Green IT Heads Gartner’s List Of Top Technologies

October 12, 2007

Email this story Print this post Add your comments

Green IT tops Gartner’s list of the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in the near future.

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years.

“Companies should factor these technologies into their strategic planning process by asking key questions and making deliberate decisions about them during the next two years,” said David Cearley, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “Sometimes the decision will be to do nothing with a particular technology. In other cases it will be to continue investing in the technology at the current rate. In still other cases, the decision may be to test/pilot or more aggressively adopt/deploy the technology. The important thing is to ask the question and proactively plan.”

The focus of Green IT that came to the forefront in 2007 will accelerate and expand in 2008, according to Gartner. Consider potential regulations and have alternative plans for data center and capacity growth. Regulations are multiplying and have the potential to seriously constrain companies in building data centers, as the impact on power grids, carbon emissions from increased use and other environmental impacts are under scrutiny.

Some companies are emphasizing their social responsibility behavior, which might result in vendor preferences and policies that affect IT decisions. Scheduling decisions for workloads on servers will begin to consider power efficiency as a key placement attribute.

The rest of Gartner’s top 10:

Unified Communications. Today, 20 percent of the installed base with PBX has migrated to IP telephony, but more than 80 percent are already doing trials of some form. Gartner analysts expect the next three years to be the point at which the majority of companies implement this, the first major change in voice communications since the digital PBX and cellular phone changes in the 1970s and 1980s.

Business Process Modeling. Top-level process services must be defined jointly by a set of roles (which include enterprise architects, senior developers, process architects and/or process analysts). Some of those roles sit in a service oriented architecture center of excellence, some in a process center of excellence and some in both. The strategic imperative for 2008 is to bring these groups together. Gartner expects BPM suites to fill a critical role as a compliment to SOA development.

Metadata Management. Through 2010, organizations implementing both customer data integration and product integration and product information management will link these master data management initiatives as part of an overall enterprise information management (EIM) strategy. Metadata management is a critical part of a company’s information infrastructure. It enables optimization, abstraction and semantic reconciliation of metadata to support reuse, consistency, integrity and shareability. Metadata management also extends into SOA projects with service registries and application development repositories. Metadata also plays a role in operations management with CMDB initiatives.

Virtualization 2.0. Virtualization technologies can improve IT resource utilization and increase the flexibility needed to adapt to changing requirements and workloads. However, by themselves, virtualization technologies are simply enablers that help broader improvements in infrastructure cost reduction, flexibility and resiliency. With the addition of automation technologies -? with service-level, policy-based active management -? resource efficiency can improve dramatically, flexibility can become automatic based on requirements, and services can be managed holistically, ensuring high levels of resiliency. Virtualization plus service-level, policy-based automation constitutes an RTI.

Mashup & Composite Apps. By 2010, Web mashups will be the dominant model (80 percent) for the creation of composite enterprise applications. Mashup technologies will evolve significantly over the next five years, and application leaders must take this evolution into account when evaluating the impact of mashups and in formulating an enterprise mashup strategy.

Web Platform & WOA. Software as a service (SaaS) is becoming a viable option in more markets and companies must evaluate where service based delivery may provide value in 2008-2010. Meanwhile Web platforms are emerging which provide service-based access to infrastructure services, information, applications, and business processes through Web based “cloud computing” environments. Companies must also look beyond SaaS to examine how Web platforms will impact their business in 3-5 years.

Computing Fabric. A computing fabric is the evolution of server design beyond the interim stage, blade servers, that exists today. The next step in this progression is the introduction of technology to allow several blades to be merged operationally over the fabric, operating as a larger single system image that is the sum of the components from those blades. The fabric-based server of the future will treat memory, processors, and I/O cards as components in a pool, combining and recombining them into particular arrangements to suits the owner’s needs. For example a large server can be created by combining 32 processors and a number of memory modules from the pool, operating together over the fabric to appear to an operating system as a single fixed server.

Real World Web. The term “real world Web” is informal, referring to places where information from the Web is applied to the particular location, activity or context in the real world. It is intended to augment the reality that a user faces, not to replace it as in virtual worlds. It is used in real-time based on the real world situation, not prepared in advance for consumption at specific times or researched after the events have occurred. For example in navigation, a printed list of directions from the Web do not react to changes, but a GPS navigation unit provides real-time directions that react to events and movements; the latter case is akin to the real-world Web of augmented reality. Now is the time to seek out new applications, new revenue streams and improvements to business process that can come from augmenting the world at the right time, place or situation.

Social Software. Through 2010, the enterprise Web 2.0 product environment will experience considerable flux with continued product innovation and new entrants, including start-ups, large vendors and traditional collaboration vendors. Expect significant consolidation as competitors strive to deliver robust Web 2.0 offerings to the enterprise. Nevertheless social software technologies will increasingly be brought into the enterprise to augment traditional collaboration.

Email this story Print this post Add your comments

Advertisers

Enhance Sustainability. Improve Profitability.

Learn how at the SAP Sustainability Resource Center. >>

Unclear about the EPA's new GHG Rule?

Learn how it could affect your business. >>

EPA mandatory emissions reporting starts Jan 1st

CSA Standards can help your organization get ready for compliance. Find out how. >>

Best Practices: Product Environmental Compliance

How to achieve compliance at a significantly lower cost. Download the full report. >>

Join the Discussion

Recent Daily News [ see all ]

11/20/2009
11/19/2009
11/18/2009

Charts [ see all ]

European Paper Industry Cuts CO2 Emissions by 42% since 1990

S. America Takes Most Urgent View of Copenhagen Talks

Nike Tops Annual Climate Action Scores

Oceans May Trap more Carbon than Forests

Jobs

View All Jobs >> Post a Job >>

Comments and Discussions

Trade Association on Trade Group on EPA Chemical Regs: ‘If Everything is a Priority, Then Nothing is a Priority’
"Seriously… that..."

Gary Markowitz on Supermarkets Tackle Emissions Reductions, Fuel Efficiency
"Supermarkets waste over 10 percent of their energy through improper..."

peter in ireland on Ontario May Follow California’s Lead on TV Energy Efficiency
"Governor Schwarzenegger is shooting himself in the foot! 1...."

Environmental Leader on S. America Takes Most Urgent View of Copenhagen Talks
"The survey respondents (the PDF report mentions 4,000 respondents in 38..."

Jake on UPS Trying New Hydraulic Hybrid Trucks
"A point of clarification: the Reuters press release referenced herein reports that 20 UPS will purchase..."

Custom Organic Shirts on S. America Takes Most Urgent View of Copenhagen Talks
"90% of North Americans believe it is urgent to get a global climate..."

peter dublin on California City’s Green Building Ordinance Applies to Commercial Buildings
"Why energy efficiebnt regulation on buildings –..."

Environmental Leader