Gartner Reveals Top 10 Technologies For Next 4 Years 163
Dr. Jim writes "The good folks over at the Gartner Group have revealed the top 10 technologies that they believe will change the world over the next four years. The usual suspects including multi-core chips, virtualization, and cloud computing are on the list. Multicore servers and virtualization will mean that firms will need fewer boxes, and apps can be easily moved from box to box (and right out the door to an outsourced data center). Workplace social networks and cloud computing means that the need for a centralized IT department will go away. Firms will no longer need to own/maintain the boxes that they use to run their firm's apps. With no need to touch a box, there will be no need to have the IT staff co-located with the boxes."
Forgetting one thing (Score:5, Insightful)
What security?
Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
I predict the next 4 years in technology is going to be similar to this year. This will end up being correct for generous definitions of "similar".
High-level, better-trained IT workers opportunity! (Score:5, Insightful)
But, by outsourcing/concentrating the server-side administration to the "cloud", you might free up IT workers to do less grunt work and do more in terms of process innovations, making the whole enterprise more efficient. IT workers will have to think about how they can make the business operate more efficiently, and be creative and get it implemented. Are today's IT workers ready for that level of thinking?
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Hey code monkey... learn electronics! [nerdkits.com]
Outsourced information will come back (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess even our business captains know that putting information into hands you can't control is a BAD idea. They should know. They've been gathering ours for years, and they know what value even trivial information (like your shopping habits) has.
Troubleshooting Step #1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Troubleshooting Step #1: Make sure it's plugged in.
Ergo, there will always be a need for IT staff co-located with the boxes.
Re:Misleading summary; lean blog post (Score:3, Insightful)
Well of course it does. The submitter is the blogger, who must have needed some page hits for some reason. That's the second reason I didn't RTF(blog). The first is the name "Gartner" who will, of course, say anything as long as you're paying them enough.
Centralized IT isn't going away (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazon EC2 only provides you with servers. You still need system admins to configure and run and debug the boxes if you're doing anything remotely complicated.
It does solve provisioning issues, procurement issues and lights-out management. But that is just a sliver of centralized IT.
And having Amazon provide "remote hands" for you to replace failed hardware is not even a "centralized" part of IT. Even without cloud computing you shouldn't have your IT organization tightly coupled to where your sites are. All that you need is the occasional physical hardware replacement, and management of the facilities (power, cooling, etc).
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
You've just summed up most Gartner reports. =)
Uh, Excuse me! (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you access the "cloud" without a computer next to you?
You have DSL embedded in your brain?
Get a clue. Companies may not have conventional desktop PCs in their offices, but they're going to have to have SOME sort of computing device - if nothing but a thin client or even just a flat screen terminal or a BlackBerry - to access the computing resources.
And those devices need servicing - if not much servicing.
Anybody who thinks computers are leaving offices is so frickin' deluded I don't know what to say.
Not to mention that your IT staff exists mostly to solve the problems with the SOFTWARE - not the hardware. And software problems aren't going away regardless of whether it's on the desk, on a server, or in the cloud.
Who deals with those problems may change. Companies may very well outsource their IT support - I am the outsource for my clients - but all that means is they'll pay more for less (except in my case, 'cause I'm cheap.) Their overall cost may go down, but in many cases they'll get poorer service because the IT staff servicing their problems isn't a member of the company or on site and thus has less comprehension of the company's needs. There's nothing like being on site and in daily contact with the staff to see what a company's problems are.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:3, Insightful)
cloud computing is latest buzzword (Score:3, Insightful)
IT Pronounced DOA for the 439th time .... (Score:2, Insightful)
I support over 180 teaching staff and 30 administrative staff + 2000 HS students using about 700 computers.
Many of the staff are quite comfortable users - but 98% of them have their real job focus "teaching students". Yes they use technology but their focus is staying abreast of new trends in Math - science - History
Local support will not go away for a long time
Re:From TFA (Score:2, Insightful)
2. "Fabric computing"? WTF is "Fabric computing"? Wikipedia leaves me ignorant, as does TFA. When I saw the phrase I thought of the first computer I ever saw [kuro5hin.org] in 1964. It was attached to a loom and wove a cloth bookmark out of thread with a design you entered with a very primitive light pen. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life, but I doubt it's what these stupid yuppies are referring to.
4. Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms? WTF??? Yeah, I've seen that yupiespeak before. It's a diagram that shows the internet as a cloud and the phrase's user as a technology-clueless idiot.
5. Web mashups? 1999 called and wants its newspeak du jour back.
6. User Interface? Didn't ENIAC have an interface? Even if it was just plugs and wires?
7. Ubiquitous computing? Hey everybody, Gartner discovered the internet!
8. Contextual computing? You mean like not putting text data in a numeric field?
9. Augmented reality? I already have it, click my sig for details. You will be assimilated, resistance is futile.
10. Semantics? 1998 called, it wants its dotcom bubblegum back.
Whoever's paying these idiots has WAY too much money and WAY too little sense. It's all babbling designed not for dissimination of information but instead obfuscation of the fact that the speaker doesn't have a fucking clue but wants you to think he's "real smart".
Nothing to see here. Not even if you have three eyes.
Re:Misleading summary; lean blog post (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally from year to year half the items would disappear from the lists (even though they were supposed to cover the next 5-10 years). In addition another quarter would randomly move about the "You'll see this technology in X years".
Most of the rest were so obvious that it really wasn't worth mentioning, an up to speed person would have known that. Wireless will be big in the future (published 2005ish)? No way!
The descriptions given for a technology(typically 2-3 paragraphs) were filled with jargon, and not terribly useful. Reading Popular Science and Mechanics was about as useful and far cheaper.
So yes, the lesson is that you can't buy innovation or management skills for a company by spending 20,000 a year, but you can make a nice sum pretending to sell it.
Re:High-level, better-trained IT workers opportuni (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I might add that outsourcing critical data is *NOT*, repeat *NOT*, going into the cloud, or over to India. There are huge obstacles to having your (health care or SOX-type, or government contract with employee info, etc.) data stored in someplace other than in your own, well-protected, data center her in the USA. It's not going to happen as there are several federal regulations that make it impossible, or really really not worth it for a number of legal reasons. That's not changing in the next four years.
Re:High-level, better-trained IT workers opportuni (Score:4, Insightful)
Puh-lease. Today's IT workers can't get our users to access network file shares rather than filling the mail spool with the same attachments (And a million revisions thereof) over and over and over... And in the few cases I've seen where people (always at least "engineers", not just your typical office staff) do use a NAS, they constantly come asking for help when they try to send outside contacts links to internal files. It seems that people have some sort of mental wall around the ideas of "local" and "not local", with no middle-ground possible. And god forbid you actually make such access secure - Users will actually burn CDs and pass them back and forth rather than even attempt to navigate the simplest of login prompts.
So no, I don't worry about finding myself unneeded any time soon - Regardless of how easy the technology gets to use, the actual users still won't get it. And they'll need us to help them get that 10.1MB file (that the email system keeps rejecting) to Fred in Accounting - Who will then need our help opening the file.
Re:Misleading summary; lean blog post (Score:2, Insightful)
The best part is that the Gartner reports I've seen ususally cost about $400 and probably average 8-10 pages. Not worth it in my opinion but then again for corporations who believe Gartner reports are prophecy I guesz $400 for a multi-billion dollar company isn't a big deal.
Re:Forgetting one thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I think it allows businesses to do more IT functions with less hardware. The staff still have to manage it. Otherwise you have an excellent strategy for retirement
Re:IT envisioned as "truckers and longshoremen" (Score:3, Insightful)
Please connect 1MW power source here -->
Please connect 1MW generator here -->
Please connect OC-192 here -->
Re:Centralized IT isn't going away (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I'm responding to a very strong statement saying that cloud computing will "make centralized IT go away". And while it may do so for small business, which needs a couple dozen servers to run some "web 2.0" apps or a storefront or whatever, I doubt it will have much of an impact on the IT staffs at S&P 500 companies.
If you look closely at Amazon's SLAs as well, they aren't going to be acceptable to most large companies. Financial institutions might be able to outsource some offline batch analysis and model crunching to EC2, but their online transactional processing that needs just stupid reliability isn't going to be transferable to Amazon's cloud.
You are correct though that by sheer number, most companies are small and most companies don't have very complicated IT needs. However, "cloud computing will make centralied IT go away" is just silly if you've got a background at centralized IT at large companies.
There will still be a lot of IT out there, it may just be bigger IT, and some of the small IT may be eliminated, or it may turn contract work.
Re:Forgetting one thing (Score:1, Insightful)
Cloud computing will probably work great in some instances... for some items in this list even, for web mashups, and social software intended to be used by the general public.
Corporate IT apps? I don't see it. At least not with data that has any kind of sensitivity. And over time as government regulations increase, more and more data becomes less suitable for the 'cloud'
Re:High-level, better-trained IT workers opportuni (Score:3, Insightful)
as always : out-sourcing or off-shoring ? Our IT department consists of only a couple of in-house people, the rest is out-sourced. However, these out-sourced people are always on-site, so this does nor make a difference in head count, only in bookkeeping strategy.