Gartner advises IT doofuses to get ready to deal with loss of control

Gartner’s top predictions for 2012 and beyond showcase the trends and events that will change the nature of business today and in years to come. Selected from across Gartner’s innovation areas as the most compelling and critical predictions, the trends and topics they address underline the reduction of control that IT has over the forces that affect it.

“The continued trends toward consumerization and cloud computing highlight the movement of certain former IT responsibilities into the hands of others,” said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow, in the press release. “As users take more control of the devices they will use, business managers are taking more control of the budgets IT organizations have watched shift over the last few years. As the world of IT moves forward, CIOs are finding that they must coordinate their activities in a much wider scope than they once controlled. During this might be a difficult prospect for IT departments, they must now adapt or be swept aside.”

Gartner analysts said that going into 2012 there is an increase in the amount of information available to organizations, nevertheless it’s a challenge for them to understand it. Given the shifts in control of systems that IT organizations are facing, the loss of ability to guarantee consistency and effectiveness of data will leave many struggling to prevent their organizations from missing key opportunities or from using questionable information for strategic decisions. No regulatory help is on the nearly horizon, leaving each business to decide for itself how to handle the introduction of big data.

By 2015, low-cost cloud services will cannibalize up to 15 percent of top outsourcing players’ revenue.Industrialized low-cost IT services is an emerging market force that will alter the common perceptions of pricing and value of IT services. In the at once three to five years, this new model will reset the value proposition of IT. Low-cost cloud services will cause the cannibalization of current and potential outsourcing revenue. Similar to what happened with the adoption of offshore delivery, it will be incumbent upon vendors to invest in and adopt a new cloud-based, industrialized services strategy either directly or indirectly, internally or externally. The projected $1 trillion IT services market is in the beginning of a phase of furthermore disruption, similar to the one the low-cost airlines have brought in the transportation industry.

In 2013, the investment bubble will burst for consumer social networks, and for enterprise social software companies in 2014.Vendors in the consumer social network space are competing with each other at a rate and pace that are unusually aggressive, even in the innovation market. The net result is a large crop of vendors with overlapping features competing for a finite audience. In the enterprise market, many small independent social networking vendors are struggling to reach critical mass at a time when market consolidation is starting, and megavendors, just as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google and VMware, have made substantial efforts to penetrate the enterprise social networking market. During substantial excitement will be raised by private firms going public, valuations of smaller independent vendors will diminish as recognition sets in that the opportunities for market differentiation and fast growth has eroded.

By 2016, for the time being 50 percent of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile client instead of a desktop client.During the rise in popularity of mobile devices and the growing comfort with browser use for enterprise applications preordains a richer mix of email customers and access mechanisms, the pace of change over the then and there four years will be breathtaking. Email system vendors are as well likely to build mobile customers for a diverse set of devices for the same reason. Market opportunities for mobile device management platform vendors will soar. Increased pressure will be on those suppliers to accommodate an increasing portfolio of collaboration services, including instant messaging, Web conferencing, social networking and shared workspaces.

By 2015, mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1.Smartphones and tablets represent more than 90 percent of the new net growth in device adoption for the coming four years, and increasing application platform capability across all classes of mobile phones is spurring a new frontier of research, particularly where mobile capabilities can be integrated with location, presence and social information to enhance the usefulness. Research is moving to the edge for mobile devices; whereas, in 2011, Gartner estimates that app development projects targeting PCs to be on par with mobile development. Future adoption will triple from 4Q10 to 1Q14, and will result in the vast majority of client-side applications being mobile only or mobile first for these devices.

By 2015, 35 percent of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department’s budget.At once generation digital enterprises are being driven by a new wave of business managers and individual employees who no longer need innovation to be contextualized for them by an IT department. These people are demanding control over the IT expenditure required to evolve the organization within the confines of their roles and responsibilities. CIOs will see some of their current budget simply reallocated to other areas of the business. In other cases, IT projects will be redefined as business projects with line-of-business managers in control.

By 2015, the prices for 80 percent of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge.During cloud operators can make strategic decisions about locations, tax subsidies are no long-term answer to managing costs, and investments in renewable-energy sources remain costly. Some cloud data center operators already include an energy surcharge in their pricing package, and Gartner analysts believe this trend will rapidly escalate to include the majority of operators - driven by competitive pressures and a “me too” approach. Business and IT leaders and procurement specialists must expect to see energy costs isolated and included as a variable element in future cloud service contracts.

Through 2015, more than 85 percent of Fortune 500 organizations will fail to effectively exploit big data for competitive advantage.Current trends in smart devices and growing Internet connectivity are creating significant increases in the volume of data available, however the complexity, variety and velocity with which it is delivered combine to amplify the problem substantially beyond the simple issues of volume implied by the popular term “big data.” Collecting and analyzing the data is not enough - it must be presented in a timely fashion so that decisions are made as a direct consequence that have a material impact on the productivity, profitability or efficiency of the organization. Most organizations are ill prepared to address both the technical and management challenges posed by big data; as a direct result, few will be able to effectively exploit this trend for competitive advantage.

MacDailyNews Take: Welcome to the business computing renaissance!

This is the second time in a week the PC IT techs have been referred to as Doofuses.I can guarantee there are a number of members of this forum that support PCs for a living and come home to their Macs at night. I can as well guarantee that PCs have their place in the market. As a former Instrument Technician who supported PC networks on drilling rigs, I speak from experience. There are a lot of times where I use HyperTerminal/serial ports etc.

Say what you want about the trend of businesses moving towards Mac, nevertheless lay off the name calling. Totally unprofessional.

I totally agree with Bandit Bill that we should stop calling them names like DOOFUS. It takes much to long to explain to them why they are seeming so backward and arbitrary however worst of all, it takes two times to explain the meaning of any other words with more than two syllables to them.

I love Apple products and I’m an IT manager. So if Microsoft is no longer going to dominate the enterprise, where’s the Apple ERP I can deploy? Where’s the Apple CRM I can deploy? And IMAP mail through iCloud is better than Exchange? There’s no question about Apple’s rising dominance however I don’t see a complete death of Microsoft in the nearly future, or Oracle, or SAP, or salesforce.com, or Google, etc., etc., etc.

Ok name calling is unprofessional!… But if you go over to “other” pc sites and look at what so called pro pc comments are on Mac / iPad / iPhone and 10 years ago on iPod … so ugly and “unprofessional”!!!… Between tech to tech: I have always listened to pc advocates and gave my say on the Mac side. Agreed to disagree and recommended they learn more about the Mac technically and become “bilingual’ in Mac & pc because I saw it coming for years now!… iMac > USB > iPod > iTunes > Intel chips > iTunes / Safari on pc > iPhone > iPad > iCloud > Zero virus Mac OS X > Tons of Patents & IP rights … I got it at the time and all in all getting it!!!

So where is Gartners' TOST analysis showing cloud and other computing as a growing % of enterprise resources through 2015? Or LATTE curves tracking shared vs. proprietary clouds? All the things you'd show on even a basic PSTRY chart YOY… If not, interesting thought about tax subsidies and global energy surcharge.

Typically, Gartner is a day late and a dollar short. These trends were obvious shortly afterwards the iPad was at first released. But at that time again what do I know. I only have an iPod Touch, iPhone, 2 iPads and…oh yeah, a desktop computer.

Lifelong Mac user

As a lifelong Mac user, I suggested and installed a Windows network at work.a. Macs simply offer too much freedom in an enterprise setting.b. Specialty applications are lacking.c. There is not enough tech support from Apple.d. Most people already know Windows, which reduces training costs.e. It is difficult to make a Mac a “dumb terminal” because Macs just find each other out of the box and can share files with relative impunity. The boss As a matter of fact doesn’t of that sort!f. Security again – to an IT “Doofus” … “Target Mode” on a Mac is viewed as a major security breach, whereby a thief can copy an entire harddrive without ever logging in. Thankfully, with the elimination of the Firewire interface, Apple appears to be burning this old bridge.g. cross-compatibility with legacy DOS applications doesn’t exist with Macs.

I agree times are changing, nevertheless Windows on the whole runs 95% of the world because it offers the enterprise greater control over the end user, plus legacy support, and that’s not about to be upset as quickly as some hopefuls might like to think.

The concept that in order for Apple to succeed

Sounds to me like “People nevertheless haven’t gotten over the concept that in order for Apple to succeed, MicroSoft has to fail”.