top strategic technologies for 2010

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Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010

Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2009

October 18-22, 2009Walt Disney World DolphinOrlando, FL

David Cearley and Carl Claunch

This presentation, including any supporting materials, is owned by Gartner, Inc.and/or its affiliates and is for the sole use of the intended Gartner audience orother authorized recipients. This presentation may contain information that isconfidential, proprietary or otherwise legally protected, and it may not be furthercopied, distributed or publicly displayed without the express written permissionof Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. 2009 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. Allrights reserved.

Notes accompany this presentation. Please select Notes Page view.These materials can be reproduced only with written approval from Gartner.Such approvals must be requested via e-mail: [email protected] is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates.


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This presentation, including any supporting materials, is owned by Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and is for the sole use of theintended Gartner audience or other authorized recipients. This presentation may contain information that is confidential,proprietary or otherwise legally protected, and it may not be further copied, distributed or publicly displayed without the expresswritten permission of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. 2009 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.Al l rights reserved.

Strategic Technologies and Trends

Enterprise impact during the nextthree years

- IT budget, business operations,business opportunities

- Threat/risk to the business

- Direct, derivative and combinatorial

- Short-term or long-term planning

Reach maturity or a tipping point

Driver of change/disruption

- User behavior and expectations

- Industry models and economics

- Technology markets and pricing

May be existing or emerging

Target mainstream enterprise

Factor in Hype Cycles, surveys, clientinquiries and ongoing research

Selectively combine related items forstrategic emphasis

Evaluate for type, scope, degree,speed and size of impact

Not a comprehensive list

Not a list of top IT budget items

Removal from the list does not mean itis no longer strategic.

Prefer items changing during next twoor three years not currently factoredinto most strategic plans

Rotate slow moving long-term andemerging items periodically

Strategic Technologies The Top 10 List

All strategic technologies need to be investigatedand factored into the planning process.

A strategic technology is one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise during the next threeyears. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, theneed for a major dollar investment or the risk of being late to adopt. Companies should factor thesetechnologies into their strategic planning process by asking key questions and making deliberate decisionsabout them during the next two years. Sometimes the decision will be to do nothing with a particulartechnology. In other cases, it will be to continue investing in the technology at the current rate. In still othercases, the decision may be to test/pilot or more aggressively adopt/deploy the technology.

A strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a widerrange of uses. In the case of a mainstream technology, the strategic decision will likely revolve around

product/vendor selection and the degree to which it is incorporated into the broad IT environment. A strategictechnology may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage forearly adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years. In the case of anemerging technology, the strategic decision may be to request funding to evaluate the technology.

This presentation highlights technologies that will be strategic for most organizations. It is not acomprehensive list of every technology that is ready for adoption or incorporation into the strategic planningprocess. Companies should use the list as a starting point and adjust based on their industry, unique businessneeds, technology adoption model (that is, Type A, B or C company) and other factors.

Strategic Imperative: Companies should use the Gartner Top 10 list as a starting point andadjust their list based on their industry, unique business needs, technology adoption model(that is, Type A, B or C company) and other factors.


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2009 Hype Cycles related to the top 10 technology list:

Cloud Computing

Virtualization

Social Software

Data Management

PC Technologies

E-Commerce

Analytic Applications

Consumer Mobile Applications

Software as a Service Business Intelligence and Information Management

Application Development

Mobile Devices

Data and Application Security

Server Technologies

Emerging Trends

See also: The Enterprise CIO's 2009 Agenda: Discipline, Risk and Opportunity (G00165267)

Key Issues

What technologies willdrive the future ofapplications, applicationdevelopment and datacenters?

What technologies willdrive change andadvances in the end-userenvironment?

What other long-termtrends and "forgotten"technologies should beevaluated?

PC Hype Cycle

2009

A few Oldies. but Goodies Selected Technologiesthat should already be in your strategic plan

* Service-Oriented Architecture *

* IM/Presence and Collaboration *

* Master Data Management *


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Three items were removed from the list in 2010. unified communications is still a strategic long term trend but evolution continues at a slow pacemaking it less critical to highlight on this years list. The dual trend toward specialized systems and servers beyond blades continues with somevendors emphasizing "converged systems" that bring network, storage and server functions. However, in 2010 we do not expect major shifts in themarket and have replaced these technologies with other new data center technologies for consideration (flash memory, reshaping data center). Thesetopics added to specialized systems and "beyond blades" approaches for data center planning in 2010/2011. It should be noted that removing atechnology from the list does not mean it is no longer strategic. Rather, it simply reflects a shift in emphasis relative to other technologies. In somecases, technologies are rotated from year to year to expose a larger number of technologies over time.

A number of topics remain on the list but with a new emphasis. Many aspects such ofvirtualization including virtualized servers, storage andnetworking are part of the strategic plan for many data centers and virtualization has become an integral part of other trends on the 2010 list such ascloud computing and client computing. In 2010, we emphasize new elements such as live migration for availability that have longer termimplications. Cloud computing is maturing with emphasis placed on public cloud service consumption, private cloud environment development andweb/cloud application development. WOA and Enterprise Mashups are brought together as part of this topic. A particularly strategic emphasis forbusiness intelligence is advanced analytics which is a key technology to support pattern based strategy. Social software and social networking is

maturing over the next two to five years in many dimensions impacting applications, application development and security. Social computing picksup this theme. Green IT remains strategic but the aspect of that deals with energy consumption is increasingly an integral part of data center andclient strategies and as such are dealt with as part ofreshaping the data centerand client computing. In 2010, the focus shifts to how technology tosupport greener business (i.e.,IT for Green) augments the green IT strategies for improved IT energy efficiency.

In addition to flash memory and reshaping the data center three other technologies were added. Client computing and mobile applications reflect amaturing and convergence of trends related to end user devices and applications, as well as the location where the devices are used. Mobileapplications in particular reflect the increasing importance of this market as an increasingly important touch point for an enterprises customers andthe need for IT to factor this into their strategy.

Note: In the above text items on the 2009 list are highlighted in bold, while items on the 2010 list are highlighted in italics

Technologies You Can't Afford to Ignore

Top 10 Strategic TechnologyAreas for 2010

1. Cloud Computing

2. Advanced Analytics

3. Client Computing

4. IT for Green

5. Reshaping the Data Center

6. Social Computing

7. Security Activity Monitoring

8. Flash Memory

9. Virtualization for Availability

10.Mobile Applications

Top 10 Strategic TechnologyAreas for 2009

1. Virtualization

2. Business Intelligence

3. Cloud Computing

4. Green IT .

5. Unified Communications ..

6. Social Software and SocialNetworking

7. Web-Oriented Architecture ..

8. Enterprise Mashups ..

9. Specialized Systems .

10.Servers Beyond Blades .

Dropped for 2010Modified for 2010 New for 2010

Strategic Imperative: Companies should factor the top 10 technologies into their strategicplanning process and make deliberate decisions about them during the next two years. Thisdoes not necessarily mean adoption and investment in all of the listed technologies.


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Key Issues

What technologies will drive the future ofapplications, application development and datacenters?

What technologies will drive change andadvances in the end-user environment?

What other long term-trends and "forgotten"technologies should be evaluated?


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Gartner defines cloud computing as "a style of computingwhere scalable and elastic IT-related capabilities are provided

'as a service' to customers* using Internet Technologies".

Cloud Computing: Everything as a Service PromisesAgility, Innovation, Simplicity and Economic Value

* Public cloud computing refers to delivery of cloud services by a third-party provider to externalcustomers. In private cloud computing, IT acts as the provider of services to internal customers.

3FocalPo

intsForCloud

Projects

ConsumingCloud Services

1

Developing Cloud-Based Applicationsand Solutions

2

Implementing PrivateCloud ComputingEnvironments

3Internet Technologies5

Metered by Use4

Shared3

Scalable and Elastic2

Service-Based1

5AttributesThatSupportOutcomes

During the past 15 years, IT industrialization has grown in popularity. IT services delivered via hardware, software andpeople are becoming repeatable and usable by a wide range of customers and service providers. This is partly because ofthe commoditization and standardization of technologies, virtualization and the rise of service-oriented softwarearchitectures, and (most importantly) the dramatic growth in popularity/use of the Internet and the Web. These things,taken together, constitute the basis of a discontinuity that amounts to a new opportunity to shape the relationship betweenthose who use IT services and those whosellthem. The discontinuity implies that the ability to deliver specializedservices in IT can now be paired with the ability to deliver those services in an industrialized and pervasive way. Thereality of this implication is that users of IT-related services can focus on what the services provide them, rather thanhowthe services are implemented or hosted.

Just as utility companies sell power to subscribers, and telephone companies sell voice and data services, IT services such

as network security management, data center hosting or even departmental billing can now be easily delivered as acontractual service. The buying decision then shifts from buying products that enable the delivery of some function (likebilling) toward contracting, with someone else delivering those functions. This isn't new, but itdoes represent a differentmodel from the licensed-based, on-premises models that have dominated the IT industry for so long. Names for this typeof operation have come into vogue at different times. Utility computing, SaaS, application service providers all havetheir place in the pantheon of industrialized delivery models. However, none has garnered widespread acceptance as thecentral theme for how any and all IT-related services can be delivered globally.

Strategic Imperative: Establish a project team that includes represnetatives from across IT aswell as key business constituencies to establish an overall approach to cloud computing andevaluate the opportunities and risks associated with this new style of computing.


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Consuming Cloud-Computing Services

Service Consumer Responsibility

Service Provider Responsibility

SystemInfrastructure

Services

Client

A

P

I

ApplicationInfrastructure

Services

Client

A

P

I

P

I

A

Client

A A A

P

III

P P

Application, InformationOr Business Process

Services

Rapid development,deployment and change

Greater vendor lock-in

Rapid hardwareprovisioning and delegatedhardware management

Developer responsible forcloud optimization

Rapid applicationdeployment and change

Least flexibility

Warning: Hazards AheadProceed With Caution

Using cloud resources does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does re-arrange some and reduce others. The cost of deliveringa business solution based in the cloud depends on many variables. One notable differentiator is the level at which the customer entersthe cloud.

System infrastructure services (e.g., Amazon EC2 and S3) delivers access to a virtualized pool of compute and storage services. Theleast disruptive approach to cloud infrastructure is to use basic system infrastructure to host traditional enterprise applications. Amore sophisticated approach would be to build a program so that it will uniquely exploit cloud-centric distributed and parallelprocessing capabilities, and run the resulting program on cloud system infrastructure. In both scenarios, the rest of the applicationinfrastructure (e.g., database, development tools) still must be acquired and installed and the consumer is typically responsible forapplication life cycle management and security.

Use of application infrastructure services moves more of the infrastructure stack to a cloud model and typically uses cloud basedservices to build, store, run and manage the resulting application. Application infrastructure services can provide an abstraction layerthat reduces the complexity of creating cloud optimized application. This approach is being championed by a new crop of RAD and

database vendors that provide turnkey environments (e.g., application platform as a service [APaaS]) that build on the scalability ofcloud-based infrastructures. However, use of application infrastructure services and APaaS increases vendor lock-in insofar asapplications developed for one vendor offering are often not portable to another vendor's service.

Developers can also access external application, information or process services via a mashup model. The result of the externalservice is brought to the internal application. An extension of this model would allow for a degree of configuration and extension tothe external service being accessed. In either of these approaches the consumer of the cloud service offloads even more of thedevelopment and management functions in comparison to either cloud infrastructure approach. The tradeoff is that customization islimited to the configurability and mashability of the existing application, information or process services.

None of the approaches will be sufficient for the full range of application needs for the typical enterprise. Most users will employ ahybrid model that uses all three techniques. Users planning their budgets for cloud engagements must understand both the cloud-generated costs and the retained internal costs to arrive at the total cost estimate for such project.

Strategic Imperative: Develop unique and appropriate selection criteria and governancemodels for each layer of the cloud computing service hierarchy but combine them into anoverall cloud computing strategy.


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Tactical Guidance: Familiarize yourself with the trade-offs of different developmentapproaches, and develop a plan for where and how you will use each. Don't let vendormarketing and hype dictate your strategy.

Cloud/Web Application Development Why Strategic

- SOA + Web + Cloud

- All Web apps become cloud apps

- New solution opportunities

- The Citizen Developer

- The Enterprise as Cloud Provider

Multiple Cloud Approaches- Cloud Service Configure/Mashup

- Cloud-Hosted Application

- Cloud-Optimized Application

Cloud Tools, Techniques/Skills

- WOA & Global Class Design

- Design for linear scalability, parallelprocessing and distributed data

- Application Platform as a Service

- Develop with social networking in mind

- Merge Web design and developmentDeveloper

Browser/RIAor Traditional

Client

System Infrastructure

Sys./App. Infra.Application

Consumer

Global-

Class App.

Access andConfiguration

Enterprise-Class App.

Cloud-based services can be exploited in a variety of ways to develop an application or solution. The least-disruptive approach is to continue usingtraditional development tools and techniques, and exploit the cloud as a virtualized pool of compute and storage services. A slightly moresophisticated model would be to build a program on internal systems that will uniquely exploit cloud-centric distributed and parallel processingcapabilities, and run the resulting program in the cloud. Developers can also create and execute applications internally, and simply access externalapplication, information or process services via a mashup model. The result of the external service is brought to the internal application. An extensionof this approach would allow for a degree of configuration and extension to the external service being accessed. Full exploitation of the cloud meansthat external resources are used for building, storing, running and managing the application. This approach is being championed by a new crop ofRAD and database vendors that provide turnkey environments (e.g., application platform as a service [APaaS]) that build on the scalability of cloud-based infrastructures. None of the approaches will be sufficient for the full range of application needs for the typical enterprise. Most users willemploy a hybrid model that uses all three techniques.

There is a fundamental tradeoff between using cloud system infrastructure and cloud application infrastructure to create cloud optimizedapplications. Using cloud system infrastructure the developer is given maximum control over the environment but must build linear scalability,distributed data management and multitenancy (if needed) into the application themselves. Most IT groups do not have the skills to accomplish this.By using application infrastructure services (e.g., Application Platform as a Service) the developer can insulate themselves from this complexity butat the expense of control over every aspect of the environment.

Web development tools have reached a point where they can address most enterprise use cases. Users should avoid religious debates on thesuperiority of one scripting language over another and focus on how well the tool or framework supports developer productivity to construct andmaintain the application.

In addition to consuming cloud services enterprises will increasingly act as cloud providers and deliver application, information or business processservices to customers and business partners. The first step in this direction is often tied to a companies web site with elements of the web site beingmade more "mashable" by exposing information and capabilities of the web site using RESTful APIs, RSS feeds and other WOA techniques. Asecond step entails exposing other business processes and information sources that are not currently part of the companies formal website using thesame mechanisms. Best Buy is one example of a company pursuing this approach.


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Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud

Computing One Size Doesn't Fit AllPrivate Public

Distinctions are made at the extremes, butmany examples exist somewhere between.Good Control

Lower Value

Less Control

High Value

Hybrid

Pros Cons More Control

Less Latency

More Secure

Learning Environment

Shift "Price/Cost" to "Price/Value"

Continued Asset Ownership

Reduced Economies of Scale

Reduced Sharing

Reduced Flexibility

CapEx Dominated

Company/EntityOwned Assets and

Scope is Bounded byExclusive

Membership definedby company/Entity

No owned assets andscope is open to

anyone who can payfor service as

delivered by provider

Private cloud computing is a style of computing where scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service tointernal customers using Internet technologies. Note that this definition is extremely similar to our public cloud computing definition.The focus on internal is related to who can access or use the services in question and who owns or coordinates the resources used todeliver the services. We present two characteristics that are related to conducting private cloud computing, as opposed to public cloudcomputing:

Limited Membership (that is, exclusive membership): A private cloud implementation has a bounded membership that is exclusive(that is, only approved members can participate, and approval is contingent on some characteristic that the general public or othergeneral businesses cannot gain easily). For example, membership may be limited to employees and designees of a given company.Alternatively, services may be limited to a set of businesses in a given industry, or they might be limited to an industry trade group.Access to these services will frequently be controlled by a centralized organization (such as a company's IT organization or anindustry association), but this control is not essential to the concept of the private cloud. Note that a cloud service that only requires

customers to sign up is not considered to be exclusive.Spectrum of Control/Ownership: A private cloud service is different from a public cloud service in that private cloud services areimplemented for an exclusive set of consumers. There is a spectrum from fully private services to fully public services that blursdistinctions of ownership or control. There are many examples that fall somewhere between public cloud services and private cloudservices, including business partners sharing resources, private cloud services built on top of public cloud services and specializedservices limited to a small number of enterprises in a specific industry. Private cloud services can be built on top of a public cloudinfrastructure or in a hybrid model. Organizations need to focus on the services to improve clarity and direction.

Tactical Guideline: When deciding between public and private cloud initiatives, considerwhat the scope of membership needs to be and who must own the assets.


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Virtualization: Far Beyond Consolidation

Live Migration VMware or Microsoft

Currently used for one time permanent move

But imagine a perpetual process, never done- What happens if source VM fails?

- What happens if target VM fails?

One mechanism for availability versus many

VM VM

Separatephysical

machines

Highreliabilitymachine

Separatehi-reliabilitymachines

Fail-overclusteringsoftware

Faulttolerantserver

Nospecial

approach

Change virtualization setting

Versus

Live migration is the movement of a running virtual machine (VM), while its operating system and other softwarecontinue to execute as if they remained on the original physical server. This takes place by replicating the state of physicalmemory between the source and destination VMs, then, at some instant in time, one instruction finishes execution on thesource machine and the next instruction begins on the destination machine. The source VM stops at this point, while theusers, networks and disk activities take place to and from the destination physical machine from that point forward.VMware names this VMotion, whereas Microsoft calls it Live Migration.

Imagine, however, if the replication of memory were to continue indefinitely, but execution of instructions remains on thesource VM. We are one instant away from switching over to the destination machine, but don't take the step. Considerwhat happens if the source VM were to fail suddenly the next instruction that was to be executed would now take placeon the destination machine, completing the live migration. The source virtual machine is now stopped and we have a

single (destination) VM running. If the destination VM were to fail, we would just pick a new destination to start theindefinite migration. Thus, we have very high availability possible.

The key value proposition is to displace a variety of separate mechanisms with a single dial that can be set to any levelof availability from baseline to fault tolerance, all using a common mechanism and permitting the settings to be changedrapidly as needed. We can dispense with expensive high-reliability hardware, with fail-over cluster software and itsadministrative complexity, and perhaps even with fault-tolerant hardware, yet still meet our availability needs. This is keyto cutting costs, lowering complexity, as well as increasing agility as needs shift.


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Reshaping the Data Center POD Design and Power Zones

What we knew about data centerdesign for decades was wrong!

POD Design

- Incremental build-out methodology

- Use standard components to maximizeflexibility, cost-effectiveness

- Component configuration optimizedpower and cooling to a prescribedamount of raised-floor space

- Reduce capex

Power Zones

- High density

- Medium density

- Low density

Based on workload mix

Power and cooling designed at thezone level

Expandable over time

Dramatically reduce capitalcosts upfront

Minimize overprovisioning

Reduce operating expenses by up to 40%

Allow very-high-density computingwhere needed

In the past, design principles for data centers were simple: Figure out what you have, estimate growth for 15 to 20 years, then build tosuit. Newly-built data centers often opened with huge areas of white floor space, fully powered and backed up by a UPS, water- andair-cooled, and mostly empty. We have discovered that much of what we knew is really false costs are lower if one builds in slices.If you expect to need 9,000 square feet during the life of a data center, then design the site to support it, but only build what's neededfor five to seven years. This POD approach in which populated floor space may only be 5,000 feet initially, fully supported bypower, UPS, chillers and generators, with 4,000 feet left as a slab or built out to absolute minimum requirements (essentially, a shell) is becoming a best practice.

Similarly, we thought the most efficient way to deal with varying densities was to intermix hot and cool devices to even out the heatacross the center, but placing cooling closer to the heat producers, who are isolated into hot zones, ends up more efficient in capitaland operating costs. Most customers that have considered the density zone approach have found that high-density applicationscomprise, on average, 10% to 15% of the total, medium-density requirements are about 20%, and the rest of the workload is allocated

to low density. In a 9,000-square-foot data center, this approach yields lower cost, initially and ongoing. Assuming 10% of floor spaceis designed to high-density (200 w/sq. ft.), 20% was medium-density (150 W/sq. ft.) and the rest was low or normal density (100W/sq. ft.), the overall building cost would be $16.8 million (a 21% reduction). At a 50% load, yearly electrical costs would be$740,000 (a 27% reduction). If zone requirements changed, and more high-density floor space was needed, then scaling up PDUswould be a simple way to increase power. Adding more on-floor CRAC units would address cooling issues. For larger data centers, athree- or four-pod approach creates a living facility that would be continually updated with the latest power and cooling technologies,ensuring optimal performance. In the last phase (e.g., the fourth pod), plans could begin to retrofit the first pod with new technologies,beginning an evolutionary cycle for the facility, and extending its useful life.

Cutting operating expenses, which are a nontrivial part of the overall IT spend for most clients, frees up the money to apply to otherprojects or investments either in IT or in the business itself.

Strategic Guideline: Users should adopt a pod-based approach to new data centerconstruction and expansion.


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IT For Green Business Green ITMeans More Than Energy Efficient IT

Remote communication and

collaboration to reduce travel

Analytics to optimize

transportation of goods

Teleworking

Content and document mgtreduce the need for paper

Smart building technology

Carbon tracking,

management and trading

Collation and reporting of

nonfinancial and CSR data

How intrinsic is IT to business?

How much of a contribution tothe overall green footprint willgreen IT make?

If I don't spend on green IThow will it affect my business?

Mfg Energy Retail Fin Svcs. Gov't.

IT's Impact

Business Production andOperations

Fix Business Fix IT

Product Use

Domains of Impact

IT can enable many green initiatives. The use of IT, particularly among the white collar staff, can greatlyenhance an enterprise's green credentials. Common green initiatives include the use of e-documents toreduce the consumption of paper for operational and regulatory-compliance-related activities, includingfiling of reports with regulatory bodies. Using e-document management systems can also serve as thebeginning steps to facilitate collaboration among geographically disparate parts of the organization.Reducing travel, particularly in a service-centric organization, can drastically improve the overall carbonfootprint of the enterprise. An extension of this philosophy is teleworking, where employees no longercommute to the office on a regular basis. Not only can the business gain from a reduction in energyconsumed for transportation, it could physically reduce its footprint on the environment by occupying

smaller buildings with smaller paved spaces, reducing storm water runoff. This makes the use of smartbuilding technologies, such as auto-off lighting and occupancy-based HVAC viable and cost-effective.

IT also can provide the analytic tools that others in the enterprise may use to reduce energy consumption inthe transportation of goods or other carbon management activities.


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Key Issues



What other long-term trends and "forgotten"technologies should be evaluated?


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Client Computing: Strategic Decisions Ahead

Virtualization changesthe building blocks

Provisioning choicesexpand

Cloud-based and RIAapplication useincreases

Device and OS optionsmatter less

Major Microsoftupgrade decisions loom

Non-enterprise-owneddevices become saferand more desirable

Generational shift altersusers expectations

Build a strategic client-computing road map.Either your suppliers are riding your road

map, or youre riding theirs.

* Partial Listing of Hype Cycle Entries

TechnologyTrigger

Peak of InflatedExpectations

Trough ofDisillusionment

Slope of Enlightenment Plateau ofProductivity

time

expectations

Years to mainstream adoption:less than 2 years 2 to 5 years 5 to 10 years more than 10 years

obsoletebefore plateau

As of July 2009

PersistentPersonalization

Operating SystemStreaming

PC Hypervisors

PC Linux forConsumers

(Mature Markets)

Web-Based Office Productivity Suites

Hosted Virtual Desktops

PC Application Streaming

PC Application Virtualization

Hosted PC Virtualization Software

Open-SourceOffice Products

Server-BasedComputing

Tablet PC

PC Linux for DataEntry Workers

Hype Cycle for PC Technologies*

Virtualization is bringing new ways of packaging client computing applications and capabilities: Hosted Virtual Desktops, WorkspaceVirtualization, Virtual Machines, Application Virtualization. Streaming brings new ways to deliver application, OS and workspacepackage to users. More efficient virtualized packaging options that allow apps and total user desktop images to be stored centrally andused anywhere are emerging and will be mainstream in three years. As a result, the choice of a particular PC hardware platform andeventually the OS platform becomes less critical. Web-based/cloud-based applications will encourage more hardware and OS-agnostic application development. Previously binary decisions, like local versus centralized computing, are becoming a spectrum ofchoice.

The Windows based desktop PC as the dominant client computing device is being challenged by alternative OS options and formfactors. Use of tablets, netbooks and smartphone to augment or replace the traditional desktop PC is increasing. By 2014, we expectover 50% of the end-point devices accessing the internet will be smartphones. Linux for data entry workers is reaching mainstreamacceptance and maturity while use for consumers in both mature and emerging markets will reach mainstream adoption in two to fiveyears. Macintosh is growing as a viable option for business users in leading-edge organizations that exploit advanced techniques to

manage client diversity. In the midst of this turmoil organizations are also facing major upgrade decisions in 2010/2011 with therelease of Windows 7 and Office 2010. Facing this major upgrade decision, along with the myriad of trends driving change in theclient environment, organizations are realizing that, unless they build road maps, they will be hostages to the road maps of theirsuppliers. Successful enterprises are taking advantage of choice to seize control of the cadence of their investments in an area thatrepresents a big slice of the IT budget.

An increasing number of users are pushing for support of non-standard and non-company-owned devices. Younger technology savvyworkers have higher expectations about what they should be using, need less support and are more willing to find a work-around forIT restrictions. Our research indicates that most companies have 15% to 20% of these rogue devices on their networks withengineering and technology savvy environments having the largest percentage. Deciding how to equip which user with what and howhas become a much more granular challenge. The balance between standardization and overprovisioning has changed. Meanwhilecompanies are trying to reduce the capital budget and manageability overhead of PCs.

Strategic Imperative: Proactively build a five to eight year strategic client computing roadmapoutlining an approach to device standards, ownership and support; OS and applicationselection, deployment and update; and management and security plans to manage diversity.


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Mobile Applications

Harbinger: Manytens of thousands

of new and morepowerful applicationsare coming online.This will accelerate.

How Does It Affect You?

Mobile applications need newservers to which they connect

Application delivery and supportcomplexity increases

Immature management tools

Look at mobile apps as a critical

enabler of B2C client interactionsand increased customer satisfaction

Mobile applications can create

Stickiness

Customer behavioral inertia

Value real estate

Company differentiation

Support impulse interactions

By YE 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing a rich environment for theconvergence of mobility and the Web. Mobile devices are becoming computers in their own right, with an astounding amount ofprocessing ability and bandwidth.

We already see many thousands of applications for platforms like the Apple iPhone, in spite of the limited market (only for the oneplatform) and need for unique coding. How much bigger would this be if many of the same applications that run in the enormous PCmarket were usable on mobile devices, without having to be developed explicitly for that platform? It may take a newer version that isdesigned to flexibly operate on both full PC and miniature systems, but if the operating system interface and processor architecturewere identical, that enabling factor would create a huge turn upwards in mobile application availability.

New marketplaces such as the iTunes store enable the easy dispersion of these B2C mobile applications. Potential users can visit areasonable number of such sites to find and download their desired programs, instead of requiring each business to promote its

application and lure customers to a unique download mechanism.Moore's Law gives us twice as many transistors in the same chip area, which for PCs is leading to an increasing number of cores innewer systems to employ all those added transistors. However, an alternate approach is to implement a single simple x86 processor onan ever shrinking chip, with both cost and size decreasing as transistor densities keep improving. This allows an x86 system to bedeployed in mobile devices and in other places that don't suit a full PC. Current activities like the Intel Atom processors show thispotential is near, while research projects and demonstrations point to its feasibility. Gartner predicts that the technical, business andmarket issues will be overcome, luring processor makers like Intel, mobile device makers and software developers into making thispossibility become a future reality.


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Advanced Analytics: OperationalAnalytics to Optimize and Simulate

Gartner's definition of optimization/simulation: Using analyticaltools and models to maximize business process and decisioneffectiveness by examining alternative outcomes and scenarios,before, during, and after process implementation and execution.

Traditionaloffline analytics

In-line/embeddedanalytics

Exploringevents/data

Derivingevents/data

Predictive

Explanatory

Enabling Trends

Increasing connectivity

More-powerful mobileprocessors

Sophisticated mobileapplications

FixedRules

Supported by Data

PredictiveAnalytics

We have reached the point in the improvement of performance and costs that we can afford to perform analytics and simulation foreach and every action taken in the business. Not only will data center systems be able to do this, but mobile devices will have accessto data and enough capability to perform analytics themselves, potentially enabling use of optimization and simulation everywhereand every time.

This can be viewed as a third step in supporting operational business decisions. Fixed rules and prepared policies gave way to moreinformed decisions powered by the right information delivered at the right time, whether through CRM or ERP or other applications.The new step is to provide simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, not simply information, to empower even moredecision flexibility at the time and place of every business process action.

Another way to view this is as a shift in timing. Business intelligence has mainly provided us historical analysis, increasinglypowerful ways of analyzing what has already happened. We can increase the scope of the information that is analyzed and we canreduce delays between the data creation and its analysis, but at heart this is a look backwards. The new step looks into the future,

predicting what can or will happen.

We don't want to only spot past patterns of suspicious activity that might indicate fraud had already occurred. Think of the additionalvalue if we could look at an action as it is taking place, predict the results, spot the fraud that will ensue and be able to stop it before itmaterializes. What if we could predict the likely sales in a store from remaining inventory for various possible purchases at thismoment, and offer inducements to a customer to pick the product right now that maximizes likely total revenue for the remainder ofthe day?

Advanced analytics also involves new technologies to search unstructured content and other search enhancements.

Definition: Optimization and simulation is using analytical tools and models to maximizebusiness process and decision effectiveness by examining alternative outcomes andscenarios, before, during, and after process implementation and execution.


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Web content management (WCM) systems, team collaboration support and portals have evolved ascomplementary applications. This early evolution and system interaction became the basis of the smartenterprise suite (SES). A WCM system deals with content creation and management, controlling who cancreate documents for the Web site, how multiple authors collaborate and who approves their work. It alsodetermines how documents will look and be revised, protected, stored and delivered. Portals control whichusers see what content under what circumstances, and collect and configure content on demand. Theymaintain a list of available content and know who controls it, the permissions required to access it, and theform and character that its authors have specified for its delivery.

Early portal products focused on information access rather than providing the workspace within which teams

would collaborate. Team workspaces evolved during the same period to provide a Web-based workenvironment. However, workers do not want two distinct environments to support their work one for theirown work products (whether personal or group) and another for accessing "external" information. Theconvergence of these functions has been fairly slow, while portals focused on integration, first of informationaccess, and then of application access.

Action Item: Plan for the inclusion of a document repository within the portal to create the opportunity to usethis merged capability to support collaborative teamwork.

Strategic Imperative: Focus both on use of social software and social media in the enterpriseand participation and integration with externally facing enterprise-sponsored and publiccommunities. Do not ignore the role of the social profile to bring communities together.

PublicSocialMedia

Social Softwarefor the Enterprise

ExternallyFacing:

CustomerCommunities

Bloggers

Facebook

MyspaceTwitter

ContentTagging

SearchWebsite

Integration

Ratings

Discussions

Blogs

WikisSocialNetwork

Activity Streams

E-Mail Integration

Content Tagging

Security

Social Computing:Participating in and Tapping Into the Collective

SocialProfile

Recommendations

Ratings

The Battle for User Input and Knowledge Sharing


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Examine Collaboration in Context UsingSocial Network Analysis

Social network analysisshows relationship-based businessintelligence regarding:

Intricacies of workingrelationships

- Which team and individual

activities would benefit fromtechnology

Network connectors andboundary spanners

- Who are the critical people todrive technology adoption

Social analytics

- Trends, topics, expertise

Social network analysisshows relationship-based businessintelligence regarding:

Intricacies of workingrelationships

- Which team and individual

activities would benefit fromtechnology

Network connectors andboundary spanners

- Who are the critical people todrive technology adoption

Social analytics

- Trends, topics, expertise

Social networks exist. The process of social network analysis is a purposeful study of social networks to gleaninformation, gain insight and develop an action plan based on that insight. In some situations, a company maysimply want to understand how people interact and ensure that it supports those interactions with technology.In other situations, a company may create an intervention to change behavior once it has had a chance toevaluate the current state of the social network in its department or organization. For more information onSNA, see "Social Network Analysis: What a Difference an 'A' Makes" (G00160449).

Action Item: Organizations that really want to optimize their effectiveness should begin with baseline SNA andcompare it every year to see what has changed.

Reality Check: Organization charts seldom reveal how work really gets accomplished.


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Key Issues



What other long-term trends and "forgotten"technologies should be evaluated?


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Flash Memory Wide Uses Ahead

Why Flash is Strategic

Orders-of-magnitude enhancements ofperformance in small, rugged footprint withdecreased power consumption

Price per byte declines shrink gap from costsof traditional hard disk drives

Issues and Impact

Adds a layer to the storage hierarchy, whichchanges enterprise plans and strategies

Cost and useful life disadvantages

Rebalances the processor to storage speedratio after years of widening

Strategic Decisions

Evaluate storage requirements and budgetfeasibility versus performance, capacity,power and total cost of ownership (TCO).

Find opportunities to leverage the uniqueperformance to displace other hardware orsolve service level challenges

Disadvantages

Advantages

Performance

Density

Ruggedness

Cost per byte

Update limits

Energy efficiency

Flash memory is a semiconductor memory device, familiar to many from its use in USB memory sticks anddigital camera cards. It is much faster than rotating disk, but considerably more expensive a few dozentimes more per byte than the same capacity disk drive. This differential is shrinking, however. At the rate ofprice declines, the technology will enjoy more than a 100% compound annual growth rate during the next fewyears and become strategic in many IT areas.

Flash has a number of advantages compared to the technologies it will displace. It has enormous speedcompared to rotating disk drives. The energy requirements are somewhat lower than rotating disk, even whenvery aggressive power management features are used to minimize disk drive consumption, but the power usedper input-output operation is enormously lower which is where this really shines. That is, when considering

flash-based storage against the amount of hard disk drive based storage that would be needed to sustain thesame rate of I/O operations, the energy efficiency is compelling. Flash based storage, being solid state, is muchmore rugged and takes up less space.

The disadvantages of flash based storage are twofold the cost per byte of storage is considerably higheralthough the gap continues to lessen, and flash devices have a finite life with a maximum number of updatesthat can be performed. This can be ameliorated by load-balancing techniques, but we might need to replacedevices during the useful life of the flash-based products when we would not with a hard-drive alternative.


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Flash Memory Changing Storage

A blend of RAM and disks

Use as cache?

Use as solid state disk?

Implement a new layer in thestorage hierarchy?

Internal or external location?

New layer suggests uniqueplacement philosophy

Mechanism for placement?

- Operating system chooses

- Application/middleware picks

- Formal OS interface helpful

Y++Disk

Y+++++Flash

N+++++++++RAM

NonvolatileCostSpeedDevice

Virtual

Paging

File Cache

Flash

Disk Cache

Disk Drive

New Storage Hierarchy

?

We will see huge use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems. In addition, it

offers a new layer of the storage hierarchy in servers and client computers that has key advantages space, heat, performance and

ruggedness among them.

Unlike the RAM, the main memory in servers and PCs, flash memory is persistent even when power is removed. In that way, it looks

more like disk drives where we place information that must survive power-downs and reboots, yet it has much of the speed of

memory, far faster than a disk drive. Instead of the milliseconds experienced with disks, we measure flash and RAM access in

nanoseconds.

The simplest and most obvious uses of flash are to increase the size of caches, thus increasing the effective performance of disk (at

least for data that is able to be delivered out of cache instead of from the drive itself). This is complicated because flash memory has a

fairly limited number of writes it can sustain before it can fail, far less than RAM or disks. Putting mainly read-only data in a flash-

based cache is a good current exploitation. Similarly, one could create a solid state disk, something that is attached and accessed the

same as rotating disk but which internally uses flash memory to hold all the data.

The more interesting possibility is to recognize that this is neither fish nor fowl, but a new blend of both RAM and disk that can

become a new layer in the storage hierarchy. Just as we have to decide what data sits only in virtual memory in the PC and what data

is placed on some disk device, we should decide what data should be placed in flash. We can depend upon its nonvolatility, yet

benefit from its enormous speed compared to disk, the other nonvolatile choice. Key to getting maximum value is putting the right

information in the new layer only the information or system tables that can benefit most from the speed advantage, giving the most

overall improvement to the system. This will require the operating system or application to designate the important data.


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User Activity Monitoring It's Going to Get Harder

Cloud ApplicationsCloud Applications

Cloud InfrastructureCloud Infrastructure

Cloud Security ServicesCloud Security Services

CorporateData

Your Data Center

Privileged Users:Data Center

User Activity: Data-Center-Hosted Applications

TargetedA

ttacks In

sid

erThreats

ApplicationsApplications

InfrastructureInfrastructure

Activity monitoringActivity monitoring

Compliance

PrivilegedUsers: Cloud

User Activity: Cloud-Based Applications Targeted attacks are on the

rise

Application and infrastructureare prime vulnerabilities

Cloud computing complicatesthe picture

Security shifting from targetedprotection to broad monitoring

User activity event streamsmust be monitored

- Instrument internalsystems

- Evaluate cloud providers

We need to monitor the activity of privileged users and application users. Targeted attacks are on the rise.Many of these attacks exploit security weaknesses in applications or infrastructure. When the attack occursfrom the application layer, the only signal that we may ever have of the breach is abnormal applicationactivity from a compromised user account. When the attack occurs from the infrastructure layer, the onlysignal that we may ever have of the breach is abnormal system access from a compromised privileged useraccount. During the next five years, the work of user activity monitoring, compliance reporting, and breachor attack discovery will be complicated by the adoption of cloud computing. This work will be moreimportant as organizations consume IT services that are implemented on external shared IT infrastructures.

Most organizations will have a mix of IT functions that are consumed as a service and applications that are

implemented on their own IT infrastructure. Some corporate data will be exposed to the corporation'sprivileged users, and some corporate data may be stored on a shared infrastructure and will potentially beexposed to the privileged users of the service provider. Internal threat, fraud and attack discovery will stilldepend on the ability to track user activity across transactions and across applications, but user activity willbe scattered across internally provided and externally sourced applications (which may not be instrumenteddirectly for monitoring).


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User Activity and Resource AccessMonitoring Technologies

System

Network

Application

Database

Data

Identity and access policy change

Privileged user activity

Application user activity

Sensitive data access and movement

User Activity

Monitor:

SecurityInformationand Event

Management(SIEM)

FraudDetection

DatabaseActivity

Monitoring(DAM)

Data LossPrevention

(DLP)

Technologies

IdentityAnd

AccessManage-

ment(IAM)

ComplianceReporting

Forensics/BreachDetection

Anti-Fraud

Drivers

AccessManagement

Information security professionals face the challenge of detecting malicious activity in a constant stream ofdiscrete events that are usually associated with an authorized user and are generated from multiple network,system and application sources. At the same time, security departments are facing increasing demands for ever-greater log analysis and reporting to support audit requirements.

A variety of complementary (and sometimes overlapping) monitoring and analysis tools help enterprises betterdetect and investigate suspicious activity often with real-time alerting or transaction intervention. SIEM,content monitoring and filtering (CMF) and data leak prevention (DLP), database activity monitoring (DAM)network behavior analysis, and fraud detection all provide improved user activity monitoring, alerting and(often) event correlation. However, each of these tools varies in the scope of monitoring source coverage, and

while complementary, they don't necessarily interoperate. Also, in many organizations, each tool may appeal toa different buying center or business unit. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of these tools,enterprises can better understand how to use them to defend the enterprise and meet audit requirements.


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Action Plan Tomorrow

- Categorize vendor cloud offerings as "consumer" or "provider" focused- Identify social profile sources and begin planning for coordination- Use pod and zone concepts for data center refits or new builds- Expand "Green IT" to include a focus on "IT for Green Business"

Within 90 Days- Establish a project team to identify public and private cloud computing

opportunities and governance models

- Determine where user activity and resource access monitoring can beapplied for maximum impact in your environment

- Find opportunities for mobile apps for both customers and workers- Investigate flash memory to address your top performance problems

Within 12 months- Build a 10-year strategic roadmap for client computing- Exploit SNA for fraud detection and organizational development- Build transition plans to a live migration based availability strategy- Select the high value points to employ operational analytics

Action Plan


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Recommended Reading

Cloud Computing Services: A Model for Categorizing and CharacterizingCapabilities Delivered From the Cloud G00163913

"APaaS: A "Killer App" to Cloud Computing?" G00168152

The Spectrum of Public-to-Private Cloud Computing G00167187

Extracting Business Intelligence from Social Networks G00168222

Hype Cycle for Analytic Applications, 2009 G00167256

Overview of Content Analytics Projects, 2009 G00165682

Hype Cycle for PC Technologies 2009 G00168647 Sustainability Will Be Important Even Beyond the Recession G00168403

Cost Optimization: Cut Costs by Building Agile Data Centers G00167589

Hype Cycle for Social Software G00168875

Pattern Discovery With Security Monitoring and Fraud DetectionTechnologies (G00170384)

Emerging Technology Analysis: Solid State Drives, Server TechnologiesG00168356

Smartphones: Why Internet Access is Not Enough G00169100

Recommended Reading

Additional Research

The Changing Hardware Foundation for Windows Server (G00171107)

How Cloud Computing Relates to Grid Computing (G00171353)

top strategic technologies for 2010

Documents