Top 10 in forward-looking tech

 

At its Gartner Symposium/ITxpo last month in Orlando, Fla., Gartner Group Inc. analysts hazarded the 10 most strategic technologies and trends over the next three years ”“ those that will require major investment for competitive reasons, or those that have a high potential for disruption to an organization.

“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 … The important thing is to ask the question and proactively plan.”

The top 10 strategic technologies for 2008 include:

1. “Green” information technology.

2. Unified communications systems that allow messages to be accessed across various platforms such as voice, e-mail and instant messaging.

3. Business process modeling that defines common rules for different processes in order to allow information technology staff quickly to design and install systems.

4. Metadata management that assigns descriptive “labels” allowing organizations quickly to dredge up information in databases.

5. Virtualization technologies that allow system administrators to manage disparate systems from a single computer screen.

6. “Mashup” or composite software applications that perform a wide range of functions from a single program.

7. Web-oriented architecture that allows companies swiftly to push automated business processes onto the Internet, broadening the number of clients or partners that can make use of them.

8. Computing fabrics that make greater use of server “blades” that can be slotted into or out of a data center without downtime.

9. “Real-world Web” that constantly updates information from the Web according to a particular locale, activity or context, akin to a GPS navigation device providing constant updates as a vehicle moves through town.

10. Social software, or Web-based systems that develop social connections, akin to Myspace.com.