Gartner reveals the top 10 technology trends it believes are "strategic for most organisations" in 2013-- the top technologies IT leaders should factor in their plans for the near future.
The analyst defines a "strategic technology" as one with the potential for significant impact on enterprise in the next 3 years. A strategic technology may represent a mature technology ripe with potential, as well as an emerging opportunity for early adopters.
All the technologies listed emerge from what Gartner calls the "nexus of converging forces"-- social, mobile, cloud and information.
Mobile Device Battles: According to Gartner mobile phones will overtake PCs as most common global internet access device by 2013, and by 2015 80% of handsets sold in mature markets will be smartphones. By 2015 tablet shipments will reach around 50% of laptop shipments, with Windows 8 placing 3rd behind Android and iOS. This means the end of the Windows-dominated PC era, in the face of a post-PC environment catering for different form factors and operating systems.
Mobile Applications and HTML5: Developers face a complex mobile app-development tool market, one Gartner divides in 6 architectures (native, special, hybrid, HTML 5, Message and No Client). In the long term, development will shift towards HTML5-based web apps, while developers will also need to learn how to deliver cross platform touch-optimised apps.
Personal Cloud: Gartner says the personal cloud will replace the PC even in the consumer sphere, with the internet acting as the glue connecting many different devices. As a result, focus will shift from client devices to cloud-based cross-device services.
Enterprise App Stores: By 2014 most organisations will deliver mobile apps to employees through private app stores, with IT taking the role of market manager delivering services, if not an ecosystem.
Internet of Things (IoT): Key IoT elements are already embedded in mobile devices, such as embedded sensors, image recognition technologies and NFC payments, while cellular technology is being embedded in anything from pharmaceutical containers to automobiles. Thus, everything is connected, be it with Bluetooth, LE, NFC or wifi.
Hybrid IT and Cloud Computing: IT departments now have to play multiple roles, coordinating IT-related activity, with the cloud pushing such change to another level.
Strategic Big Data: Multiple systems are replacing the single enterprise data warehouse, with content management, data warehouses, data marts and specialized file systems tied together with data services and metadata, creating the "logical" data warehouse.
Actionable Analytics: Organisations can afford to perform analytics and simulation for every action the business takes, while mobile devices connected to cloud-based analytic engines allow for analytics on the go.
In Memory computing (IMC): Squeezes the execution of certain hours-long batch processes into minutes (or seconds), allowing the delivery of such processes as (near) real-time services over the cloud.
Integrated Ecosystems: The market is shifting from loosely coupled heterogeneous systems to more integrated systems and ecosystems, bringing lower costs, simplicity and more assured security to customers. Such an approach also brings tighter solution stack control and greater sales margins to vendors, without the need to provide actual hardware. Gartner predicts virtual appliances (software delivered as hardware) will gain in popularity over the next 5 years.
Go Gartner Identifies Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013
