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the Free CMSWire NewsletterAnalyst firm Gartner, Inc. has once again looked into its crystal ball and identified the 10 technologies and trends it feels will significantly affect the enterprise most in 2012. Gartner announced the top 10 list of strategic technologies at its Gartner Symposium/IT Expo that just concluded.
How Do You Know It’s Strategic?
Strategic is one of those words that, many times, means different things to different people. Strategy to some is just an elaborate plan that is unlikely to ever be implemented, but instead serves as point of inspiration (or source of mockery). Gartner defines a strategic technology as
one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years.”
According to Gartner, strategic technologies:
- have high potential for disruption to IT or business
- require significant capital investment
- have high risk if adopted late
Let’s take a look at what Gartner’s analysts expect to be on the lips of technology leaders for months to come.
The Top Ten Strategic Technology List
Tablets
Tablets aren’t just sexy toys for the consumer market. The further consumerization of technology will continue to move forward and companies will have to address this new form factor for employees, customers and partners. Organizations will have to consider their goals, how they will manage risk and of course how they will address implementation on the tools as part of their mobile efforts.
Mobile-Centric Applications, Interfaces
Users expect to be constantly connected and have access to everything anywhere they need it. To support these users, organizations must ensure that their information is easily consumable over all channels, not just the desktop. Mobile and touch application are introducing new user interface paradigms. Instead of standalone monolithic applications, the new application model is likely to be one of composition and assembly so that changing needs can be quickly addressed. In addition, new technology developments such as HTML5 will improve the ability of organization to better deliver cross-platform applications and reduce the need to write redundant native applications.
Contextual, Social User Experience
Social computing and developing deep relationships with users will continue to be a point of influence for technology projects. Gartner anticipates that understanding the end-user’s or object’s environment, activities, connections and preferences to improve the quality of interaction will become even more important for organizations to deliver.
Internet of Things
The internet has moved from the desktop to mobile and later it will be everywhere. The Internet of Things refers to growing trend of sensors and intelligence added to physical items such as consumer devices or physical assets and the connection of these to the Internet.
Organizations will have to determine if they can benefit from capabilities such as:
- embedded sensors — detect and communicate changes
- image recognition
- near field communication (NFC) payment — already popular in Asia, NFC allows users to wave their phone to pay for goods
App Stores, Marketplaces
Gartner predicts there will be more than 70 billion mobile application downloads annually in the next 2 years. Users have gotten so accustomed to the “app store” concept that marketplaces will begin to play a more important role in the enterprise. This shift will put technology teams in a slightly different role — they will no longer be planners and directors dictating what’s installed in many cases; they will instead be managers to govern the diverse new ecosystem.
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