12 August 2008

Gartner has identified eight emerging technologies that it says should be strongly considered for adoption by IT planners in the next ten years.

In its report, Hype cycle for emerging technologies 2008, Gartner identifies 27 emerging technologies and trends, eight of which it says will have a transformational business impact.

Green IT, service-oriented architecture (SOA), cloud computing, social computing platforms, video telepresence and microblogging are among the technologies and trends that are expected to reach a plateau in two to five years’ time.

“Although Web 2.0 is now entering the ‘trough of disillusionment’, it will emerge within two years to have transformational impact as companies steadily gain more experience and success with both the technologies and the cultural implications,” said the report’s author, Gartner vice president Jackie Fenn. “Later – in two to five years – cloud computing and SOA, which is moving up the ‘slope of enlightenment’, will deliver transformation in terms of driving deep changes in the role and capabilities of IT. Finally, public virtual worlds, which are suffering from disillusionment after their peak of hype in 2007, will in the long term represent an important media channel to support and build broader communities of interest.”

In addition, many technologies are finding popularity among consumers before being adopted by businesses. “Following the trend of the last few years, many of the new entries on this year’s hype cycle, including microblogging, social networking platforms and cloud computing, are making their impact in the consumer world before they hit businesses,” said Fenn. “Other technologies that have passed the trigger where they start to be interesting to businesses include 3D printing, surface computing, augmented reality and mobile robots. We expect early adopters to start applying these in novel ways and driving new classes of application, such as using 3D printers to dramatically change the supply chain by creating products and replacement parts at the point of need.”