Gartner Trends @ ITxpo

Wireless performance and latency have improved and will continue to do so over the coming years. Gartner analyst states:

• LTE has the potential to unify CDMA and GSM, and has defined a path to LTE-A, which will be ITU-4G-compliant. LTE will start deployment arund 2010 and should be able t deliver a reliable 10/10 experience (10Mbps at 10 ms latency, which is sufficient for a wide range of apps).
• WiMax will remain a relative niche for the next 3 years, serving more as a metro-area fill-in network than a natiowide compeitor to cellular. WiMax client devices will be relatively scarce compared with cellular devices. WiMax may be more attractive in emerging markts where wired broadband is weaker.
• 802.11n will slowly replace 100 Mbps wired Ethernet to enable “all-wireless” homes and offices.

Nokia’s Symbian OS is expected to have the large part of the world market due to all the emerging markets over the coming years.

TAGS:  Gartner, Wireless, Mobile, IT Trends

Several top Gartner analysts offered opening comments at Gartner Fall ITxpo and Symposium in Orlando, FL this morning. Failing financial markets was the hot topic as it impacts all aspects of the IT business. As budgets tighten IT must innovate, cut, manage capacity, focus core services, and invest in infrastructure needed for the long haul. Modernization is also a focus as much IT infrastructure is dated. Leveraging IT staff and customer ideas will enable innovation in the face of many challenges. IT businesses must understand their operational environment and they must deliver real tangible business value. IT leaders who are courageous will carry the industry forward.

TAGS: Gartner, IT in 2008,

The Emerging Trends Radar Screen is another way to look at many of the topics we’ve been hearing about at the conference. Looking at the graphic, it’s easy to see how the shifts in technology move into these emerging technologies over time.

Some of the items highlighted by Jackie Fenn were:

For the Web, it’s a move from Web 2.0 to the Real World Web. Web 2.0 is about participation, communities, rich user interfaces, ratings, tagging, and social interaction. Real World Web is about context (WYNIWYG), is proactive, has identity/avatar management, has the environment as an interface, where tagging improves machine access and it’s all supported by the network, wireless, sensors, location, and semantic technologies.

3D Printing is also on the emerging trends radar. The printers are reasonably priced from $20,000 down to $5,000. See more information in an earlier post below.

Computers are beginning to look like items in our environments instead of the typical computer keyboard, CPU, and monitor we’ve seen for decades. Surface computing with touch interfaces (like iPhone) and gesture interfaces (think Wii) are the future for many computing technologies.

Mobile Robots that do household chores (think iRobot Roomba) and specific task work (like carrying and lifting, emergency response and rescue). Robots are being developed by the Army to rescue wounded soldiers from battle – a very dangerous job. There are also opportunities for robots in healthcare industries (like InTouch Health’s mobile videoconferencing robots for physicians).

Emerging Power:  solar power, shoes and other forms of scavenging power. Supercapacitors, microcombustion and microturbines are also on the radar.

When Steve Prentice, VP and Gartner Fellow, spent a day at Vanderbilt in October, 2006, he spoke with many different constituencies about the consumerization of IT and its expected impact on the infrastructure and culture at Vanderbilt. Prentice also spoke a lot about digital natives – those who were born with a mouse in their hand – those who can “triple-tap” text messages on their cell phones without looking at it.

In keeping with IT cultural trends, Prentice spoke today about the move to socialization of IT. And again he spoke about digital natives, but also spoke quite a bit about “Generation V“. The “V” stands for “virtual”, which is they way this generation wants to obtain their information, products and services, communication, and relationships.

The socialization of IT is all about communities. We all understand that communities are groups of people who share common characteristics or interests who believe they are distinct from the larger society as a whole. But Prentice suggests that large communities are really made up of many smaller communities. He mentioned Dunbar’s Number, which suggests that communities become self-limiting above 150 individuas.

Most of you have heard of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Craig’s List. You are also likely aware of rating systems where individuals rate their interactions with you or your website. Rating systems are everywhere on the net and that’s because they work. The community wants to influence the reputation of those with whom they interact. For companies and businesses, social validation and online reputation are everything. Newer generations don’t care about corporate marketing. They want to see what other customers think. Imagine students who think about coming to Vanderbilt. Most of their parents look at the brochures and website to learn more about the school, but the students want to hear from other students how they rate Vanderbilt and what they think about it.

Prentice mentions that online gaming systems should also be considered social networking sites. Some companies are starting to use online gaming for training purposes because the environments are so rich and full featured. Those of us who like to play online games now and again, understand these concepts and are glad others are beginning to realize their potential. The fact is, there are over 73 million gamers in the world, their average age is 27, and they play an average of 22 hours a week.

TAGS: Digital Natives, Generation V, Emerging Trends

Cloud computing is going to be a hot topic at Gartner this year. They will be researching, discussing, and forecasting many different angles of how this transition from products to services will affect the business of IT as well as the services of IT. As businesses look at the many possibilities with cloud computing, it is also important to evaluate the issues of intellectual property, e-discovery, and security when deciding how and when to use these new services in the cloud. Gartner hasn’t yet thoroughly reviewed those issues, but their early look at emerging trends are below.

The Trends:   

• Consumer demand for web-delivered services is growing.
• SaaS is only the beginning. Soon everything will be a service.
• Internal private clouds will proliferate quickly. Internal service delivery will guarantee safety.
• The cloud is already upsetting technology sales models.
• The cloud will upset economic models as well.

The Implications:  

• Vendors will be forced to introduce cloud platforms – even if they aren’t ready.
• User customers will have to learn to manage service contracts rather than product licenses.

CIOs, BUSINESS LEADERS, VENDORS and CONSUMERS should:   Today:  

• Start cataloguing which cloud services are available (from Amazon to Zoho), and consider what they mean to you or your customers’ interests.
• Direct emerging technology teams to evaluate cloud computing and Web/cloud platform technologies, and explore various adoption scenarios.

Near Future (next 12 months):  

• Start evaluating your technology legacy and how modernization would affect it.
• Demand that your technology providers explain how Web/cloud platform models will affect their offerings and pricing strategies.
• Determine whether the cloud ultimately will be robust enough to meet your business goals.

 Finally, with the industrialization of IT as companies offer cloud computing services, impact in the creation of big data centers and increases in mass production are expected.

TAGS: Cloud Computing, Gartner, Emerging Trends

The keynote address focused on emerging trends and looking to the future. Context driven networks will connect us in new and more meaningful ways than the bandwidth-focused networks of today. The idea is no longer WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get), but now we look for WYNIWYG (What You NEED Is What You Get)! Networks will be able to anticipate your needs and make information available to you when you need it. For instance, if your calendar knows where you are supposed to be, and your GPS in your car or cell phone knows where you are, these devices will work together to get you the information you need to make it to your meeting. Federation will be an important part in enabling these devices communicate to you.

Another example is being researched by the EPA. Imagine being able to determine the health of the world at any given time. By placing sensors in our cell phones that determine the air quality around them; or by placing sensors in the boots of fly fishermen who stand in streams measuring water quality; the EPA may one day be able to see information about the environment on an ongoing basis that they’ve never had before.

Mass collaboration means more data is hitting the Internet than ever before. A quote I read in the most recent EDUCAUSE magazine (March/April 2008, p. 13) is, “Data is the pollution problem in the information age in the same way that pollution was the pollution problem in the industrial age.” Data is everywhere. How we capture what we need and discard what we don’t, will enable us to be more productive as a community.

Gartner prediction:  By 2012 mashups will become crictical to business success for 80% of businesses.

• Connect
• Globalize
• Industrialize
• Innovate
• Socialize
• Advance

These are our directives from Gartner.

TAGS: Gartner, Emerging Trends