Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014 [1] [2] Every year, one of the most enlightening parts of Gartner Symposium is Gartner Fellow David Cearley's list of the top 10 strategic technology trends. Unlike the more speculative top 10 predictions [3], this is usually a much more realistic list of technology trends that have the biggest potential for significant enterprise impact over the next three years. As such, they may not be as surprising but they are still instructive. [4] forwardthinking.pcmag.com/show-reports/316750-gartner-s-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2014 1/7
[5] This year, Cearley divided the list into three groups, as defined by Gartner's "Nexus of Forces" (social, mobile, cloud, and information) framework. Four of the 10 were listed as Converging Forces, in other words, things brought up by forces interacting. These include mobile device diversity and management, mobile apps and applications, the Internet of Everything, and Hybrid Cloud and IT as a service broker. Another four were derivative items, things that come up as a result of individual forces. These include the cloud/client architecture, the era of the personal cloud, software-defined anything, and Web scale IT. And finally there are two areas ripe for future disruption: smart machines and 3D printing. Gartner expects all of these areas to drive significant change or disruption in the industry. Here is this year's list, along with some comments. Mobile Device Diversity & Management Gartner expects no single vendor or platform will completely dominate the mobile industry. Google, Apple, and Microsoft will all be important players, albeit in that order. There should also be many different form factors, ranging from wearable devices to large displays for shared areas. In fact, Cearley believes we will see a lot more personal area networks by 2017 to connect all our wearable devices, which will connect though our smartphones to the network. This seems pretty reasonable to me. I wore a Samsung Galaxy Gear during the show, and spent a fair amount of time with Google Glass as well, both connected to a phone via Bluetooth. Cearley predicted a typical knowledge worker will use three to five devices by forwardthinking.pcmag.com/show-reports/316750-gartner-s-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2014 2/7
2016 and organizations will consider various mobile device management (MDM) suggestions, ranging from containerization models to applying the security to the application not a container. Eventually, he said, mobile platforms that do not come from the device makers will become more strategic to the enterprise because users will want a diversity of devices. But the market is moving rapidly, so he suggested it is too early for enterprises to pick a strategic vendor. Instead, for now, he thinks enterprises need to make a series of tactical decisions for the next two years and wait until around 2016 to pick a strategic vendor. "Tactics are the new strategy," he said. I'll talk more about this soon, but in general, I agree that most people are making tactical decisions here. Mobile Apps and Applications Cearley talked about how enterprises have to review their strategy for both "apps" and "applications," making a distinction between simple touch-based apps for basic entry and information consumption and more full-featured applications. Video and voice are now changing the UI models of applications and there is much more of a need for organizations to deploy cross-platform applications, both those purchased and those developed in-house. This in turn leads to a need for new development skills and questions about whether you should develop native apps or HTML5-based ones. Almost every CIO I know whose organization creates applications is grappling with this issue now, and there isn't an easy answer. I suspect this will get a great deal of attention in the year again. The Internet of Everything This is Gartner's term for what other folks are calling the Internet of Things (IoT). Cearley explained this includes people, things, information, and places all connected. He predicted there will be 25 billion "things" connected to the Internet by 2020 and gave the example of smart diapers that know when they need to be changed, a seemingly popular example at this conference. He also talked about the importance of "big data analysis" growing as everything is connected. More interestingly, he suggested this could end up changing usage models, and in turn, business models. For instance, cars that know where and how they are driven could result in pay-as-you-go insurance. I agree there will be many new business models, but wonder if most organizations will deal with this next year. forwardthinking.pcmag.com/show-reports/316750-gartner-s-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2014 3/7
Hybrid Cloud & IT as Service Broker I've heard a lot of vendors and analysts talk about the "hybrid cloud" in recent months, but Cearley broke this concept down into four different kinds of hybrid solutions. In a "static composition," the breakdown is fixed, so some services run within an organization and others run in the public cloud. This is what most people talk about and are doing today. In an "event composition," the balance changes for a specific event, such as disaster recovery, which seems to be emerging. In a "deployment composition," the services come together whenever a service is provisioned or use, with the actual location of the service varying by policies or just capacity. And in "dynamic composition," the application is recomposed during runtime, as needed. I've sometimes heard of the last two called "cloudbursting" and that's gotten a lot of attention, but very few real applications yet. He also talked about how "hybrid IT" affects not only technology, but also the organization model. The role of the IT department changes, from that of a service provider to an advisor, broker, and provider to the business, helping lines of the business navigate through a variety of private cloud, public cloud, traditional services, and mobile apps, often creating an "enterprise app store." I do know of a variety of organizations that are looking at the world this way, but it's still more of the exception than the rule. Cloud/Client Architecture Most of us have grown up in a world of the client/server architecture, with most IT organizations focused on applications that run on internal servers as well as PCs. The new model involves clients that can be on multiple devices and services that come from the cloud. As he explained this, the cloud will become the control point and system of record for applications that can span multiple client devices, with the experience changing based on context and the device and the possibility that people will be using multiple devices simultaneously. It's a definite trend but one that started several years ago and with which almost every organization is already dealing. Of course, there's still plenty more to do. The Era of Personal Cloud Cearley talked about the rise of the "personal cloud." In his view, each person will have his or her own personal set of cloud services, including personal forwardthinking.pcmag.com/show-reports/316750-gartner-s-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2014 4/7
services such as Facebook and corporate applications. The users assemble their own services but IT needs to be ready for an even greater shift in the balance of power toward the user. This certainly seems to be occurring but very few IT organizations seem to have really wrestled with it, beyond focusing on the potential security concerns. Software Defined Anything We're on a "journey to programmable everything," Cearley said, talking about a range of more standardized building blocks that the industry is developing. This includes everything from Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings like Amazon Web Services to software-defined networks and storage to Open Stack and fabric-based computing. The common trend, he said, is that "everything is a platform." He noted that in many cases this is being driven by the largest vendors in the marketplace, with both open-source and proprietary elements. The benefits here include both more standardization and faster reconfiguration. Cearley discussed both "above the line" and "below the line" services, those that are hosted within and without the data center. It's a trend just about every major IT vendor is talking about, but it remains to be seen whether this really presents the cost savings backers think it will. Web Scale IT The concept here is that much of the world is moving to big or "hyper-scale," very resilient data centers, such as those run by Facebook, Google, or Amazon Web Services. In the opening keynote, Gartner's Peter Sondergaard said public data centers will grow to 35 percent of the market (versus about 20 percent today) and 20 percent of all data centers will be such "hyperscale" data centers. Cearley said the techniques that these big "web-scale" companies are using are now making their way to the enterprise, particularly in concepts such as designing for failure (assuming some percentage of computers will fail but that applications need to continue to run) and DevOps (running development and operations more like a single function). My take is that most businesses will never need "Web scale" infrastructure; SaaS systems and "hybrid IT" makes more sense but for larger organizations, these concepts work. And everyone can do a better job of planning for failure. The Rise of Smart Machines We're seeing an explosion of new content coming from Big Data and the forwardthinking.pcmag.com/show-reports/316750-gartner-s-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2014 5/7
Internet of Things, network-scale computing, more powerful hardware, and new algorithms in areas such as deep learning and natural language processing. This is all leading to the creation of a new class of "smart machines" that are different from anything else we've seen, Cearley said. He divided this into three categories: movers (such as autonomous vehicles), doers (such as the Baxter industrial robot and other robotic factory equipment), and sages (such as personal assistants like Siri and Google Now and also smart advisors such as Watson). There have been both utopian and dystopian views of what such machines can do and while I do expect machines will get smarter, I think their impact in the next three years may be a bit more limited than some are saying. Longer term, the issues get larger. 3D Printing Gartner is very bullish on this trend, and while Cearley didn't spend much time on it, he did indicate the huge potential in making prototypes and short-run manufacturing. I'm a huge fan of the concept but worry that the field is becoming a bit overhyped. It's interesting to compare this list with previous lists. Here are my thoughts from the time for the 2012 list [6] and the 2013 list [7]. Cearley noted that social isn't a line item this year, nor is information, although he noted big data and actionable analytics, two key items from last year, are still quite important. 1. javascript:openimagewindow('http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1740,iid=395098,00.asp', '480', '382') 2. javascript:openimagewindow('http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1740,iid=395098,00.asp', '480', '382') 3. http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/show-reports/316713-gartner-s-top-10-strategicpredictions 4. javascript:openimagewindow('http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1740,iid=395099,00.asp', '1080', '607') 5. javascript:openimagewindow('http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1740,iid=395099,00.asp', '1080', '607') 6. http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/show-reports/289266-gartner-it-s-top-10-technologytrends%20 forwardthinking.pcmag.com/show-reports/316750-gartner-s-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2014 6/7
7. http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/show-reports/304215-gartner-it-s-top-10-strategictechnology-trends-for-2013 forwardthinking.pcmag.com/show-reports/316750-gartner-s-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2014 7/7