Big data, mobile device battles and the rise of the personal cloud were among the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2013, research firm Gartner announced at the ITxpo in Orlando Oct. 23. Gartner Vice President David Cearley noted that while enterprises may not have to adopt and invest in all of the listed technologies, they should make deliberate decisions about how these trends fit in with the organization’s expected needs in the near future.
With mobile phones projected to overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide in 2013, and more than 80 percent of the handsets sold in mature markets likely to be smartphones by 2015; Gartner believes mobile device manufacturers, led by Apple and devices running Google’s Android operating system, will increasingly fight for market share, while Microsoft’s Windows 8 devices placed a distant third. The landscape of mobile apps is also expected to shift closer to an HTML5 architecture in 2013 and by 2014, and Gartner believes that many organizations will deliver mobile applications to workers through private application stores.
“Enterprises face a complex app store future as some vendors will limit their stores to specific devices and types of apps forcing the enterprise to deal with multiple stores, multiple payment processes and multiple sets of licensing terms,” the report warned.
The personal cloud will shift the focus from the client device to cloud-based services delivered across devices, as the personal cloud gradually replaces the PC as the location where individuals keep their personal content, access their services and personal preferences and center their digital lives. Dealing with data volume, variety, velocity and complexity will force changes to traditional approaches as organizations tackle the problem of big data, moving the focus to how to architect strategic information.
As staffs have been asked to do more with less, IT departments must play multiple roles in coordinating IT-related activities, and cloud computing, also on Gartner’s list, is pushing that change to another level. The report also singled out the Internet of Things (IoT), a concept that describes how the Internet will expand as physical items such as consumer devices and physical assets are connected to the Internet, as a trend that will impact enterprises in 2013.
Rounding out the top 10 trends are actionable analytics, which provides rapid simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, to empower more decision flexibility at the time and place of business processes, In memory computing (IMC), which allows millions of events to be scanned in a matter of a few tens of milliseconds to detect correlations and patterns pointing at emerging opportunities and threats, and finally integrated ecosystems, a trend driven by the desire for lower cost, simplicity and more assured security. The integrated ecosystems trend is manifested in three levels, according to the report.
“Appliances combine hardware and software and software and services are packaged to address an infrastructure or application workload. Cloud-based marketplaces and brokerages facilitate purchase, consumption and/or use of capabilities from multiple vendors and may provide a foundation for ISV development and application runtime,” the report said. “In the mobile world, vendors including Apple, Google and Microsoft drive varying degrees of control across and end-to-end ecosystem extending the client through the apps.”