Gartner predicts a consumer social network investment bubble burst in 2013, and over half of top Global 1,000 companies will store client’s sensitive data in clouds by 2016.
Daryl C. Plummer, Managing VP & Gartner Fellow, held a webinar entitled Gartner Top Predictions for 2012: Control Slips Away (registration required), and made a number of predictions for the years to come. The driving forces are Social driven by Behavior, Information providing Context, Mobile ensuring Access, and Cloud Computing as a Delivery mechanism, according to Plummer.
One of the predictions is that the consumer social network investment bubble will burst in 2013, and the similar enterprise bubble will have the same fate a year later. Also, a large number of top Fortune 500 organizations will not manage to exploit big data opportunities available.
- By 2015, low-cost cloud services will cannibalize up to 15% of top outsourcing players' revenue.
- In 2013, the investment bubble will burst for consumer social networks, and for enterprise social software companies in 2014.
- By 2016, at least 50% of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile client, instead of a desktop client.
- By 2015, mobile application development (AD) projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1.
- By 2016, 40% of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service.
- At YE16, more than 50% of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud.
- By 2015, 35% of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department's budget.
- By 2014, 20% of Asia-sourced finished goods and assemblies consumed in the U.S. will shift to the Americas.
- Through 2016, the financial impact of cybercrime will grow 10% per year, due to the continuing discovery of new vulnerabilities.
- By 2015, the prices for 80% of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge.
- Through 2015, more than 85% of Fortune 500 organizations will fail to effectively exploit big data for competitive advantage
One of the main problems for IT departments that Plummer draw attention to is that users no longer strictly obey IT’s policies for the organizations. For example, if one is given a RIM smartphone for his work, he might go out and buy an iPhone because that’s what he likes. Or if an organization bans a certain social network, users might still access them from their desk by using a communication channel that is not controlled by the IT department. Plummer said that 80% of respondents buy cloud services without asking IT, fearing that the IT department would delay the purchasing process or not accept it. Plummer recommends for IT organizations to find the “best ways to use the trends, not the best ways to stop the trends,” to coordinate things instead of controlling them. One example would be to let employees use the phone they want at work but being given less support compared to using the recommended mobile device.
As is the case with any prediction, we will have to wait and see if these predictions will come true, and how accurate they are.