ignore these technologies at your peril

The keynote of Gartner's SVP, Peter Sondergaard, highlighted how the priorities of business have changed within a short period of time. Gartner identified that in 2009 the top 3 technologies were Virtualisation, Business Inteligence and cloud computing. Looking at the top three in 2010 brings a change in those technologies which are priorities to; Cloud Computing, Advanced Analytics and Client computing.

The first technology not to avoid is Cloud computing, a major technology trend is seeing huge investment, with Gartner expecting that within just a few short years, up to 20% of businesses will own no IT assets, highlighting a major shift to the cloud and managed services. Virtulisation of the client's environment is becoming a route to cloud computing, so in affect is stepping stone to cloud computing.

Avoiding this second technology is a bad idea, Advanced Analytics. This is allowing businesses to realise that potentially the Meta data they have may be the most valuable asset. Gartner indicates that the current crops of business analysis models are outmoded and need replacing, as unstructured data becomes key data. The credit card business were highlighted as how the meta data they have is allowing them to make business decisions and subsequently offers to consumers not based on spend amounts, but how credit limits can be adjust by life style changes such as divorce even.

The third technology not to avoid is client computing; Peter Sondergaard challenged perceptions with the statement that by 2014 80% of users in western world and affluent users in emerging markets will have a smart phone. This shift to client computing requires businesses to change how they interact not only with it's consumers but also its employees as they demand access to application to interact with the business via their Smartphone.