Information technology research specialist Gartner is never averse to making provocative forecasts for the year(s) ahead.
They anticipate a slowdown in growth of spend on IT especially in Europe. Perhaps more interesting is the theme that the IT department is losing its pre-eminence as users and business managers take more control.
“Mega trend” predictions can be useful and thought provoking but take care. We noticed that in 2006 they predicted “Vista will be the last major release of Windows”. They were on safer ground in saying that “PCs will halve in cost by 2010″.
Global IT Spend to hit $3.8tn in 2012
Growth will be constrained to 3.7% with strength in telecoms equipment and enterprise software. They revised their forecast down following the impact of the Thailand floods on hard disc drive production, along with uncertainty in the Eurozone.
Emergence of the nexus of four forces
The convergence of cloud, social, mobile and information management into a unified set of forces shaping almost every IT-related decision.
IT spending
The movement of spending from the IT department to other parts of the business. IT departments and business leaders will find they must co-ordinate activities across a much wider scope.
Market transformation
The transformation of entire markets brought on by new technology-based options.
The social networks investment bubble will burst
In 2013 for consumer social networks and 2014 for enterprise social software companies.
The financial impact of Cybercrime will grow 10% per annum
New vulnerabilities will increase cybercrime at least until 2016.
Browsers, Tablets & Mobile Clients
By 2016, at least 50% of enterprise email users will no longer rely on a desktop client
Mobile Application Developments (AD) will soar
Driven by smartphone and tablet usage, ADs will outnumber native PC projects by 4:1 by 2015.
Independent security testing will become the norm
By 2016, 40% of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for use of any type of cloud service
Blogalot – January 2012
