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Top Tech Trends for 2013
1. Mobile Device Battles
Gartner predicts that by 2013 mobile phones
will overtake PCs as the most commonWeb
access device and that by 2015 over 80%
of the handsets sold in mature markets
will be smartphones. However, only 20%
of those handsets are likely to beWindows
phones. By 2015 media tablet shipments
will reach around 50% of laptop shipments
andWindows 8 is likely to be in third place
behind Google’s Android and Apple iOS
operating systems. The era of PC dominance
withWindows as the single platform will be
replaced with a post-PC era where there is a
greater variety of form factors andWindows
is just one of a number of environments IT
will need to support.
2. Mobile Applications and HTML5
The market for tools to create consumer
and enterprise-facing apps is complex and
for the next few years no single one will be
best for all types of mobile application. Six
mobile architectures will remain popular
– native, special, hybrid, HTML 5, Message
and No Client. However, as HTML5 becomes
more capable there will be a long term shift
away from native apps toWeb apps. Even so,
native apps won’t disappear and will always
offer the best user experiences and most
sophisticated features. Developers will need
new design skills to deliver touch-optimised
mobile applications that operate across a
range of devices in a co-ordinated fashion.
3. Personal Cloud
The personal cloud will gradually replace the
PC as the location where individuals keep
their personal content and access services
and personal preferences. It will be the glue
that connects the array of devices they use
during their daily lives. Users will see their
personal cloud as a portable, always-available
place where they go for computing and
Gartner has identified the Top 10 technologies and trends for 2013 that no
business can afford to ignore. Unveiled at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo,
in Orlando, Florida on October 25, they are the ones Gartner believes IT
leaders should factor into their strategic planning over the next two years.
communication activities. No one platform,
form factor, technology or vendor will
dominate, so managing diversity and mobile
devices will be an imperative.
4. Enterprise App Stores
Enterprises face a complex app store future,
as some vendors will limit their stores to
specific devices and types of apps forcing
the enterprise to deal with multiple stores,
multiple payment processes and multiple sets
of licensing terms. Gartner believes that by
2014 many organisations will deliver mobile
applications to workers through private
application stores. The role of IT will thus shift
from that of a centralised planner to a market
manager providing governance and brokerage
services to users and potentially even an
ecosystem to support apptrepreneurs.
5. The Internet of Things
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept
that describes how the Internet will expand
as physical items are connected to the
Internet and embedded with sensors, image
recognition technologies and NFC payment.
Smartphones and other intelligent devices
don’t just use the cellular network, they also
communicate via NFC, Bluetooth, LE and
Wi-Fi to a wide range of peripherals, such as
wristwatch displays, healthcare sensors, smart
posters and home entertainment systems.
6. Hybrid IT and Cloud Computing
As businesses are asked to do more with less,
IT departments must play multiple roles in
coordinating IT-related activities, which cloud
computing is pushing to another level. An
internal cloud services brokerage (CSB) role is
emerging as IT organisations realise they have
a responsibility to improve the provisioning
of distributed, heterogeneous and often
complex cloud services to internal users
and external business partners. The new role
will provide a means for the IT organisation
to retain and build influence in the face of
challenges posed by the adoption of cloud as
an approach to IT consumption.
7. Strategic Big Data
Big Data is moving from a focus on individual
projects to influence an enterprise’s entire
strategic information architecture. Dealing
with data volume, variety, velocity and
complexity is forcing organisations to
abandon the concept of a single enterprise
data warehouse containing all information
needed for decisions. Instead they are moving
towards multiple systems, including content
management, data warehouses, data marts
and specialised file systems, tied together
with data services and metadata, which
will become the ‘logical’ enterprise data
warehouse.
8. Actionable Analytics
Analytics is increasingly delivered to users
at the point of action. Performance and cost
improvements mean IT leaders can afford to
perform analytics and simulation for every
action taken in their business. A mobile client
linked to cloud-based analytic engines and
big data repositories potentially enables use
of optimisation and simulation to improve
decision-making in every business process.
9. In Memory Computing
In memory computing (IMC) enables certain
types of lengthy batch processes to be
squeezed into minutes or even seconds so
that they can be provided to users in the
form of real-time or near real-time cloud
services. Millions of events can be scanned in
tens of millisecond to detect correlations and
patterns pointing at emerging opportunities
and threats ‘as things happen’. The possibility
of concurrently running transactional and
analytical applications against the same
dataset opens unexplored possibilities for
business innovation. Numerous vendors will
deliver in-memory-based solutions over the
next two years driving this approach into
mainstream use.
10. Integrated Ecosystems
The market is undergoing a shift to more
integrated systems and ecosystems and
away from loosely coupled heterogeneous
approaches. The trend is being driven by
users’ desire for lower costs, simplicity and
better security, while vendors benefit from
having more control of the solution stack and
bigger margins. The trend is manifested in
three levels: i) appliances combining hardware
and software and software and services
are packaged to address an infrastructure
or application workload; ii) cloud-based
marketplaces and brokerages facilitate
the purchase, consumption and/or use of
capabilities from multiple vendors; and iii)
in the mobile world, vendors such as Apple,
Google and Microsoft drive varying degrees
of control across an end-to-end ecosystem
extending the client through apps.
www.gartner.com
Gartner: The era of PC dominance withWindows as the single platform will be replaced with
a post-PC era where there is a greater variety of form factors andWindows is just one of a
number of environments IT will need to support.