The 5 Forces that Could Derail High-Tech Markets

Gartner analysts identify the five disruptive factors they claim could force enterprises to change the way they attack their prospective markets.

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 communities have paved the way for new startups offering alternatives to technology incumbents, such as Microsoft and IBM. Traditional businesses must embrace these new models or risk losing market share.

SAAS With traditional, perpetual software licenses, the software maker typically took little responsibility for results. With SAAS (software as a service), service providers will be held to higher standards based on results.

Global-Class Systems Global-class systems, or system architectures of many computing nodes serving as one system (think Google and its server farms), threaten to upset the balance of power between IBM and Microsoft in the messaging m

‘Consumerization’ ‘Consumerization’ is creating an IT civil war between smaller companies focused on innovation (by looking to consumers to drive their product development) and vendors focused on traditional control and

Open Source Open source enables many elements of these other four discontinuities to develop, but there are oodles of issues with this model. While its acquisition cost is low, total cost of ownership is a burden as multiple distribu

Gartner believes any one of these forces can upset the balance of power between users and their IT organization (or between vendors in a segment). Put the five together and let them amplify each others dislocating impact, and there is major trouble, alon

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