Document Management News

Analyst Gartner has made its key predictions for IT departments in 2010 and beyond, with cloud computing, mobile electronic payments and green IT featuring.

Gartner says its predictions for 2010 "showcase the trends and events that will change the nature of business today and beyond".

Brian Gammage, an analyst at Gartner, said, "As organisations make plans to navigate the economic recovery and prepare for the return to growth, our predictions for 2010 focus on the impact of critical changes in the balance of control and power in IT. With greater financial and regulatory oversight for all IT investment decisions, few organisations will be unaffected."

Gartner’s top predictions for 2010 and beyond include:

By 2012, 20% of businesses will own no IT assets. Virtualisation, cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and notebook systems on corporate networks will drive this trend.

By 2012, India-centric IT services companies will represent 20% of the leading cloud aggregators in the market through cloud service offerings.

By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and web socialisation. Other social networks - including Twitter - will continue to develop, but Facebook will represent a common denominator for all of them.

By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common web access device worldwide. By 2013, the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will exceed 1.82bn units, and will therefore be greater than the installed base for PCs.

By 2014, over 3bn of the world's adult population will be able to transact electronically via mobile or internet technology.

By 2014, most IT business cases will include carbon remediation costs. Today, server virtualisation and desktop power management demonstrate substantial savings in energy costs, and those savings can help justify projects. Incorporating carbon costs into business cases provides a further measure of savings, and prepares the organisation for increased scrutiny of its carbon impact.

Gartner will be holding webinars today (14 January) and later this month on its predictions.