So Gartner's top 10 predictions are out for 2010 and it's a very different picture to last year. Nevertheless, it's always interesting to see what the world's leading IT analysts think is going to happen next in the year to come.
In this article I've plucked out the bits that have most to do with Services Oriented Architecture (SOA), Enterprise Mashups, Business Social Networking and other such technologies that are making businesses more agile.
No surprise that Cloud Computing is number 1. The feeding frenzy around cloud computing has been growing for some time and now it's almost impossible for IT leaders not to consider cloud computing as a way forward for their future IT infrastructure. For many organizations however, cloud computing is just another form of commercial model for virtualization of servers; the result of a transformation is a gated environment for enterprise applications on a hosted web server instead of using in-house servers. This myopic view of cloud computing is a big undersell on the possibilities that the cloudspace offers to create extensible community-based portals and possibilities of knowledge markets, federated applications and the like that reach beyond the firewall of the enterprise to harness talent and resources from knowledge markets - but it's a start. I expect that the majority of organizations will want to 'practise' deploying non-core applications to the cloud first and then see how well the experiment works before they consider porting their discrete applications and ERP systems to this new platform. We could be talking a lag of 3 to 5 years before larger corporations make this sort of 'can't turn back the clock' step.
Number 2 on Gartner's list is Advanced Analytics. It's interesting that Gartner worked hard not to say Business Intelligence and came up with a new term. But BI is changing. At one time it was about massing data into huge OLAP cubes to impart knowledge organizations already owned but couldn't see. Today though, business intelligence has gone online and forms part of the Enterprise Mashup Portal platform business people use to consume information services. These applications are no longer passive, but provide tools for users to serve themselves with new views of information, let's them paint 'what if?' scenarios and share their content within their secure social networks. The need for agile Business Intelligence tools has been answered by mashups that form part of the social operating systems organizations are in the process of developing. Advanced Analytics is no longer about OLAP cubes that serve only 15% of the user population; it's about letting decision makers at all levels of the enterprise consume information in new ways to find answers to new questions they've only just begun to think about.
Social Computing comes in at number 6 on the list. Trying to make sense of social networking in a business context has been a tough challenge in 2009. In truth, there are so many different technologies and approaches that the subject has proved too overwhelming for IT leaders to make any sense of. I expect that the take-off in business social networking will only happen when 4 things happen (at the same time and probably in the same software service that business people can try before they buy):
1. A security architecture emerges that business people can trust - Business social networking has to sit within a security blanket that corporate buyers can trust. The software applications and services found in consumer land don't come close to managing content and intellectual property the way that businesses need to.
2. Data can be owner-managed - Organizations want to harness their corporate information capital, while individuals want a record of their social relationship activities. Having knowledge of conversations, talent and skills on Facebook or Twitter doesn't give business people the security or control over information assets that they require.
3. A realistic alternative to email emerges - Email today is the peer-to-peer communications vehicle of choice that benefits from the ability to work even when the sender and receiver are not both online. Without a genuine alternative to email, the home page of most business people will still be Outlook.
4. Supporting social behaviors - In the real world business people chat, have more formal conversations and even more formal scheduled meetings. It's not realistic to believe that, in a virtual world, business people will suddenly be satisfied with informal communications for every situation. Business social networking tools will have to mature to support social behaviors that people are accustomed to.
The fact that Security - and specifically activity monitoring - has only reached number 7 on the list is surprising to me. With all of the concerns raised around data security in 2009 I would have singled out Security as being a top 3 issue. The issue of enterprise security has matured over 2009 away from the idea of protecting the silos of data to protecting the data itself. This has fostered more mature discussions around inclusive security models that see users as individuals rather than good guys and bad guys (where anyone who doesn't work for the enterprise is assumed to be bad). In 2010, Encanvas is releasing its RING OF STEEL inclusive security architecture that enables CIOs to push back data governance to line of business managers so that appropriate governance regimes can be implemented at departmental level. This means that the people responsible for data are also made responsible for its security. For IT leaders this has to be good news. Whoever said that IT leaders must be the security watchdogs of the enterprise anyway?
The last notable entry holds up the list at number 10. Mobile applications are still topical it seems but the idea that mobile applications need to be treated as somehow 'special' is slowly ebbing away. Convergence of web and mobile platforms mean that Enterprise mashup platforms like Encanvas can produce applications for mobility as easily as they do for desktop and web. The mobile device has become 'just another portal consumer' in an always connected world. I expect we won't see mobile applications appearing on the next Gartner list for 2011!
All of the above is good news for Integrated Software Platforms like Encanvas that provide 2-step publishing to the cloud with the assurety of a robust inclusive security model. No surprise that the global market for Enterprise Mashups Software is expected to grow ten-fold in 2010.
Looks like it's going to be a busy year!
Just reading your Cloud Coffee House book and it's like a breath of fresh air. What worries me about social networking is that it is driven by social fashion and it may be replaced by something else over night, before it's really got going. People power frightens large corporations and although they may give lip service to it, they are plotting away in dark rooms to destroy or dilute it.
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