliances have been used to accomplish IT purposes, but only with a few classes of function have appliances
prevailed. Heterogeneous systems are an emerging trend in high-performance computing to address the requirements of the most demanding
workloads, and this approach will eventually reach the general-purpose computing market. Heterogeneous systems are also specialized
systems with the same single-purpose imitations of appliances, but the heterogeneous system is a server system into which the owner installs
software to accomplish its function.
Social Software and Social Networking. Social software includes a broad range of technologies, such as social networking, social
collaboration, social media and social validation. Organizations should consider adding a social dimension to a conventional Web site or
application and should adopt a social platform sooner, rather than later, because the greatest risk lies in failure to engage and thereby, being
left mute in a dialogue where your voice must be heard.
Unified Communications. During the next five years, the number of different communications vendors with which a typical organization
works with will be reduced by at least 50 percent. This change is driven by increases in the capability of application servers and the general
shift of communications applications to common off-the-shelf server and operating systems. As this occurs, formerly distinct markets, each
with distinct vendors, converge, resulting in massive consolidation in the communications industry. Organizations must build careful, detailed
plans for when each category of communications function is replaced or converged, coupling this step with the prior completion of appropriate
administrative team convergence.
Business Intelligence. Business Intelligence (BI), the top technology priority in Gartner’s 2008 CIO survey, can have a direct positive impact
on a company’s business performance, dramatically improving its ability to accomplish its mission by making smarter decisions at every level
of the business from corporate strategy to operational processes. BI is particularly strategic because it is directed toward business managers
and knowledge workers who make up the pool of thinkers and decision makers that are tasked with running, growing and transforming the
business. Tools that let these users make faster, better and more-informed decisions are particularly valuable in a difficult business
environment.
Green IT. Shifting to more efficient products and approaches can allow for more equipment to fit within an energy footprint, or to fit into a
previously filled center. Regulations are multiplying and have the potential to seriously constrain companies in building data centers, as the
effect of power grids, carbon emissions from increased use and other environmental impacts are under scrutiny. Organizations should
consider regulations and have alternative plans for data center and capacity growth.
2009

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Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled
capabilities to consumers. Cloud-based services can be exploited in a variety of ways to develop an application or a solution. Using cloud
resources does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does re-arrange some and reduce others. In addition, consuming cloud services
enterprises will increasingly act as cloud providers and deliver application, information or business process services to customers and
business partners.
Advanced Analytics. Optimization and simulation is using analytical tools and models to maximize business process and decision
effectiveness by examining alternative outcomes and scenarios, before, during and after process implementation and execution. This can be
viewed as a third step in supporting operational business decisions. Fixed rules and prepared policies gave way to more informed decisions
powered by the right information delivered at the right time, whether through customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource
planning (ERP) or other applications. The new step is to provide simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, not simply
information, to empower even more decision flexibility at the time and place of every business process action. The new step looks into the
future, predicting what can or will happen.
Client Computing. Virtualization is bringing new ways of packaging client computing applications and capabilities. As a result, the choice of a
particular PC hardware platform, and eventually the OS platform, becomes less critical. Enterprises should proactively build a five to eight
year strategic client computing roadmap outlining an approach to device standards, ownership and support; operating system and application
selection, deployment and update; and management and security plans to manage diversity.
IT for Green. IT can enable many green initiatives. The use of IT, particularly among the white collar staff, can greatly enhance an enterprise’s
green credentials. Common green initiatives include the use of e-documents, reducing travel and teleworking. IT can also provide the analytic
tools that others in the enterprise may use to reduce energy consumption in the transportation of goods or other carbon management
activities.
Reshaping the Data Center. In the past, design principles for data centers were simple: Figure out what you have, estimate growth for 15 to
20 years, then build to suit. Newly-built data centers often opened with huge areas of white floor space, fully powered and backed by a
uninterruptible power supply (UPS), water-and air-cooled and mostly empty. However, costs are actually lower if enterprises adopt a pod-
based approach to data center construction and expansion. If 9,000 square feet is expected to be needed during the life of a data center, then
design the site to support it, but only build what’s needed for five to seven years. Cutting operating expenses, which are a nontrivial part of the
overall IT spend for most clients, frees up money to apply to other projects or investments either in IT or in the business itself.
2010

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Social Computing. Workers do not want two distinct environments to support their work – one for their own work products (whether personal
or group) and another for accessing “external” information. Enterprises must focus both on use of social software and social media in the
enterprise and participation and integration with externally facing enterprise-sponsored and public communities. Do not ignore the role of the
social profile to bring communities together.
Security – Activity Monitoring. Traditionally, security has focused on putting up a perimeter fence to keep others out, but it has evolved to
monitoring activities and identifying patterns that would have been missed before. Information security professionals face the challenge of
detecting malicious activity in a constant stream of discrete events that are usually associated with an authorized user and are generated from
multiple network, system and application sources. At the same time, security departments are facing increasing demands for ever-greater log
analysis and reporting to support audit requirements. A variety of complimentary (and sometimes overlapping) monitoring and analysis tools
help enterprises better detect and investigate suspicious activity – often with real-time alerting or transaction intervention. By understanding
the strengths and weaknesses of these tools, enterprises can better understand how to use them to defend the enterprise and meet audit
requirements.
Flash Memory. Flash memory is not new, but it is moving up to a new tier in the storage echelon. Flash memory is a semiconductor memory
device, familiar from its use in USB memory sticks and digital camera cards. It is much faster than rotating disk, but considerably more
expensive, however this differential is shrinking. At the rate of price declines, the technology will enjoy more than a 100 percent compound
annual growth rate during the new few years and become strategic in many IT areas including consumer devices, entertainment equipment
and other embedded IT systems. In addition, it offers a new layer of the storage hierarchy in servers and client computers that has key
advantages including space, heat, performance and ruggedness.
Virtualization for Availability. Virtualization has been on the list of top strategic technologies in previous years. It is on the list this year
because Gartner emphases new elements such as live migration for availability that have longer term implications. Live migration is the
movement of a running virtual machine (VM), while its operating system and other software continue to execute as if they remained on the
original physical server. This takes place by replicating the state of physical memory between the source and destination VMs, then, at some
instant in time, one instruction finishes execution on the source machine and the next instruction begins on the destination machine.
Mobile Applications. By year-end 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing a rich environment
for the convergence of mobility and the Web. There are already many thousands of applications for platforms such as the Apple iPhone, in
spite of the limited market and need for unique coding. It may take a newer version that is designed to flexibly operate on both full PC and
miniature systems, but if the operating system interface and processor architecture were identical, that enabling factor would create a
huge turn upwards in mobile application availability.
2010

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Cloud Computing. Cloud computing services exist along a spectrum from open public to closed private. The next three years will see the
delivery of a range of cloud service approaches that fall between these two extremes. Vendors will offer packaged private cloud
implementations that deliver the vendor's public cloud service technologies (software and/or hardware) and methodologies (i.e., best practices
to build and run the service) in a form that can be implemented inside the consumer's enterprise. Many will also offer management services to
remotely manage the cloud service implementation. Gartner expects large enterprises to have a dynamic sourcing team in place by 2012 that
is responsible for ongoing cloudsourcing decisions and management.
Mobile Applications and Media Tablets. Gartner estimates that by the end of 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich,
mobile commerce providing an ideal environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web. Mobile devices are becoming computers in
their own right, with an astounding amount of processing ability and bandwidth. There are already hundreds of thousands of applications for
platforms like the Apple iPhone, in spite of the limited market (only for the one platform) and need for unique coding.
The quality of the experience of applications on these devices, which can apply location, motion and other context in their behavior, is leading
customers to interact with companies preferentially through mobile devices. This has lead to a race to push out applications as a competitive
tool to improve relationships and gain advantage over competitors whose interfaces are purely browser-based.
Social Communications and Collaboration. Social media can be divided into: (1) Social networking —social profile management
products, such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendster as well as social networking analysis (SNA) technologies that employ
algorithms to understand and utilize human relationships for the discovery of people and expertise. (2) Social collaboration —technologies,
such as wikis, blogs, instant messaging, collaborative office, and crowdsourcing. (3) Social publishing —technologies that assist
communities in pooling individual content into a usable and community accessible content repository such as YouTube and flickr. (4) Social
feedback - gaining feedback and opinion from the community on specific items as witnessed on YouTube, flickr, Digg, Del.icio.us, and
Amazon. Gartner predicts that by 2016, social technologies will be integrated with most business applications. Companies should bring
together their social CRM, internal communications and collaboration, and public social site initiatives into a coordinated strategy.
Video. Video is not a new media form, but its use as a standard media type used in non-media companies is expanding rapidly. Technology
trends in digital photography, consumer electronics, the web, social software, unified communications, digital and Internet-based television
and mobile computing are all reaching critical tipping points that bring video into the mainstream. Over the next three years Gartner believes
that video will become a commonplace content type and interaction model for most users, and by 2013, more than 25 percent of the content
that workers see in a day will be dominated by pictures, video or audio.
Next Generation Analytics. Increasing compute capabilities of computers including mobile devices along with improving connectivity are
enabling a shift in how businesses support operational decisions. It is becoming possible to run simulations or models to predict the future
outcome, rather than to simply provide backward looking data about past interactions, and to do these predictions in real-time to support each
individual business action. While this may require significant changes to existing operational and business intelligence infrastructure, the
potential exists to unlock significant improvements in business results and other success rates.
2011

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Social Analytics. Social analytics describes the process of measuring, analyzing and interpreting the results of interactions and associations
among people, topics and ideas. These interactions may occur on social software applications used in the workplace, in internally or
externally facing communities or on the social web. Social analytics is an umbrella term that includes a number of specialized analysis
techniques such as social filtering, social-network analysis, sentiment analysis and social-media analytics. Social network analysis tools are
useful for examining social structure and interdependencies as well as the work patterns of individuals, groups or organizations. Social
network analysis involves collecting data from multiple sources, identifying relationships, and evaluating the impact, quality or effectiveness of
a relationship.
Context-Aware Computing. Context-aware computing centers on the concept of using information about an end user or object’s
environment, activities connections and preferences to improve the quality of interaction with that end user. The end user may be a customer,
business partner or employee. A contextually aware system anticipates the user's needs and proactively serves up the most appropriate and
customized content, product or service.
Storage Class Memory. Gartner sees huge use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT
systems. It also offers a new layer of the storage hierarchy in servers and client computers that has key advantages — space, heat,
performance and ruggedness among them. Unlike RAM, the main memory in servers and PCs, flash memory is persistent even when power
is removed. In that way, it looks more like disk drives where information is placed and must survive power-downs and reboots. Given the cost
premium, simply building solid state disk drives from flash will tie up that valuable space on all the data in a file or entire volume, while a new
explicitly addressed layer, not part of the file system, permits targeted placement of only the high-leverage items of information that need to
experience the mix of performance and persistence available with flash memory.
Ubiquitous Computing. The work of Mark Weiser and other researchers at Xerox's PARC paints a picture of the coming third wave of
computing where computers are invisibly embedded into the world. As computers proliferate and as everyday objects are given the ability to
communicate with RFID tags and their successors, networks will approach and surpass the scale that can be managed in traditional
centralized ways. This leads to the important trend of imbuing computing systems into operational technology, whether done as calming
technology or explicitly managed and integrated with IT.
Fabric-Based Infrastructure and Computers. A fabric-based computer is a modular form of computing where a system can be aggregated
from separate building-block modules connected over a fabric or switched backplane. In its basic form, a fabric-based computer comprises a
separate processor, memory, I/O, and offload modules (GPU, NPU, etc.) that are connected to a switched interconnect and, importantly, the
software required to configure and manage the resulting system(s).
2011

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Media Tablets and Beyond. Users can choose between various form factors when it comes to mobile computing. No single platform, form
factor or technology will dominate and companies should expect to manage a diverse environment with two to four intelligent clients through
2015. IT leaders need a managed diversity program to address multiple form factors, as well as employees bringing their own smartphones
and tablet devices into the workplace.
Mobile-Centric Applications and Interfaces. The user interface (IU) paradigm in place for more than 20 years is changing. UIs with
windows, icons, menus, and pointers will be replaced by mobile-centric interfaces emphasizing touch, gesture, search, voice and video.
Applications themselves are likely to shift to more focused and simple apps that can be assembled into more complex solutions. These
changes will drive the need for new user interface design skills. By 2015, mobile Web technologies will have advanced sufficiently, so that half
the applications that would be written as native apps in 2011 will instead be delivered as Web apps.
Contextual and Social User Experience. Context-aware computing uses information about an end-user or objects environment, activities,
connections and preferences to improve the quality of interaction with that end-user or object. A contextually aware system anticipates the
user’s needs and proactively serves up the most appropriate and customized content, product or service. Context can be used to link mobile,
social, location, payment and commerce. It can help build skills in augmented reality, model-driven security and ensemble applications.
Through 2013, context aware applications will appear in targeted areas such as location-based services, augmented reality on mobile
devices, and mobile commerce.
Internet of Things. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that describes how the Internet will expand as sensors and intelligence are
added to physical items such as consumer devices or physical assets and these objects are connected to the Internet. The vision and concept
have existed for years, however, there has been an acceleration in the number and types of things that are being connected and in the
technologies for identifying, sensing and communicating. These technologies are reaching critical mass and an economic tipping point over
the next few years. Key elements of the IoT include: Embedded sensors, Image Recognition, Near Field Communication (NFC) payment.
App Stores and Marketplaces. Application stores by Apple and Android provide marketplaces where hundreds of thousands of applications
are available to mobile users. Gartner forecasts that by 2014, there will be more than 70 billion mobile application downloads from app stores
every year. This will grow from a consumer-only phenomena to an enterprise focus. With enterprise app stores, the role of IT shifts from that of
a centralized planner to a market manager providing governance and brokerage services to users and potentially an ecosystem to support
entrepreneurs. Enterprises should use a managed diversity approach to focus on app store efforts and segment apps by risk and value.
2012

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Next-Generation Analytics. Analytics is growing along three key dimensions: From traditional offline analytics to in-line embedded analytics.
This has been the focus for many efforts in the past and will continue to be an important focus for analytics. From analyzing historical data to
explain what happened to analyzing historical and real-time data from multiple systems to simulate and predict the future.
Big Data. The size, complexity of formats and speed of delivery exceeds the capabilities of traditional data management technologies; it
requires the use of new or exotic technologies simply to manage the volume alone. Many new technologies are emerging, with the potential to
be disruptive (e.g., in-memory DBMS). Analytics has become a major driving application for data warehousing, with the use of MapReduce
outside and inside the DBMS, and the use of self-service data marts. One major implication of big data is that in the future users will not be
able to put all useful information into a single data warehouse. Logical data warehouses bringing together information from multiple sources as
needed will replace the single data warehouse model.
In-Memory Computing. Gartner sees huge use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT
systems. In addition, it offers a new layer of the memory hierarchy in servers that has key advantages — space, heat, performance and
ruggedness among them. Besides delivering a new storage tier, the availability of large amounts of memory is driving new application models.
In-memory applications platforms include in-memory analytics, event processing platforms, in-memory application servers, in-memory data
management and in-memory messaging.
Extreme Low-Energy Servers. The adoption of low-energy servers — the radical new systems being proposed, announced and marketed by
mostly new entrants to the server business —will take the buyer on a trip backward in time. These systems are built on low-power processors
typically used in mobile devices. The potential advantage is delivering 30 times or more processors in a particular server unit with lower power
consumption vs. current server approaches. The new approach is well suited for certain non-compute intensive tasks such as map/reduce
workloads or delivery of static objects to a website. However, most applications will require more processing power, and the low-energy server
model potentially increases management costs, undercutting broader use of the approach.
Cloud Computing. Cloud is a disruptive force and has the potential for broad long-term impact in most industries. While the market remains
in its early stages in 2011 and 2012, it will see the full range of large enterprise providers fully engaged in delivering a range of offerings to
build cloud environments and deliver cloud services. Oracle, IBM and SAP all have major initiatives to deliver a broader range of cloud
services over the next two years. As Microsoft continues to expand its cloud offering, and these traditional enterprise players expand offerings,
users will see competition heat up and enterprise-level cloud services increase.
2012

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Mobile Device Battles. Gartner predicts that by 2013 mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide
and that by 2015 over 80 percent of the handsets sold in mature markets will be smartphones. However, only 20 percent of those handsets
are likely to be Windows phones. By 2015 media tablet shipments will reach around 50 percent of laptop shipments and Windows 8 will likely
be in third place behind Google’s Android and Apple iOS operating systems. Windows 8 is Microsoft’s big bet and Windows 8 platform styles
should be evaluated to get a better idea of how they might perform in real-world environments as well as how users will respond.
Mobile Applications and HTML5. The market for tools to create consumer and enterprise facing apps is complex with well over 100 potential
tools vendors. Currently, Gartner separates mobile development tools into several categories. For the next few years, no single tool will be
optimal for all types of mobile application so expect to employ several. Six mobile architectures – native, special, hybrid, HTML 5, Message
and No Client will remain popular. However, there will be a long term shift away from native apps to Web apps as HTML5 becomes more
capable.
Personal Cloud. The personal cloud will gradually replace the PC as the location where individuals keep their personal content, access their
services and personal preferences and center their digital lives. It will be the glue that connects the web of devices they choose to use during
different aspects of their daily lives. The personal cloud will entail the unique collection of services, Web destinations and connectivity that will
become the home of their computing and communication activities. Users will see it as a portable, always-available place where they go for all
their digital needs. In this world no one platform, form factor, technology or vendor will dominate and managed diversity and mobile device
management will be an imperative. The personal cloud shifts the focus from the client device to cloud-based services delivered across
devices.
Enterprise App Stores. Enterprises face a complex app store future as some vendors will limit their stores to specific devices and types of
apps forcing the enterprise to deal with multiple stores, multiple payment processes and multiple sets of licensing terms. By 2014, Gartner
believes that many organizations will deliver mobile applications to workers through private application stores. With enterprise app stores the
role of IT shifts from that of a centralized planner to a market manager providing governance and brokerage services to users and potentially
an ecosystem to support apptrepreneurs.
The Internet of Things. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that describes how the Internet will expand as physical items such as
consumer devices and physical assets are connected to the Internet. Key elements of the IoT which are being embedded in a variety of
mobile devices include embedded sensors, image recognition technologies and NFC payment. As a result, mobile no longer refers only to use
of cellular handsets or tablets. Cellular technology is being embedded in many new types of devices including pharmaceutical containers and
automobiles. Smartphones and other intelligent devices don't just use the cellular network, they communicate via NFC, Bluetooth, LE and Wi-
Fi to a wide range of devices and peripherals, such as wristwatch displays, healthcare sensors, smart posters etc.
2013

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Hybrid IT and Cloud Computing. As staffs have been asked to do more with less, IT departments must play multiple roles in coordinating IT-
related activities, and cloud computing is now pushing that change to another level. A recently conducted Gartner IT services survey revealed
that the internal cloud services brokerage (CSB) role is emerging as IT organizations realize that they have a responsibility to help improve the
provisioning and consumption of inherently distributed, heterogeneous and often complex cloud services for their internal users and external
business partners.
Strategic Big Data. Big Data is moving from a focus on individual projects to an influence on enterprises’ strategic information architecture.
Dealing with data volume, variety, velocity and complexity is forcing changes to many traditional approaches. This realization is leading
organizations to abandon the concept of a single enterprise data warehouse containing all information needed for decisions. Instead they are
moving towards multiple systems, including content management, data warehouses, data marts and specialized file systems tied together with
data services and metadata, which will become the "logical" enterprise data warehouse.
Actionable Analytics. Analytics is increasingly delivered to users at the point of action and in context. With the improvement of performance
and costs, IT leaders can afford to perform analytics and simulation for every action taken in the business. The mobile client linked to cloud-
based analytic engines and big data repositories potentially enables use of optimization and simulation everywhere and every time. This new
step provides simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, to empower even more decision flexibility at the time and place of every
business process action.
In Memory Computing. In memory computing (IMC) can also provide transformational opportunities. The execution of certain-types of hours-
long batch processes can be squeezed into minutes or even seconds allowing these processes to be provided in the form of real-time or near
real-time services that can be delivered to internal or external users in the form of cloud services.
Integrated Ecosystems. The market is undergoing a shift to more integrated systems and ecosystems and away from loosely coupled
heterogeneous approaches. Driving this trend is the user desire for lower cost, simplicity, and more assured security. Driving the trend for
vendors the ability to have more control of the solution stack and obtain greater margin in the sale as well as offer a complete solution stack in
a controlled environment, but without the need to provide any actual hardware. The trend is manifested in three levels. Appliances combine
hardware and software and software and services are packaged to address and infrastructure or application workload. Cloud-based
marketplaces and brokerages facilitate purchase, consumption and/or use of capabilities from multiple vendors and may provide a foundation
for ISV development and application runtime. In the mobile world, vendors including Apple, Google and Microsoft drive varying degrees of
control across and end-to-end ecosystem extending the client through the apps.
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15
A strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or
become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging
technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early
adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years.
These technologies impact the organization's long-term plans, programs and
initiatives.

Top 10 Strategic
Technology Trends
16
Mobile Device Diversity and Management. Through 2018, the growing variety of devices, computing styles, user contexts and interaction
paradigms will make "everything everywhere" strategies unachievable. The unexpected consequence of bring your own device (BYOD)
programs is a doubling or even tripling of the size of the mobile workforce. This is placing tremendous strain on IT and Finance organizations.
Mobile Apps and Applications. Gartner predicts that through 2014, improved JavaScript performance will begin to push HTML5 and the
browser as a mainstream enterprise application development environment. Gartner recommends that developers focus on creating expanded
user interface models including richer voice and video that can connect people in new and different ways. Apps will continue to grow while
applications will begin to shrink. Apps are smaller, and more targeted, while a larger application is more comprehensive. Devlopers should
look for ways to snap together apps to create larger applications.
The Internet of Everything. The Internet is expanding beyond PCs and mobile devices into enterprise assets such as field equipment, and
consumer items such as cars and televisions. The problem is that most enterprises and technology vendors have yet to explore the
possibilities of an expanded internet and are not operationally or organizationally ready. Imagine digitizing the most important products,
services and assets. The combination of data streams and services created by digitizing everything creates four basic usage models –
Manage; Monetize; Operate; Extend.
Hybrid Cloud and IT as Service Broker. Bringing together personal clouds and external private cloud services is an imperative. Enterprises
should design private cloud services with a hybrid future in mind and make sure future integration/interoperability is possible. Hybrid cloud
services can be composed in many ways, varying from relatively static to very dynamic. Managing this composition will often be the
responsibility of something filling the role of cloud service broker (CSB), which handles aggregation, integration and customization of services.
Enterprises that are expanding into hybrid cloud computing from private cloud services are taking on the CSB role. More deployment
compositions will emerge as CSBs evolve (for example, private infrastructure as a service [IaaS] offerings that can leverage external service
providers based on policy and utilization).
Cloud/Client Architecture. Cloud/client computing models are shifting. In the cloud/client architecture, the client is a rich application running
on an Internet-connected device, and the server is a set of application services hosted in an increasingly elastically scalable cloud computing
platform. The cloud is the control point and system or record and applications can span multiple client devices. The client environment may be
a native application or browser-based; the increasing power of the browser is available to many client devices, mobile and desktop alike.
Robust capabilities in many mobile devices, the increased demand on networks, the cost of networks and the need to manage bandwidth use
creates incentives, in some cases, to minimize the cloud application computing and storage footprint, and to exploit the intelligence and
storage of the client device.
2014

Top 10 Strategic
Technology Trends
17
The Era of Personal Cloud. The personal cloud era will mark a power shift away from devices toward services. In this new world, the
specifics of devices will become less important for the organization to worry about, although the devices will still be necessary. Users will use
a collection of devices, with the PC remaining one of many options, but no one device will be the primary hub. Rather, the personal cloud will
take on that role. Access to the cloud and the content stored or shared from the cloud will be managed and secured, rather than solely
focusing on the device itself.
Software Defined Anything. Software-defined anything (SDx) is a collective term that encapsulates the growing market momentum for
improved standards for infrastructure programmability and data center interoperability driven by automation inherent to cloud computing,
DevOps and fast infrastructure provisioning. As a collective, SDx also incorporates various initiatives like OpenStack, OpenFlow, the Open
Compute Project and Open Rack, which share similar visions. As individual SDx technology silos evolve and consortiums arise, look for
emerging standards and bridging capabilities to benefit portfolios, but challenge individual technology suppliers to demonstrate their
commitment to true interoperability standards within their specific domains.
Web-Scale IT. Web-scale IT is a pattern of global-class computing that delivers the capabilities of large cloud service providers within an
enterprise IT setting by rethinking positions across several dimensions. Large cloud services providers such as Amazon, Google, Facebook,
etc., are re-inventing the way IT in which IT services can be delivered. Their capabilities go beyond scale in terms of sheer size to also
include scale as it pertains to speed and agility. If enterprises want to keep pace, then they need to emulate the architectures, processes and
practices of these exemplary cloud providers. Gartner calls the combination of all of these elements Web-scale IT. Web-scale IT looks to
change the IT value chain in a systemic fashion. Data centers are designed with an industrial engineering perspective that looks for every
opportunity to reduce cost and waste.
Smart Machines. Through 2020, the smart machine era will blossom with a proliferation of contextually aware, intelligent personal assistants,
smart advisors (such as IBM Watson), advanced global industrial systems and public availability of early examples of autonomous vehicles.
The smart machine era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT. New systems that begin to fulfill some of the earliest visions for what
information technologies might accomplish — doing what we thought only people could do and machines could not —are now finally
emerging.
3-D Printing. Worldwide shipments of 3D printers are expected to grow 75 percent in 2014 followed by a near doubling of unit shipments in
2015. While very expensive “additive manufacturing” devices have been around for 20 years, the market for devices ranging from $50,000 to
$500, and with commensurate material and build capabilities, is nascent yet growing rapidly. The consumer market hype has made
organizations aware of the fact 3D printing is a real, viable and cost-effective means to reduce costs.
2014

Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends 2007-2014 - Gartner

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Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends 2007-2014 - Gartner