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Gartner’s Ten Key Predictions For 2007
Along with a short commentary by Lundquist
This is prediction season and Gartner – which holds one of the top spots in the prediction business – has passed along the company’s key expectations. I’m going to include them verbatim from Gartner and follow each with a short comment from yours truly
1. Through 2009, market share for the top 10 IT outsourcers will decline to 40.0% (from 43.5% now), equaling a revenue shift of $5.4 billion. As market share declines, some key outsourcing vendors will cease to exist in their current named form. The reduced number of large contracts, increased amount of competition and reduction in contract sizes have placed great pressure on outsourcers, which will have to “sink or swim” based on support for selective outsourcing and disciplined multisourcing competencies.
Lundquist comment: True that the big outsourcers share will decline, but false that outsourcing will decline. I think you will continue to see a rise of small, nimble outsourcing firms that use the web to deliver applications faster than you can say, “charge it on my credit card.”
2. Only one Asia/Pacific-based service provider will make the global top 20 through 2010. The number of global players in consulting that come from Asia is relatively small. This will limit the ability of the Asian juggernaut to grow revenue streams rapidly and become global leaders.
Lundquist comment: Top 20 service provider? This will depend on the government regulatory environment as much as on technology. If the government clearances were in place, an Asian company could quickly acquire its way to the top tier.
3. Blogging and community contributors will peak in the first half of 2007. Given the trend in the average life span of a blogger and the current growth rate of blogs, there are already more than 200 million ex-bloggers. Consequently, the peak number of bloggers will be around 100 million at some point in the first half of 2007.
Lundquist commentary: Couldn’t happen soon enough. Too many blogs all talking about the same thing. An army of zombie bloggers wandering the Internet by 2007’s end. What do ex-bloggers become? Probably the next generation of video bloggers. 4. By 2009, corporate social responsibility (CSR) will be a higher board- and executive-level priority than regulatory compliance. Regulation has become a key issue for government and the corporate world, with the aim of ensuring more-responsible behavior. However, the need for companies to be socially responsible to their employees, customers and shareholders is growing as well. The future will see corporate boards and executives make this social dynamic a more-critical priority. Lundquist commentary: Well wouldn’t that be nice. However regulatory compliance is a big stick and corporate social responsibility is a nice warm feeling. I don’t think this will happen without a stick somewhere.
5. By the end of 2007, 75% of enterprises will be infected with undetected, financially motivated, targeted malware that evaded their traditional perimeter and host defenses. The threat environment is changing — financially motivated, targeted attacks are increasing, and automated malware-generation kits allow simple creation of thousands of variants quickly — but our security processes and technologies haven’t kept up.
Lundquist commentary: Good news as I think it is more than 75% now. All it takes is money and motivation to stop the bad guys and as company’s bear more costs for lost data the motivation will be in high gear. There are strong efforts underway right now to find new ways of defeating the bad bugs and I think the fruits of that research will be seen in 2007. The service providers and hosted services have a role to play here.
6. Vista will be the last major release of Microsoft Windows. The next generation of operating environments will be more modular and will be updated incrementally. The era of monolithic deployments of software releases is nearing an end. Microsoft will be a visible player in this movement, and the result will be more-flexible updates to Windows and a new focus on quality overall.
Lundquist commentary: Microsoft needs big operating systems to make big revenues. The subscription model does not work well for Redmond. They’ll come up with another version even if it is a new improved Vista.
7. By 2010, the average total cost of ownership (TCO) of new PCs will fall by 50%. The growing importance and focus on manageability, automation and reliability will provide a welcome means of differentiating PCs in a market that is increasingly commoditized. Many of the manageability and support tools will be broadly available across multiple vendors. However, vendors that can leverage these tools further and can graduate from claims of “goodness” to concrete examples of cost savings will have a market advantage.
Lundquist commentary: I don’t think so. PCs will need to become energy managers, secure data managers and reliability managers all of which would work well in a thin client environment. Managing the current and the next crop of PCs will be as difficult as ever.
8. By 2010, 60% of the worldwide cellular population will be “trackable” via an emerging “follow-me Internet.” Local regulations have arisen to protect users’ privacy, but growing demands for national safety and civil protection are relaxing some of the initial privacy limitations. Marketing incentives will also push users to forgo privacy concerns, and many other scenarios will enable outsiders to track their users.
Lundquist commentary: This is true and happening as we speak. Users and government agencies will make the vendors provide a means to opt out on trackable but new applications and incentives will make trackable fun, exciting and profitable.
9. Through 2011, enterprises will waste $100 billion buying the wrong networking technologies and services. Enterprises are missing out on opportunities to build a network that would put them at a competitive advantage. Instead, they follow outdated design practices and collectively will waste at least $100 billion in the next five years.
Lundquist commentary: Again, I think this is a reduction in current spending mistakes. These big numbers are tough to track, but I think Gartner is correct in saying that too many companies will miss out on new opportunities because they are stuck in the muck of past decisions.
10. By 2008, nearly 50% of data centers worldwide will lack the necessary power and cooling capacity to support high-density equipment. With higher densities of processors proliferating, problems in this area continue to grow. Although the power and cooling challenge of high-density computer equipment will persist in the short term, a convergence of innovative technologies will begin to mitigate the problem by 2010.
Lundquist commentary: I’m glad this made the list. There is a crunch coming and getting your data center in order should be an IT priority for 2007.