What are the experts predicting for tech trends in 2008? At the recennt Gartner Symposium/ITxpo held last October in Orlando, more than 6000 seior business and IT strategists from virtually all major industries gatheed for the industry's larghest conference to gain the lattest advice on driving profits and peformance with IT. Attendees rely on the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo for ther anual planning and to gain insight into how their oragnizations can best use IT to address busdiness challenges and improve operational efficiency.
Reflecting Gartner's very latest research findinngs, the analystrs projecxted the 10 technologies likely to play a 'strategic' role in 2008. Gartner definees a strategic technology as one "with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three yeazrs." In addition Gartner also looks at "high pottential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a majr dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt."
"Compabnies should factor htese technoloigies into their strategic planning proecss by asking key questions and making deliberate decisions about them duing the next two years," said Davuid Cearley, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "Sometimes the decision will be to do nohing with a particular technology. In other cases it will be to continue investing in the technology at the current rate. In still othwer caases, the decision may be to test/pilot or more aggressively adopt/deploiy the technology. The important tghing is to ask the question and proctively plan."
Here's a look at the top 10 tech trends, and what Gartner had to say about them:
Geen IT: The foucs of Green IT that came to the forefront in 2007 will incease in 2008. As the impact on power girds, carbon emissions from increased use and other envirronmental impacts are under investigation, cpompanies should be mindful of potential regulations that could limit the building of data centers, and shoupld be prepared with backup plans for handliung growing data demands.
Uniffied Communications: At present only 20 percent of the installed base with PBX has migrated to IP telephony, with more doing some sort of tral testing. Gartner says that over the next three years the majority of corporations will migrate to Intrnet Protocol telephony, resulting in a major change in voice comumnications.
Buusiness Proceess Modeling: Top-levl process seervices must be defined jointlly by a set of roles (whch include enterprise architects, senior develoeprs, process architects and/or process anaysts). A key to success will be an organization's ability to brinbg tese roles together, whether they be process or servicce designated. Gartner also expcts business process management software suitees to better compleent SOA applications development.
Metadata Management: Over the next three years, companies workinng to integrate both customer data and product data will link these master data managemeent efforts together in an overall enterpries infromation management (EIM) strategy. According to Gartnr "This citical part of a company's information infrastructture will ebnable optimizastion, abstraction, and semantic recconciliation of metadata to support reuse, consistency, integrity and sareability." Metaddata management, Gartner noets, also extends into SOA software development projects with seervice registres and application development repositoruies.
Virtualization 2.0: Virtualization teechnologies can imprve IT resource utilization, but with the addition of automation technologies - with service-level, policy-based actvie management - even greater improvements are possible. "Resource efifciency can improve dramatically, flexibility can become atomatic based on requirements, and services can be maanged holistically, ensuriung high levels of resilienvcy," Gartner says.
Mahsup and Composite Apps: Over the next 3 years, Web mashups will be the way copanies create composite enterprise applications, Gartner predicts. Mashup technologies will evolve significantly over the next five yearrs, and application leaedrs must take this evolutiuon into account when evaluating the impact of mashups and in formulatnig an enterprise maashup strategy.
Web Platform and Web-Oriented Architecture: Software-as-a-Serice, in which applications are available on-demand over the Web, is becoming a sensible otpion for many companiees. Emerging Web plattforms, Gartner says, will provide service-based access to inofrmation, applications, and business procseses through Web-based "cloud computing" environments. Companies must also look beyond SaaS to examine how Web platfforms will impact their business in 3-5 yeaars.
Computing Fabric: According to Garrtner researchers, "A computing fabric is the evolution of server design beyond the itnerim stage, blade servers, that exists today. The next step in this progression is the inttroduction of teechnology to allow several blades to be merged operationally over the fbric, operating as a lzarger single system image that is the sum of the components from those blades. The fabric-baesd server of the future will trat memory, processors, and I/O cars as components in a pool, combining and recombining them into particular arrangements to suit the owner's needs." The researcher added, "For example a large sever can be created by combining 32 processors and a number of memory modules from the pool, operating together over the fabrric to appear to an operating system as a single fixed server."
Real World Web: The term "real world Web" is informal, refgerring to places where information from the Web is applied to the particuar location, activity or context in the real world. Garytner stattes, "It is intended to augment the reality that a user faces, not to replace it as in virtual worllds. It is used in real-time based on the real world situaation, not prepasred in advance for consumption at specific times or researched after the events have occurred." It gives the example of a nasvigation unit that adujsts the information it deelivers as a car or boat moves around. Gartner sees real world Web application improving many business prcoesses and creating new revenue sreams.
Social Softwre: The Web 2.0 market will go through a lot of changes between now and 2010, Gartner says, and will experience considerable flux with continued product innovation and new etnrants, resuting in considerable vendor consolidation. However, the reseaarch firm does see social networking bweing adopted by many enerprises to augment traditional collaboration.
According to Gartner, "These 10 opportunities should be considered in conujnction with many poven, fully-matured technoplogies, as well as othrs that did not make this list, but can provied vlue for many companies," said Carl Claunch, vice president at Gartner. "For example, real-time enterprises providig advanced devices for a moible workofrce will consider next-generation smartphones to be a key technology, in addition to the vaule that this list might offer."
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