Commodity cloud to threaten top outsourcers

The rise of industrialised services and the marginalisation of the CIO are just two of Gartner's top trends for 2012 and beyond

Commoditised cloud services and mobile computing platforms will enjoy astronomic growth over the next few years, if Gartner's annual rundown of top industry predictions is to be believed.

The analyst's compilation of the 11 trends that will have the most impact on the tech industry next year and beyond is peppered with references to mobility, connectivity and the cloud. Below we run through each prediction in turn.

The growth of low-cost cloud services
Gartner projects that, by 2015, cheap, industrialised IT services will eat into the sales of the world's top outsourcing providers to the tune of 15 per cent. Services players are urged to begin investing in and building a strategy around commodity cloud services. The research firm compares the effect low-cost services will have on the IT industry to that experienced in the transport world following the boom in no-frills airlines.

The social networking bubble is soon to burst
Hysteria among the investment community around consumer-focused social networks will dissipate in 2013, predicts Gartner. The same thing will happen for enterprise social software companies the following year.

The analyst points out that smaller players trying to make waves in the enterprise social network space are "struggling to reach critical mass". Consolidation activity is picking up, adds Gartner, as top vendors like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google and VMware take aim at the market.

Enterprise email will go mobile
The research house predicts that, in five years' time, at least half of all enterprise workers will chiefly access their email through a browser, tablet or mobile device. Meanwhile, email system manufacturers will increasingly construct mobile clients for a varying range of devices.

The mobile device management market is projected to explode, while IT suppliers will routinely be tasked with providing technologies including messaging, conferencing and social networking. "The pace of change will be breathtaking," said Gartner.

Apps will also go mobile
The analyst forecasts that, by 2015, app development projects focused on smartphones and tablets will outnumber those targeted at PCs by four to one. Some 90 per cent of net new growth in device adoption over that period is projected to come from smartphones and tablets.

Security is a prerequisite for cloud adoption...
In five years' time, two fifths of companies will demand proof of independent security tests before investing in any form of cloud service, forecasts Gartner. Certifications from inspectors will become "a viable alternative or complement to third-party testing".

...but that won't stop top enterprises migrating
Over the next five years, more than half of the globe's 1000 biggest organisations will have put at least some customer-sensitive data into a public cloud environment, predicts the analyst. The economic sticky wicket will drive firms to find ways to cut operating costs and achieve efficiencies through streamlining.

Gartner claims that more than one in five top enterprises has "already begun to selectively store their customer-sensitive data in a hybrid architecture".

CIOs will begin to lose control
Gartner projects that in four years' time, more than a third of enterprise IT spending will be managed outside of the IT department. Many initiatives will be considered as business projects, rather than tech projects, with the relevant departmental managers taking control.

Meanwhile, the consumerisation of IT will further erode the significance of the CIO as "individual employees no longer need technology to be contextualised for them by an IT department".

The Americas will take a bite out of Asian manufacturing
Over the next couple of years, a fifth of goods currently sourced from Asia for consumption in the US will be sourced closer to home. Gartner forecasts that "most products are candidates to be relocated" to the US, Canada or Latin America. Rising oil prices and wages in offshore countries have meant that many firms are not achieving the desired cost savings by sourcing from Asia, claims Gartner.

The cost of cybercrime will rise
The financial impact of online crime is forecast by Gartner to grow by 10 per cent each year, with new vulnerabilities being found regularly. Changes in IT delivery methods and the proliferation of employee-owned devices will further complicate the threat landscape for IT chiefs. Attackers will also develop targeted and "innovative attack paths".

Energy comes at a cost
By 2015 80 per cent of cloud services will include an energy surcharge, forecasts the analyst. The pressure on margins applied by a hotly competitive market will lead the majority of cloud service providers to include energy as a variable cost in customer contracts.

Big firms don't get big data
Gartner asserts that, over the next four years, more than 85 per cent of Fortune 500 companies will still not be "effectively exploiting big data for competitive advantage". Smart devices and greater connectivity are increasing the volume of data available to enterprises, but many fail to understand the need to collect and analyse it "in a timely fashion", claims the research house.

Daryl Plummer, managing vice president at Gartner, claimed that, as the relationship between the IT department and the wider enterprise changes, coordination will be the watchword for businesses looking to forge ahead next year.

"Any organisation that wishes to accelerate in 2012 must establish in itself a significant discipline of coordinating distributed activities," Plummer said. "They must establish relationship management as a key skill and train their people accordingly. The reason for this is that the lack of control can only be combated through coordinative activities.

"The IT organisation of the future must coordinate those who have the money, those who deliver the services, those who secure the data, and those consumers who demand to set their own pace for the use of IT," added Plummer.