Gartner's
top predictions focus on economic risks, opportunities and
innovations that will impel CIOs to move to the next generation of
business-driven solutions.
The
priorities of CEOs must be dealt with by CIOs who exist in a
still-turbulent economy and increasingly uncertain technology
future," said Daryl
Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow. "As
consumerization takes hold and the Nexus of Forces drives CEOs to
certain expectations, CIOs must still provide reliability,
serviceability and availability of systems and services. Their
priorities must span multiple areas. As the world of IT moves
forward, it is finding that it must coordinate activities in a much
wider scope than it once controlled, and as a result, a loss of
control echoes through several predictions we are making."
Gartner's
top predictions for IT organizations include the following:
Through
2015, 90% of enterprises will bypass broad-scale deployment of
Windows 8. Windows 8 is Microsoft's attempt to bring the touch
interface to its flagship product to counter gains by Apple in
rapid-growth markets. Microsoft had to make this change to modernize
its offering, and its approach is to push IT organizations to this
new interface as quickly as possible. However, most enterprises and
their trusted management vendors are not yet prepared for this
change, and Gartner predicts that enterprises will want to wait for
more stability before proceeding. While Microsoft as a technology
company can make these changes at a more advanced pace, the
preponderance of the customer base cannot move so quickly. The market
will take time to mature, and most enterprises will sit on the
sideline for now.
By
Year-End 2014, three of the top five mobile handset vendors will be
Chinese. Mobile phone penetration in emerging markets has
resulted in a changing of the guard in terms of the leading vendors.
The openness of Android creates new markets for OEMs that previously
did not have the necessary software expertise and engineering
capabilities. The market continues to consolidate around Android and
iOS, with other ecosystems struggling to gain traction, and, with
most vendors committed to Android, it has become difficult to
differentiate. The result is that the traditional mobile phone
players are getting squeezed, being unable to compete with Apple and
Samsung at the high end and struggling to differentiate from
aggressive new vendors, most notably Huawei and ZTE, which are using
the same Android platform for their models. Chinese vendors have the
opportunity to leverage their strong position in the domestic Chinese
market for entry-level smartphones and expand to other regions,
because this is not just an emerging-market phenomenon.
By
2015, big data demand will reach 4.4 million jobs globally, but only
one-third of those jobs will be filled. The
demand for big data is growing, and enterprises will need to reassess
their competencies and skills to respond to this opportunity. Jobs
that are filled will result in real financial and competitive
benefits for organizations. An important aspect of the challenge in
filling these jobs lies in the fact that enterprises need people with
new skills — data management, analytics and business expertise and
nontraditional skills necessary for extracting the value of big data,
as well as artists and designers for data visualization.
By
2014, European Union directives will drive legislation to protect
jobs, reducing offshoring by 20 percent through 2016. An
upward trend in unemployment has continued in the European Union
during the ongoing financial crisis. With little expectation of a
short-term recovery, Gartner expects to see the European Union
introducing directives before the end of 2014 to protect local jobs.
The impact of this protectionist legislation would be a net reduction
of offshoring by 20 percent through 2016. This does not mean that
organizations would abandon the use of global delivery models, but it
would result in the rebalancing of where labor is located with such
models. Opportunities would be created for firms to invest further in
lower-cost parts of Europe, or in areas within their domestic
location, where costs may be lower.
By
2014, IT hiring in major Western markets will come predominantly from
Asian-headquartered companies enjoying double-digit growth. An
increasing number of successful Asian companies — particularly from
China and India — are enjoying double-digit growth rates and will
substantially grow their geographic footprints, making significant
investments in major Western markets through 2015. Consequently,
these organizations will be responsible for major hiring of IT
professionals to support their growth at a time when Western
companies will still be coping with the impact of the economic
crisis. Exacerbating the disparity between the hiring practices of
Western and Asian organizations will be the increased use of
industrialized IT solutions, which will further reduce the IT
staffing needs of Western firms.
By
2017, 40 percent of enterprise contact information will have leaked
into Facebook via employees' increased use of mobile device
collaboration applications. Facebook is one of the top five
applications installed on smartphones and tablets, and many
organizations are being pressured to permit interlinking with
Facebook and similar products, because those products provide a high
degree of leverage for new contacts. While many organizations have
been legitimately concerned about the physical coexistence of
consumer and enterprise applications on devices that interact with IT
infrastructure, there has been little discussion about the underlying
technologies that permit transfer of information between legitimate
enterprise-controlled applications and consumer applications. These
interactions are difficult to track, and the technologies to control
the transfer are more difficult to build, deploy and manage.
Through
2014, employee-owned devices will be compromised by malware at more
than double the rate of corporate-owned devices. Corporate
networks will become more like college and university networks, which
were the original "bring your own device" (BYOD)
environments. Because colleges and universities lack control over
students' devices, they focus on protecting their networks by
enforcing policies that govern network access. Gartner believes that
enterprises will adopt a similar approach and will block or restrict
access for those devices that are not compliant with corporate
policies. Enterprises that adopt BYOD initiatives should establish
clear policies that outline which employee-owned devices will be
allowed and which will be banned. In the BYOD era, security
professionals will need to diligently monitor vulnerability
announcements and security incidents involving mobile devices and
respond appropriately with policy updates.
Through
2014, software spending resulting from the proliferation of smart
operational technology will increase by 25 percent. Previously
"dumb" operational devices or objects, like a vending
machine, medical device, marine engine or parking meter, are now
having software embedded in them, and sensors are being linked to the
Internet to create and receive data streams. This machine-to-machine
communication has the potential to trigger significant new software
costs for four reasons: (1) because of the amount of software like
light databases or operating systems embedded within large numbers of
operational devices; (2) because of the traditional software vendors
starting to charge license fees, in certain circumstances, if the
devices even indirectly hit their applications; (3) because
operational technology vendors are developing IT-like platforms and
getting away from hardware sales and into annuity software sales; (4)
because the people buying and paying for this may not even be in IT,
are not experts in software procurement, and may make expensive
mistakes signing license agreements with hidden, or not so hidden,
costs and risks.
By
2015, 40 percent of Global 1000 organizations will use gamification
as the primary mechanism to transform business operations. Seventy
percent of business transformation efforts fail due to lack of
engagement. Gamification addresses engagement, transparency of work,
and connecting employees' actions to business outcomes. Companies
apply feedback, measurement and incentives — the same techniques
that game designers use, to keep players interested — to achieve
the needed engagement for the transformation of business operations.
Diverse industry segments are already finding gamification effective,
and, according to M2 Research, the worldwide market will grow from
$242 million in 2012 to $2.8 billion in 2016, with enterprise
gamification eclipsing consumer gamification in 2013.
By
2016, wearable smart electronics in shoes, tattoos and accessories
will emerge as a $10 billion industry. The majority of revenue
from wearable smart electronics over the next four years will come
from athletic shoes and fitness tracking, communications devices for
the ear, and automatic insulin delivery for diabetics. Wearable smart
electronics, such as fitness trackers, often come with data analysis
applications or services that create useful insights for the wearer.
Applications and services will create new value for consumers,
especially when combined with personal preferences, location,
biosensing and social information. CIOs must evaluate how the data
from wearable electronics can be used to improve worker productivity,
asset tracking and workflow. Wearable electronics will also provide
more-detailed information to retailers for targeting advertisements
and promotions.
By
2014, market consolidation will displace up to 20 percent of the top
100 IT services providers. A Nexus of Forces, including cloud,
big data, mobility and social media, along with continued global
economic uncertainty, will accelerate the restructuring of the nearly
$1 trillion IT services market. By 2015, low-cost cloud services will
cannibalize up to 15 percent of top outsourcing players' revenue, and
more than 20 percent of large IT outsourcers not investing enough in
industrialization and value-added services will disappear through
merger and acquisition. This will limit and endanger the typical
offshore/nearshore approach run by dedicated IT services providers
and create low-cost options onshore or facilitate a globalized
approach to staffing. CIOs should reevaluate the providers and types
of providers used for IT services, with particular interest in
cloud-enabled providers supporting information, mobile and social
strategies.
Source:
Gartner
