Gartner this morning unveiled its list of predictions for the IT sector for 2012 and beyond. If everything they say happens, the IT landscape is going to look a lot different than it does now. For one thing, the weather will be...cloudier. Gartner also expects that the bubble in social networking will burst by 2013, and they see off-shore manufacturing coming back home. (Or at least closer.)
- By 2015, low-cost cloud services will cannibalize up to 15 percent of top outsourcing players' revenue.
"The projected $1 trillion IT services market is at the beginning of a phase of further disruption, similar to the one the low-cost airlines have brought in the transportation industry."
- In 2013, the investment bubble will burst for consumer social networks, and for enterprise social software companies in 2014.
"Vendors in the consumer social network space are competing with each other at a rate and pace that are unusually aggressive, even in the technology market...While substantial excitement will be raised by private firms going public, valuations of smaller independent vendors will diminish as recognition sets in that the opportunities for market differentiation and fast growth has eroded."
- By 2016, at least 50 percent of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile client instead of a desktop client.
"While the rise in popularity of mobile devices and the growing comfort with browser use for enterprise applications preordains a richer mix of email clients and access mechanisms, the pace of change over the next four years will be breathtaking."
- By 2015, mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1.
"Smartphones and tablets represent more than 90 percent of the new net growth in device adoption for the coming four years, and increasing application platform capability across all classes of mobile phones is spurring a new frontier of innovation, particularly where mobile capabilities can be integrated with location, presence and social information to enhance the usefulness."
- By 2016, 40 percent of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service.
"While enterprises are evaluating the potential cloud benefits in terms of management simplicity, economies of scale and workforce optimization, it is equally critical that they carefully evaluate cloud services for their ability to resist security threats and attacks."
- At year-end 2016, more than 50 percent of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud.
"With the current global economy facing financial pressure, organizations are compelled to reduce operational costs and streamline their efficiency. Responding to this imperative, it is estimated that more than 20 percent of organizations have already begun to selectively store their customer-sensitive data in a hybrid architecture that is a combined deployment of their on-premises solution with a private and/or public cloud provider in 2011."
- By 2015, 35 percent of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department's budget.
"Next generation digital enterprises are being driven by a new wave of business managers and individual employees who no longer need technology to be contextualized for them by an IT department."
- By 2014, 20 percent of Asia-sourced finished goods and assemblies consumed in the U.S. will shift to the Americas.
"Political, environmental, economic and supply chain risks are causing many companies serving the U.S. market to shift sources of supply from Asia to the Americas, including Latin America, Canada and the U.S. Except in cases where there is a unique manufacturing process or product intellectual property, most products are candidates to be relocated. Escalating oil prices globally and rising wages in many offshore markets, plus the hidden costs associated with offshore outsourcing, erode the cost savings that didn't account for critical supply chain factors, such as inventory carrying costs, lead times, demand variability and product quality."
- Through 2016, the financial impact of cybercrime will grow 10 percent per year, due to the continuing discovery of new vulnerabilities.
"As IT delivery methods meet the demand for the use of cloud services and employee-owned devices, new software vulnerabilities will be introduced, and innovative attack paths will be developed by financially motivated attackers. The combination of new vulnerabilities and more targeted attacks will lead to continued growth in bottom-line financial impact because of successful cyber attacks."
- By 2015, the prices for 80 percent of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge.
"While cloud operators can make strategic decisions about locations, tax subsidies are no long-term answer to managing costs, and investments in renewable-energy sources remain costly. Some cloud data center operators already include an energy surcharge in their pricing package, and Gartner analysts believe this trend will rapidly escalate to include the majority of operators — driven by competitive pressures and a "me too" approach."
- Through 2015, more than 85 percent of Fortune 500 organizations will fail to effectively exploit big data for competitive advantage.
"Current trends in smart devices and growing Internet connectivity are creating significant increases in the volume of data available, but the complexity, variety and velocity with which it is delivered combine to amplify the problem substantially beyond the simple issues of volume implied by the popular term 'big data.' Collecting and analyzing the data is not enough — it must be presented in a timely fashion so that decisions are made as a direct consequence that have a material impact on the productivity, profitability or efficiency of the organization. Most organizations are ill prepared to address both the technical and management challenges posed by big data; as a direct result, few will be able to effectively exploit this trend for competitive advantage."
