Gartner Trends @ ITxpo

Billions of dollars are spent each year by these major technology firms. Executives from each of the the R&D groups spoke about some of the new technlogies that are being explored.

Rich Friedrich of HP talked location-based services and context-aware services. Their work on the blending of virtual and actual worlds in location-based services has evolved into Mediascape. Context-aware and sensor-based services resulted in a program called CeNSE: The Central Nervous System for the Earth where one trillion nanoscale sensors and actuators will need the equvalent of 1000 Internets to collect data. They’re working with other large global companies like BP, Brinks, and others to use the data those companies are already collecting as part of their primary business.

David Douglas of Sun discussed improvements in microprocessors beyond what we’re seing now. He talked about “proximity communications” – a capacitor that has charger/amplifiers that connect two silicon chips by putting them in close proximity to each other with a special connector enabling them to work together doubling the power.

Guido Jouret of Cisco talked about their “Health Presence Pods” which enables a patient at a remote location to be diagnosed by a doctor in another location. The pod has various types of technology like an oversize screen, privacy, and medical devices like a heart monitor, blood pressure machine, stethoscope, etc. Cisco has deployed these within their company with great success. Their staff say that the privacy and functionality makes it feel like the doctor is right there with you. Other uses of these “presence pods” could be legal depositions from a distance, interviews with prisoners (who otherwise would be very costly to transport), and others.

Steve Hoover of Xerox showed examples of reusable paper. In the same way that eye glasses can be treated to turn into sunglasses when they are exposed to UV rays of the sun, paper can be treated and then printed on with UVLED printers, or written on with UVLED pens. The paper can then be used over and over hundreds of times without waste. Paper cost may end up being 3 times the cost of normal paper, but with its reusability, it will more than make up for the additional cost. He also talked about a digital mailroom where paper mail is scanned and distibuted digitally with meta data captured making e-discovery and other access much more efficient.

One last piece of parting advice from Guido Jouret of Cisco was this:

“Implement social networking and collaboration within the enterprise, and use video in all its forms for everything.”

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.

One of my favorite sessions at Gartner is the discussion on the top 10 disruptive technologies. In determining which technologies make the list of most disruptive, the research analysts are looking at how high the degree of impact will be, how broad the degree of impact will be, and the timing of the impact. I believe there may be a two more factors in their analysis, but they neglected to mention them in the session. I’ll do a bit more digging to find them. Based on their analysis, the following list was determined:

Top 10 Disruptive Technologies:

1. Multicore and Hybrids – implications on operating systems, software, software speeds, operational impact, and so much more.
2. Social Networks and Social Software – links, discussions, comments, ratings, bookmarks, tags, friends lists, refinements, references, rich user profiles, etc.
3. User Interface – organic light-emitting diode displays, digital paper and billboards, holographic and 3D, VRML to X3D, virtual keyboards, smart fabric, gesture recognition, etc.
4. Cloud Computing and Cloud/Web Platforms – a style of computing in which massively scalable IT-enabled capabilities are provided “as a service” across the Internet to multiple external customers.
5. Web Mashups – Will change the way users consume services and the way companies provide them. See Gartner prediction in earlier post below.
6. Ubiquitous Computing – We’ve gone from thousands of people per computer in the 1960s, and we’re heading toward thouands of computers per person in th future.
7. Contextual Computing – WYNIWYG – Gartner Predicts:  By 2012, context-enriched serviceswill impact a $215 billion/year B2C opportunity.
8. Augmented Reality – overlaying informaiton onto our real world
9. Semantic Technologies (7-10 years out at least) – moving intelligence from applications to data – having richer metadata about information that’s already there.
10. Virtualization – beyond consolidation – DR and BizCon – Software distribution.

What now?  CIOs, enterprise architects, and software developers should…

Today:

• Esablish a formal mechanism to identify, analye and plan for potentially disruptive technologies.
• Develop a strategy for social networking inside and outside the enterprise in partnership with sales, marketing, HR, digital natives, and other folks who have a stake in building communities of interest.

Near Future (next 12 months):

• Demand that your technology providers explain how clou computing will affect their offering and pricing strategies.
• Establish enlightened policies for employee activity in public social networks.
• Position to take advantage of the disruptive potential of virualization.

Longer Term:

• Begin bringing in the islands of semantics and context together in a federated standards-based framework.

TAGS: Disruption Technology, Emerging Trends

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

3D printers are becoming more available, though only a few new business are beginning to use them. Z Corp is a corporation trying to leverage this new technology for 3D modeling. Architectural models seem to be an easy target for this type of output. Check out the Z Corp video that explains the process. I actually got to see and touch some of the output from the 3D printing devices. If felt like a sand mold, and it was hard to believe that human hands did not touch the model in any way, and the output was from one pass of the printer. Check these out:

TAGS: 3D Printers, 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

After a four-hour flight our plane’s landing in Las Vegas was perfect. Sunny, breezy weather in the upper 70s offered a very pleasant welcome. I had just enough time to catch a shuttle to the hotel and make the 3pm meeting on IT and Higher Education. Problem was, as soon as I boarded the shuttle bus, it was smashed in the rear by a runaway bus. Crunch!, went the bus as it lurched forward, still parked at the curb of the airport.  The damage to the shuttle was minimal, but the damage to our schedules was not.

  Nearly two hours later - after EMTs, police reports, and insurance reports - we are finally on a new bus and on our way to the hotel. The session has ended and I’m off to a smashing beginning.

Welcome to my blog where I will document my trek to Las Vegas for the Spring 2008 Gartner ITxpo Symposium on emerging trends. The symposium begins this Sunday, April 6 and ends on Thursday, April 10.

TAGS: Gartner, Emerging Trends