Oct

10

Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies for 2008

Filed Under Uncategorized 

Computerworld has published "Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies for 2008" describing a "strategic technology" as a technology:

"… that may have an impact on a business. And impact could mean driving an investment or posing a threat…. If your competitors adopt one of these technologies does that put you at a competitive disadvantage?"

Gartner’s list is as follows…..

  1. Green IT. This is a path that more and more companies are taking as a socially responsible strategy. A green approach is multifaceted and can affect data center operations in a number of ways, such as moving workloads based on energy efficiency and using the most power-inefficient servers only at times of peak usage, said Carl Claunch, an analyst….. But data centers also face the threat of regulatory action to curb power usage.
  2. Unified communications. The move to unified communications systems is happening as the world shifts from analog to digital over IP networks. But it’s not just the obvious things that will converge, such as telephony and messaging. Companies may make security videos part of this convergence, which may give businesses, for instance, new ways to analyze a retail outlet’s traffic patterns.
  3. Business process management. This is not a technology, its a way of using technologies to enable companies to simulate, model and design the processes that run their businesses. A key trend is the evolution of the business process management suite, Cearley said. This may include, model-driven development, content and document management, collaboration capabilities, system connectivity, business intelligence activity monitoring and management, rules and systems management.
  4. Metadata management. This is becoming important as companies integrate data — for instance, customer and product data and warehouse data.
  5. Virtualization. Virtualization technology is critical, but not just for consolidation; it also offers a way to mirror production systems for disaster recovery.
  6. Mashups. Mashup tools allow users to take things from multiple Web sites and combine them together to create a Web-centric composite application. "You want to start building mashability into everything you do," Cearley said.
  7. The Web platform. This is the model for services in the future. An example, said Cearley, is the cloud computing announcement this week by Google Inc. and IBM, which are jointly offering a platform for use by universities for application development initiatives, including Web 2.0 projects. "Put this on your radar screen," he said.
  8. Computing fabric. A server design that is still a work in progress, computing fabric involves treating memory, processors and I/O cards as a pooled resource instead of a fixed arrangement. Blade servers allow you to do some of this pooling with I/O, Claunch said. "Be aware of this, because blades are not the final step," he said.
  9. Real World Web. This is the name of the computing experience made possible by ubiquitous access to networks of even-increasing bandwidth via mobile technologies. Thanks to the Real World Web, users can have ready access to all kinds of information, including travel information or the location of a jar of pickles in a grocery store.
  10. Social software. Social software includes podcasts, blogs and wikis — anything that fosters the development of social networks.

 

This list is worth considering as part of your 2008 - 2010 Strategic Plans.

 

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,

Related Posts

Comments

Leave a Reply