Imtech asked Juniper Networks, Director Service Provider Marketing EMEA, Paul Gainham, to provide his view on these strategic top 10.
Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010
Gartner, Inc. analysts have highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organisations in 2010.
Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.
These technologies impact the organisation’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They may be strategic because they have matured to broad market use or because they enable strategic advantage from early adoption.
“Companies should factor the top 10 technologies into their strategic planning process by asking key questions and making deliberate decisions about them during the next two years,” said David Cearley, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “However, this does not necessarily mean adoption and investment in all of the technologies. They should determine which technologies will help and transform their individual business initiatives.”
The top 10 strategic technologies for 2010 include:
Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterises a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers.
Gainham says…Cutting through the hype that surrounds the cloud, every CIO should have a plan of action that takes account of how cloud services could be introduced into the IT portfolio. This is not a big bang type activity, but more a selective review of which applications it makes sense to deliver from the cloud, which to keep in-house. This is something the CFO will be paying particular attention to, so best be prepared….
Advanced Analytics. Optimisation and simulation is using analytical tools and models to maximise business process and decision effectiveness by examining alternative outcomes and scenarios, before, during and after process implementation and execution.
Gainham says…Another holy-grail of IT and business symbiosis, there has long been a nagging doubt that for all the massive advances we have made in IT there hasn’t really been an equal return in terms of business productivity. Indeed the vast amounts of data that a business both generates and is exposed too has had a braking effect on that progress. Advanced analytics and simulation is a way of making all this data meaningful and therefore actionable.
Client Computing. Virtualisation is bringing new ways of packaging client computing applications and capabilities. As a result, the choice of a particular PC hardware platform, and eventually the OS platform, becomes less critical.
Gainham says…A combination of technologies such as virtualisation combined with new application delivery vehicles such as software as a service (SaaS) could see some potential changes at the client and may see the advent of the much discussed thin client. The client cannot however be considered in isolation but as an integral part of an overall application delivery strategy. The nirvana of any application to any device at any time may be getting closer but clearly will evolve over time, it wont be a ‘big bang’ moment.
IT for Green. IT can enable many green initiatives. The use of IT, particularly among the white collar staff, can greatly enhance an enterprise’s green credentials.
Gainham says…It’s crucial that IT is shown to lead the way here not just in words but in deed. Progressive organisations will already have clear green objectives for their teams to achieve, the CIO team needs to lead by example and show how a well thought through IT strategy can be both business positive and green compliant. A great example here is a commitment to true tele-working – arming the global workforce with technologies that mean they can be as effective on the road or at home as they are in the office.
Reshaping the Data Centre. In the past, design principles for data centres were simple: Figure out what you have, estimate growth for 15 to 20 years, then build to suit.
Gainham says…In a world of dynamic business and application change, yesterdays planning assumptions have passed their sell by date. Data centre capacity processing requirements are more fluid then ever. Adopting cloud services or an ‘in-house’ cloud approach for those applications that are difficult to predict is crucial to ensuring the business does not suffer. A solid technology base that has the ability to seamlessly scale with demand is a fundamental requisite here.
Social Computing. Workers do not want two distinct environments to support their work – one for their own work products (whether personal or group) and another for accessing “external” information.
Gainham says…This will be a fundamental need as the digital native generation make up an increasing % of the workforce. Organisations that are not progressive enough in this area may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage in workforce recruitment. Key to ensuring activities like this are in the best interests of the business can be achieved by adopting an effective security and monitoring strategy to track inappropriate usage.
Security. Activity Monitoring. Traditionally, security has focused on putting up a perimeter fence to keep others out, but it has evolved to monitoring activities and identifying patterns that would have been missed before.
Gainham says…The days of a blunt perimeter approach to security (the ‘Castle’ model) have passed and evolved to a more targeted and detailed ‘hotel’ model, in which individual user activity and access is checked before any activity is permitted and them monitored closely. In a world of virtualised and dynamic applications, technologies that allow that flexibility, such as UAC and virtualised security are crucial. The old perimeter model is too inflexible for today’s dynamic world. This is not simply about control – or limiting what users can do. It has to be about liberating users from having to make decisions about what could introduce risk onto their organisation. Effective monitoring linked to flexible, dynamic and enforceable policies help increase productivity and reduce anxiety.
Flash Memory. Flash memory is not new, but it is moving up to a new tier in the storage echelon.
Gainham says…Having ultra-reliable and very fast storage based on flash can radically affect backup, disaster recovery and storage strategies. We are already seeing flash disks of decent capacity appearing in the consumer arena, a sure sign of a demand driven market heating up. Power efficiency and lower overall space requirements for advanced flash drive technology should also see its adoption in Enterprise organisations accelerate.
Virtualisation for Availability. Virtualisation has been on the list of top strategic technologies in previous years. It is on the list this year because Gartner emphases new elements such as live migration for availability that have longer term implications.
Gainham says…This year we will see an increased emphasis on securing flows in the virtualised world together with the innovative use of existing and synergistic technologies to enable better control of virtualised architectures.
Mobile Applications. By year-end 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing a rich environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web.
Gainham says…The mobile phone is really now a mobile computer so putting to one side obvious issues such as screen size, today’s mobile devices in many cases, have access to the same bandwidth as home PC’s when you look at today’s technologies like HDSPA and tomorrows LTE. So the network it could be argued is no longer the issue – the key battleground will be who provides the new breed of mobile applications and crucially, who makes money from them. Mobile portals are too restrictive, users will demand access to ‘open garden’ content.