Gartner Reveals Top 10 Technologies For Next 4 Years

Dr. Jim writes "The good folks over at the Gartner Group have revealed the top 10 technologies that they believe will change the world over the next four years. The usual suspects including multi-core chips, virtualization, and cloud computing are on the list. Multicore servers and virtualization will mean that firms will need fewer boxes, and apps can be easily moved from box to box (and right out the door to an outsourced data center). Workplace social networks and cloud computing means that the need for a centralized IT department will go away. Firms will no longer need to own/maintain the boxes that they use to run their firm's apps. With no need to touch a box, there will be no need to have the IT staff co-located with the boxes."

Comments

Forgetting one thing

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

Right. Completely virtualize and decentralize your environment. Save money! Work faster!

What security?

Re:Forgetting one thing

[Maint_Pgmr_3]

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=530109 for the real thing

Re:Forgetting one thing

[Lord Ender]

It is true that virtualization technology allows businesses to do more IT functions with less IT staff. But it is also true that businesses are doing increasingly more IT functions all the time. So long as these factor balance each other out, IT will maintain its relatively low unemployment rate and its relatively high payscale.

However, if this balance tips, companies will benefit while IT staff loses. I consider this a possible future scenario, so I live well within my means and use a large percentage of my salary to buy ownership positions in those very companies that stand to profit from my obsolesce. That way, even if I lose in one way I win in another.

The stock market really is an amazing force for blurring the line between the working class and the ownership class, and I take full advantage of this power.

Re:Forgetting one thing

[Bandman]

It is true that virtualization technology allows businesses to do more IT functions with less IT staff.

Actually I think it allows businesses to do more IT functions with less hardware. The staff still have to manage it. Otherwise you have an excellent strategy for retirement :-)

Re:Forgetting one thing

[laddhebert]

Cloud Computing while a cool CS Concept and can be used in some cases. The fact that most apps are single threaded design will not gain any benefit from this and most companies don't need that level computing power. They would wast money and get small benefit. Unless they do some massive computing. I had to reply to this.

If you have a shop that has a very large compute farm that runs exclusively, batch jobs, then you can clearly understand where cloud computing can be a tremendous advantage. A lot of users of batch compute resources find creative ways to serialize and/or parallelize their overall process using scripts, multiple hosts, dependencies, etc. With cloud computing, all of this can be implemented automatically.

That's a huge time and cost saver right there alone. Additionally, with our cloud computing solution (Electric Cloud), we get an additional advantage with the built in virtualization that comes along with the system. In the old days, we were forced to manage multiple development build stacks to satisfy the needs of multiple business units or departments. Now, we manage a cloud of hosts that are baseline installs, with bare minimal configurations, and the submit host's environment is replicated to the cloud nodes when a build is kicked off. This saves money on hardware resources, hardware resources, engineering resources, etc.

You may think, well, most developers use the same build stack or tool stack - but that's an assumption that has been proven incorrect time and time again where I work. We work with embedded device developers and they have a very specific tool stack requirement, with specific versions, or may need a pristine build environment without the possibility of conflicts from various packages that may be installed on the build host.

/-l

Misleading summary; lean blog post

[bbasgen]

  The article summary quotes a blog posting, *NOT* the Gartner study. Further, the blog posting only quotes the top ten items from Gartner, and provides no further data.

  The blogger is passing around FUD, without supporting those statements with any information from Gartner. This is a non-article with so little data.

Re:Misleading summary; lean blog post

[thanatos_x]

I've read more than a few of their full tech summaries on the emerging trends, both by industry and year.

Generally from year to year half the items would disappear from the lists (even though they were supposed to cover the next 5-10 years). In addition another quarter would randomly move about the "You'll see this technology in X years".

Most of the rest were so obvious that it really wasn't worth mentioning, an up to speed person would have known that. Wireless will be big in the future (published 2005ish)? No way!

The descriptions given for a technology(typically 2-3 paragraphs) were filled with jargon, and not terribly useful. Reading Popular Science and Mechanics was about as useful and far cheaper.

So yes, the lesson is that you can't buy innovation or management skills for a company by spending 20,000 a year, but you can make a nice sum pretending to sell it.

Let me be the first to say

[moderatorrater]

'Duh'. Multicore processing? Are you fucking kidding me? You have to go out of your way to buy a computer that doesn't have multiple cores. Hybrid core? Wouldn't that be covered with the video cards opening up and letting generic code run on their processors? The rest are completely obvious in the same way. Anyone who's been watching computers for the past year could have compiled that list.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[TooMuchToDo]

The rest are completely obvious in the same way. Anyone who's been watching computers for the past year could have compiled that list.

You've just summed up most Gartner reports. =)

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Reverend528]

You've just summed up most Gartner reports. =)

Not everything they say is completely obvious. Remember when they told people to delay linux deployments until the SCO case was settled. Of course, that turned out to be terrible advice, but it was non-obvious.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[afabbro]

'Duh'

Gartner is mainly known for two things:

• "Duh"
• Being wrong.

Oh, and charging a lot. cf. Cringley's fine column on Gartner.

Nothing to see here

[Kohath]

If you make your predictions vague enough, they have a good chance of being correct (for generous interpretations of correct).

I predict the next 4 years in technology is going to be similar to this year. This will end up being correct for generous definitions of "similar".

High-level, better-trained IT workers opportunity!

[compumike]

While the article and summary want to scare IT workers ("Oh, oh -- can you hear your job going away?"), perhaps it's time to get back to the big picture: Information Technology is supposed to help people do their jobs more efficiently. So, while the article does much to suggest that server-side stuff might be getting "outsourced" to the cloud, people still need to interface with it. It'd be nice to see client systems taking steps forward in terms of reliability and ease of use, but nothing monumental is changing on that side of the equation.

But, by outsourcing/concentrating the server-side administration to the "cloud", you might free up IT workers to do less grunt work and do more in terms of process innovations, making the whole enterprise more efficient. IT workers will have to think about how they can make the business operate more efficiently, and be creative and get it implemented. Are today's IT workers ready for that level of thinking?

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics!

Old!

[neokushan]

Cloud computing is already here, Valve invented it this morning!

On another note, an unknown company is bringing out a sewing application that promises to push multithreading to it's limits.

Outsourced information will come back

[Opportunist]

No later than when companies notice that suddenly, surprisingly someone patents something they were on the verge of patenting themselves, when they notice that said company is somehow curiously located where their servers are.

I guess even our business captains know that putting information into hands you can't control is a BAD idea. They should know. They've been gathering ours for years, and they know what value even trivial information (like your shopping habits) has.

Troubleshooting Step #1

[dcollins]

Client: I can't login.
Troubleshooting Step #1: Make sure it's plugged in.

Ergo, there will always be a need for IT staff co-located with the boxes.

Uh, Excuse me!

[Master of Transhuman]

"Firms will no longer need to own/maintain the boxes that they use to run their firm's apps. With no need to touch a box, there will be no need to have the IT staff co-located with the boxes."

How do you access the "cloud" without a computer next to you?

You have DSL embedded in your brain?

Get a clue. Companies may not have conventional desktop PCs in their offices, but they're going to have to have SOME sort of computing device - if nothing but a thin client or even just a flat screen terminal or a BlackBerry - to access the computing resources.

And those devices need servicing - if not much servicing.

Anybody who thinks computers are leaving offices is so frickin' deluded I don't know what to say.

Not to mention that your IT staff exists mostly to solve the problems with the SOFTWARE - not the hardware. And software problems aren't going away regardless of whether it's on the desk, on a server, or in the cloud.

Who deals with those problems may change. Companies may very well outsource their IT support - I am the outsource for my clients - but all that means is they'll pay more for less (except in my case, 'cause I'm cheap.) Their overall cost may go down, but in many cases they'll get poorer service because the IT staff servicing their problems isn't a member of the company or on site and thus has less comprehension of the company's needs. There's nothing like being on site and in daily contact with the staff to see what a company's problems are.

He left off a word!!!!

[Maint_Pgmr_3]

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=681107 "Gartner Identifies Top Ten Disruptive Technologies for 2008 to 2012"

Re:High-level, better-trained IT workers opportuni

[zappepcs]

Not only that, and you do make a hugely valid point, but all this IT infrastructure is ... well, it would grind office productivity to a halt if the printer is broken. Despite all the hardware, the paperless office has not yet taken off in any meaningful way. When the connection between your desktop and the printer is through a router that is on the other side of the country, and it takes 2 hours to get it working, productivity will drop significantly. To simply bleat on about moving the data center out into the cloud is blindly spewing PR like the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

Much like outsourcing has come to be more expensive, so too will 'outsourcing' your data center. I'm sure that we've all heard of DDoS attacks. How convenient will they become when your data is on the other side of a router from your workers? Yeah, the SLAs sound good on paper, but oat 4:30 on a Friday of a long weekend, when your billing processes grind to a halt, how long will it take to get fixed? My personal favorite is the data center people telling me it is an application error. The billing department is telling me that their application is giving an error that a server can't be found. My code says that there is a permission problem on a network directory, and no one left in the data center has admin rights on that box.

Yep, this outsourcing thing will work out well.

What was that old saying? If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself? Sometimes it is true, ya know?