Well, rather than ignore the whole diatribe, we would assert that there are some real delectable takeaways in this dollar buffet.
So if you would forgive the analogy, rather than eat what's placed before us, Wasabi decided to put the
predictions to the test. We compared the dishes side by side, ie., 2014 predictions
against the 2015's just published.
Now - as with anything Gartner, we
know it's easy to serve up the same ol' meat and potatoes that was given last
year, but rather than focus on the same ol'-same ol', we focused on the items
that failed to make it on the menu and the new items that showed up.
These are the real food for thought... bon appetit!
First, Here are the Rehashed - some names have been changed to protect the lazy...
The top 10 strategic
technology trends for 2014 include:
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The top 10 strategic
technology trends for 2015 are:
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2014: Mobile Device Diversity
and Management
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2015: Computing Everywhere
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Through 2018, the growing variety of
devices, computing styles, user contexts and interaction paradigms will make
"everything everywhere" strategies unachievable. The unexpected
consequence of bring your own device (BYOD) programs is a
doubling or even tripling of the size of the mobile workforce. This is
placing tremendous strain on IT and Finance organizations. Enterprise
policies on employee-owned hardware usage need to be thoroughly reviewed and,
where necessary, updated and extended. Most companies only have policies for
employees accessing their networks through devices that the enterprise owns
and manages. Set policies to define clear expectations around what they can
and can't do. Balance flexibility with confidentiality and privacy
requirements
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As mobile devices continue to
proliferate, Gartner predicts an increased emphasis on serving the needs of
the mobile user in diverse contexts and environments,
as opposed to focusing on devices alone. Phones and wearable devices
are now part of an expanded computing environment that includes such things
as consumer electronics and connected screens in the workplace and public
space, said Mr. Cearley. "Increasingly, it's the overall environment
that will need to adapt to the requirements of the mobile user. This will
continue to raise significant management challenges for IT organizations as
they lose control of user endpoint devices. It will also require increased
attention to user experience design."
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2014: The Internet of Everything
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2015: The Internet of Things
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The Internet is expanding beyond PCs
and mobile devices into enterprise assets such as field equipment, and
consumer items such as cars and televisions. The problem is that most
enterprises and technology vendors have yet to explore the possibilities of
an expanded internet and are not operationally or organizationally ready.
Imagine digitizing the most important products, services and assets. The
combination of data streams and services created by digitizing everything
creates four basic usage models – Manage; Monetize; Operate; Extend. These
four basic models can be applied to any of the four "internets” (people,
things, information and places). Enterprises should not limit
themselves to thinking that only the Internet of Things (i.e., assets and
machines) has the potential to leverage these four models. Enterprises from
all industries (heavy, mixed, and weightless) can leverage these four models.
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The combination of data streams and
services created by digitizing everything creates four basic usage models —
Manage, Monetize, Operate and Extend. These four basic models can be applied
to any of the four "Internets." Enterprises should not limit
themselves to thinking that only the Internet of Things (IoT) (assets and
machines) has the potential to leverage these four models. For example, the
pay-per-use model can be applied to assets (such as industrial equipment),
services (such as pay-as-you-drive insurance), people (such as movers),
places (such as parking spots) and systems (such as cloud services).
Enterprises from all industries can leverage these four models.
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2014: Cloud/Client Architecture
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2015: Cloud/Client Computing
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Cloud/client computing models are
shifting. In the cloud/client architecture, the client is a rich application
running on an Internet-connected device, and the server is a set of
application services hosted in an increasingly elastically scalable cloud computing
platform. The cloud is the control point and system or record and
applications can span multiple client devices. The client environment may be
a native application or browser-based the increasing power of the browser is
available to many client devices, mobile and desktop alike. Robust
capabilities in many mobile devices, the increased demand on networks, the
cost of networks and the need to manage bandwidth use creates incentives, in
some cases, to minimize the cloud application computing and storage
footprint, and to exploit the intelligence and storage of the client device.
However, the increasingly complex demands of mobile users will drive apps to
demand increasing amounts of server-side computing and storage capacity.
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The convergence of cloud and mobile
computing will continue to promote the growth of centrally coordinated
applications that can be delivered to any device. "Cloud is the new
style of elastically scalable, self-service computing, and both internal
applications and external applications will be built on this new style,"
said Mr. Cearley. "While network and bandwidth costs may continue to
favor apps that use the intelligence and storage of the client device
effectively, coordination and management will be based in the cloud." In
the near term, the focus for cloud/client will be on synchronizing content
and application state across multiple devices and addressing application
portability across devices. Over time, applications will evolve to support
simultaneous use of multiple devices. The second-screen phenomenon today
focuses on coordinating television viewing with use of a mobile device. In
the future, games and enterprise applications alike will use multiple screens
and exploit wearables and other devices to deliver an enhanced experience.
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2014: The Era of Personal Cloud
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2015: Context-Rich Systems
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The
personal cloud era will mark a power shift away from devices toward services.
In this new world, the specifics of devices will become less important for
the organization to worry about, although the devices will still be
necessary. Users will use a collection of devices, with the PC remaining one
of many options, but no one device will be the primary hub. Rather, the
personal cloud will take on that role. Access to the cloud and the content
stored or shared from the cloud will be managed and secured, rather than
solely focusing on the device itself.
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Ubiquitous
embedded intelligence combined with pervasive analytics will drive the
development of systems that are alert to their surroundings and able to
respond appropriately. Context-aware security is an early application of this
new capability, but others will emerge. By understanding the context of a
user request, applications can not only adjust their security response but
also adjust how information is delivered to the user, greatly simplifying an
increasingly complex computing world.
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2014: Software Defined Anything
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2015: Software-Defined
Applications and Infrastructure
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Software-defined anything (SDx) is a
collective term that encapsulates the growing market momentum for improved
standards for infrastructure programmability and data center interoperability
driven by automation inherent to cloud computing, DevOps and fast infrastructure
provisioning. As a collective, SDx also incorporates various initiatives like
OpenStack, OpenFlow, the Open Compute Project and Open Rack, which share
similar visions. As individual SDx technology silos evolve and consortiums
arise, look for emerging standards and bridging capabilities to benefit
portfolios, but challenge individual technology suppliers to demonstrate
their commitment to true interoperability standards within their specific
domains. While openness will always be a claimed vendor objective, different
interpretations of SDx definitions may be anything but open. Vendors of SDN
(network), SDDC (data center), SDS (storage), and SDI (infrastructure)
technologies are all trying to maintain leadership in their respective
domains, while deploying SDx initiatives to aid market adjacency plays. So
vendors who dominate a sector of the infrastructure may only reluctantly want
to abide by standards that have the potential to lower margins and open
broader competitive opportunities, even when the consumer will benefit by
simplicity, cost reduction and consolidation efficiency.
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Agile programming of everything from
applications to basic infrastructure is essential to enable organizations to
deliver the flexibility required to make the digital business work.
Software-defined networking, storage, data centers and security are maturing.
Cloud services are software-configurable through API calls, and
applications, too, increasingly have rich APIs to access their function and
content programmatically. To deal with the rapidly changing demands of
digital business and scale systems up — or down — rapidly, computing has to
move away from static to dynamic models. Rules, models and code that can
dynamically assemble and configure all of the elements needed from the
network through the application are needed.
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2014: Web-Scale IT
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2015: Web-Scale IT
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Web-scale IT is a pattern of
global-class computing that delivers the capabilities of large cloud service
providers within an enterprise IT setting by rethinking positions across
several dimensions. Large cloud services providers such as Amazon, Google, Facebook,
etc., are re-inventing the way IT in which IT services can be
delivered. Their capabilities go beyond scale in terms of sheer size to
also include scale as it pertains to speed and agility. If enterprises want
to keep pace, then they need to emulate the architectures, processes and
practices of these exemplary cloud providers. Gartner calls the combination
of all of these elements Web-scale IT. Web-scale IT looks to change the IT
value chain in a systemic fashion. Data centers are designed with an
industrial engineering perspective that looks for every opportunity to reduce
cost and waste. This goes beyond re-designing facilities to be more
energy efficient to also include in-house design of key hardware components
such as servers, storage and networks. Web-oriented architectures allows
developers to build very flexible and resilient systems that recover from
failure more quickly.
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Web-scale IT is a pattern of
global-class computing that delivers the capabilities of large cloud service
providers within an enterprise IT setting. More organizations will begin
thinking, acting and building applications and infrastructure like Web giants
such as Amazon, Google and Facebook. Web-scale IT does not happen
immediately, but will evolve over time as commercial hardware platforms
embrace the new models and cloud-optimized and software-defined approaches
reach mainstream. The first step toward the Web-scale IT future for many
organizations should be DevOps — bringing development and operations together
in a coordinated way to drive rapid, continuous incremental development of
applications and services.
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2014: Smart Machines
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2015: Smart Machines
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Through 2020, the smart machine era
will blossom with a proliferation of contextually aware, intelligent personal
assistants, smart advisors (such as IBM Watson), advanced global industrial
systems and public availability of early examples of autonomous vehicles. The
smart machine era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT. New
systems that begin to fulfill some of the earliest visions for what
information technologies might accomplish — doing what we thought only people
could do and machines could not —are now finally emerging. Gartner expects
individuals will invest in, control and use their own smart machines to
become more successful. Enterprises will similarly invest in smart machines.
Consumerization versus central control tensions will not abate in the era of
smart-machine-driven disruption. If anything, smart machines will strengthen
the forces of consumerization after the first surge of enterprise buying
commences.
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Deep analytics applied to an
understanding of context provide the preconditions for a world of smart
machines. This foundation combines with advanced algorithms that allow
systems to understand their environment, learn for themselves, and act
autonomously. Prototype autonomous vehicles, advanced robots, virtual
personal assistants and smart advisors already exist and will evolve rapidly,
ushering in a new age of machine helpers. The smart machine era will be the
most disruptive in the history of IT.
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2014: 3-D Printing
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2015: 3D Printing
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Worldwide shipments of 3D printers
are expected to grow 75 percent in 2014 followed by a near doubling of unit
shipments in 2015. While very expensive “additive manufacturing” devices have
been around for 20 years, the market for devices ranging from $50,000 to
$500, and with commensurate material and build capabilities, is nascent yet
growing rapidly. The consumer market hype has made organizations aware of the
fact 3D printing is a real, viable and cost-effective means to reduce costs
through improved designs, streamlined prototyping and short-run manufacturing.
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Worldwide shipments of 3D printers
are expected to grow 98 percent in 2015, followed by a doubling of unit
shipments in 2016. 3D printing will reach a tipping point over the next three
years as the market for relatively low-cost 3D printing devices continues to
grow rapidly and industrial use expands significantly. New industrial,
biomedical and consumer applications will continue to demonstrate that 3D
printing is a real, viable and cost-effective means to reduce costs through
improved designs, streamlined prototyping and short-run manufacturing.
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Items That Are No Longer Being Served.
These are the
trends that Gartner abandoned.
2014: Mobile Apps and Applications
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Gartner predicts that through 2014,
improved JavaScript performance will begin to push HTML5 and the browser as a
mainstream enterprise application development environment. Gartner recommends
that developers focus on creating expanded user interface models including
richer voice and video that can connect people in new and different ways.
Apps will continue to grow while applications will begin to shrink. Apps are
smaller, and more targeted, while a larger application is more comprehensive.
Devlopers should look for ways to snap together apps to create larger
applications. Building application user interfaces that span a variety of
devices require an understanding of fragmented building blocks and an
adaptable programming structure that assembles them into optimized content
for each device. The market for tools to create consumer and enterprise
facing apps is complex with well over 100 potential tools vendors. For the
next few years no single tool will be optimal for all types of mobile
application so expect to employ several. The next evolution in user
experience will be to leverage intent, inferred from emotion and actions, to
motivate changes in end-user behavior.
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2014: Hybrid Cloud and IT as Service Broker
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Bringing together personal clouds
and external private cloud services is an imperative. Enterprises should
design private cloud services with a hybrid future in mind and make sure
future integration/interoperability is possible. Hybrid cloud services can be
composed in many ways, varying from relatively static to very dynamic.
Managing this composition will often be the responsibility of something
filling the role of cloud service broker (CSB), which handles aggregation,
integration and customization of services. Enterprises that are expanding into
hybrid cloud computing from private cloud services are taking on the CSB
role. Terms like "overdrafting" and "cloudbursting" are
often used to describe what hybrid cloud computing will make possible.
However, the vast majority of hybrid cloud services will initially be much
less dynamic than that. Early hybrid cloud services will likely be more
static, engineered compositions (such as integration between an internal
private cloud and a public cloud service for certain functionality or data).
More deployment compositions will emerge as CSBs evolve (for example, private
infrastructure as a service [IaaS] offerings that can leverage external
service providers based on policy and utilization).
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New Items On the Menu!
Here are the items new on the menu, i.e, Gartner added this year,
perhaps the only items of interest in this trend report.
2015: Advanced, Pervasive and Invisible Analytics
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Analytics
will take center stage as the volume of data generated by embedded systems
increases and vast
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2015: Risk-Based Security
and Self-Protection
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All roads to the digital future lead
through security. However, in a digital business world, security cannot be a
roadblock that stops all progress. Organizations will increasingly recognize
that it is not possible to provide a 100 percent secured environment. Once
organizations acknowledge that, they can begin to apply more-sophisticated
risk assessment and mitigation tools. On the technical side, recognition that
perimeter defense is inadequate and applications need to take a more active
role in security gives rise to a new multifaceted approach. Security-aware
application design, dynamic and static application security testing, and
runtime application self-protection combined with active context-aware and
adaptive access controls are all needed in today's dangerous digital world.
This will lead to new models of building security directly into applications.
Perimeters and firewalls are no longer enough every app needs to be
self-aware and self-protecting.
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So the morale of the story…?
Well, Ubiquitous java enabled mobile and desktop applications
and Hybrid
Cloud and IT as Service Broker are not gonna happen. However be on the lookout for Analytics
and security-aware
applications.Source:
- http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2603623
- http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2867917
So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”
____________________________________________________________
About Rick Ricker
An IT professional with over 23 years experience in Information Security, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.
For more information, contact Rick at (800) 399-6085 x502
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