The Gartner analyst community has chosen what they believe to be the top ten most significant technologies for this upcoming year. The list includes a lot of terms that might be familiar to regular readers of this publication, but it also includes some surprises. Therefore, from one to ten, we present the Gartner top ten strategic technologies list.
1. Virtualization
Server virtualization is increasing in popularity. It is seen as a solution to replace old, obsolete systems without having to actually upgrade to a new method of doing things. Instead of having a 30 year old server running in the back room that processes one transaction per second because its too expensive to upgrade it, users can instead run a virtual simulation of the entire system and all its data on a modern server, and maintain the complex relationships with the rest of a company network. This is very costefficient.
2. Business Intelligence
Software is more often being used to help business managers and knowledge workers better able to make informed decisions in their objectives of running and growing a powerful business. Business Intelligence tools let these users make faster, better and more-informed decisions are particularly valuable in a difficult business environment.
3. Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers. Although cost is a potential benefit for small companies, the biggest benefits are the built-in elasticity and scalability, which not only reduce barriers to entry, but also enable these companies to grow quickly. As certain IT functions are industrializing and becoming less customized, there are more possibilities for larger organizations to benefit from cloud computing.
4. Green IT
Shifting to more efficient products and approaches can allow for more equipment to fit within an energy footprint, or to fit into a previously filled center. Regulations are multiplying and have the potential to seriously constrain companies in building data centers, as the effect of power grids, carbon emissions from increased use and other environmental impacts are under scrutiny.
5. Unified Communications
During the next five years, the number of different communications vendors with which a typical organization works with will be reduced by at least 50 percent. This change is driven by increases in the capability of application servers and the general shift of communications applications to common off-the-shelf server and operating systems.
6. Social Software and Social Networking
Social software includes a broad range of technologies, such as social networking, social collaboration, social media and social validation. Enterprises should establish a strategy to monitor and engage in external social networking as it relates to their business because the greatest risk lies in failure to engage and thereby, being left mute in a dialogue where your voice must be heard.
7. Web-Oriented Architectures
The Internet is arguably the best example of an agile, interoperable and scalable service-oriented environment in existence. This level of flexibility is achieved because of key design principles inherent in the Internet/Web approach, as well as the emergence of Web-centric technologies and standards that promote these principles.
8. Enterprise Mashups
Enterprises are now investigating taking mashups from cool Web hobby to enterprise-class systems to augment their models for delivering and managing applications. Through 2010, the enterprise mashup product environment will experience significant flux and consolidation, and application architects and IT leaders should investigate this growing space for the significant and transformational potential it may offer their enterprises.
9. Specialized Systems
Appliances have been used to accomplish IT purposes, but only with a few classes of function have appliances prevailed. Heterogeneous systems are an emerging trend in highperformance computing to address the requirements of the most demanding workloads, and this approach will eventually reach the general-purpose computing market.
10. Servers - Beyond Blades
Servers are evolving beyond the blade server stage that exists today. This evolution will simplify the provisioning of capacity to meet growing needs. The organization tracks the various resource types, such as memory, separately and replenishes only the type that is in short supply. This eliminates the need to pay for all three resource types to upgrade capacity.
