Gartner identifies top 10 strategic technologies for 2012

Analysts examined the latest industry trends during the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, held October 16-20 in Orlando. Gartner, Inc. highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2012. Interestingly, most of the top ten trends will be of direct concern to creative industries and the production, exploitation, consumption and distribution of online content.

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on enterprises in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for major investment, or the risk of being late to adopt. These technologies impact the organization's long-term plans, programs and initiatives.

The top 10 strategic technologies for 2012 are listed on Gartner’s website. Notable developments include:

• Media Tablets and mobile computing.
• Contextual and Social User Experience.
• Internet of Things.
• Increasing size, speed and complexity of data.
• In-Memory Computing
• Cloud Computing.

Enterprises will have to come up with mobile strategies to address both business to employee (B2E) demands and business to consumer (B2C) services. Context-aware computing uses information about an end-user or objects environment, activities, connections and preferences to improve the quality of interaction with that end-user or object. A contextually aware system anticipates the user’s needs.
 
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that describes how the Internet will expand as sensors and intelligence are added to physical items such as consumer devices or physical assets and these objects are connected to the Internet. An important upcoming feature in this respect is Near Field Communication. Furthermore, Gartner sees an increasing use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems.

Lastly, cloud computing is identified as a disruptive force that has the potential for broad long-term impact in most industries. According to Gartner, the market remains in its early stages in 2011 and 2012, but we will see the full range of large enterprise providers fully engaged in delivering a range of offerings to build cloud environments and deliver cloud services. As Microsoft continues to expand its cloud offering, and these traditional enterprise players expand offerings, users will see competition heat up and enterprise-level cloud services are expected to increase.

Source: Gartner. Visit Gartner’s website to read more on current technology trends.