Lucky seven for CIOs predicted by Gartner
Researchers earmark major business IT projects for the next three years and beyond
People are going to want to become more and more connected digitally, according to Gartner
Gartner has announced what it believes will be the top seven IT projects for CIOs to address between now and 2013.
According to Stephen Prentice, vice president and Gartner Fellow, we are increasingly living, playing and working in a digital world.
“From 60 billion smart devices in 2010, there will be more than 200 billion in 2020,” he predicted. “In 2012, the internet will be 75 times larger than it was in 2002, and if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world (after China and India). Device and data proliferation is a reality that cannot be escaped.”
Emerging markets around human augmentation and wireless power devices will become $1bn (£618m) markets globally by 2020, he added.
The top seven trends are:
*IT/operational technology alignment – Gartner says that inadequate software management of operational technology (OT) systems is bound to destroy one top Global 100 company by 2013.
The benefits from streamlined budgets, coordinated planning, consistent technology architectural decisions and maximising technology purchasing power will prove compelling.
*Business gets social – Even by 2015, 80 per cent of organisations will lack a coherent approach for dealing with information from social media networks and the like, says Gartner.
*Pattern-based strategy - Through 2015, pattern-seeking technology will be the fastest-growing intelligence investment among the most successful Global 2000, according to Gartner.
A pattern-based strategy provides a framework to proactively seek, model and adapt to leading indicators, often termed ‘weak’ signals that form patterns in the market. “We have found that senior business and IT leaders see lack of information shareability as a barrier to growth,” Prentice said.
*Cloud computing - By 2016, all Global 2000 companies will use public cloud services.
Cloud computing represents a shift in the relationship between the providers and consumers of IT.
*Context-aware computing - By 2016, one-third of worldwide mobile consumer marketing will be context awareness-based, says Gartner, taking advantage of location and time to “augment” reality. About $150bn of global telecom spending will shift from services to applications by 2012, with the global market for context-aware services reaching $215bn by this time. “Unlocking this potential will be one of the next major challenges for IT,” claims Gartner. “For example, we expect 75 per cent of new search installations to include a social search element.”
*Sustainability - By 2016, sustainability will be the fastest-growing enterprise compliance expense worldwide, according to Gartner.
*Balancing cost and innovation with risk and governance - New ways to stimulate growth in revenue, jobs and industries will be sought, but alongside continuing cost and value optimisation as well as risk and regulatory compliance. Gartner also foresees a new emphasis on business-change governance.
Ken McGee, vice president and Gartner Fellow, said CIOs will need to begin implementing these technologies within three years.
“We are reaching these observations by exploring future IT growth and future adoption projections upon demand,” McGee said. “We are looking at emerging business and societal trends.
“We expect to see more deployment of existing technologies in new and innovative ways, and fewer genuinely new technologies emerging in the mainstream, as we are now starting to see the early indications of precursor and trigger technologies for th e next wave of technology, which is likely to run from about 2025 through until 2080.”
Gartner made the predictions at this year's Symposium, held globally in a range of locations.