Gartner: How big trends in security, mobile, big data and cloud computing will change IT

These are the changes that will affect IT - and you and/or your business - the most

When you go to a Gartner conference one of he main things you'll notice is the sheer volume of data they can generate on just about any IT topic. Last week's Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Fla., was no different. The conference, attended by some 9,000 executives focused on the changes security challenges, mobile computing, big data and cloud will be bringing to IT in the near future.

Trying to get through it all can be daunting so we've tried to simplify that process by distilling a variety of Gartner ITxpo presentations and coming up with the most salient information.

So here goes. From the Gartner analysts, presentations on:

The world of IT

" Worldwide IT spending is forecast to surpass $3.7 trillion in 2013, a 3.8% increase from 2012's projected spending of $3.6 trillion, but it's the outlook for big data that is creating much excitement. That's because by 2015, 4.4 million IT jobs globally will be created to support big data, generating 1.9 million IT jobs in the United States. Big data creates a new layer in the economy which is all about information, turning information, or data, into revenue. In 2013, big data is forecast to drive $34 billion of IT spending.

Most of the current spending is used in adapting traditional solutions to the big data demands -- machine data, social data, widely varied data, unpredictable velocity, and so on -- and only $4.3 billion in software sales will be driven directly by demands for new big data functionality in 2012.

" Big data currently has the most significant impact in social network analysis and content analytics with 45% of new spending each year.

" Twelve years ago technology spending outside of IT was 20% of total technology spending; it will become almost 90% by the end of the decade.

" Organizations will create the role of a chief digital officer as part of the business unit leadership, which will become a new seat at the executive table. Gartner predicts that by 2015, 25% of organizations will have a chief digital officer.

"The chief digital officer will prove to be the most exciting strategic role in the decade ahead, and IT leaders have the opportunity to be the leaders who will define it," said David Willis, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "The chief digital officer plays in the place where the enterprise meets the customer, where the revenue is generated and the mission accomplished. They're in charge of the digital business strategy. That's a long way from running back office IT, and it's full of opportunity."

" In the next three years, the dominant consumer social networks will see the limits of their growth. However, social computing will become even more important. Companies are establishing social media as a discipline. Gartner predicts that in three years, 10 organizations will each spend more than $1 billion on social media.

"Social computing is moving from being just on the outside of the organization to being at the core of business operations," said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of research. "It is changing the fundamentals of management: how you establish a sense of purpose and motivate people to act. Social computing will move organizations from hierarchical structures and defined teams to communities that can cross any organizational boundary."

Mobile

" In 2016, more than 1.6 billion smart mobile devices will be purchased globally. Two-thirds of the mobile workforce will own a smartphone, and 40% of the workforce will be mobile. The challenge for IT leaders is determining what to do with this new channel to their customers and employees.

" Gartner forecasts that in 2016, half of all non-PC devices will be purchased by employees. By the end of the decade, half of all devices in business will be purchased by employees.

" The emergence of Apple iPads, which for most users are difficult to justify as an essential computing tool, has made BYOD a near-term priority. IT organizations want end users, in most cases, to use the tools that help them perform their jobs better or to help retain valued employees, but they do not want to increase the cost per user for computing resources.

" Shipments of Android tablets will exceed shipments of iOS tablets by year end 2014. Android and iOS will continue to dominate smartphones in the short term with Windows phone growing substantially. In the tablet space Apple's dominance will be attacked by Android as lower cost devices emerge in 2013. We expect Windows 8 will remain relatively niche and more attractive to organizations then individual consumers.

" HTML5 will be a key mobile technology, but fragmentation and immaturity will remain challenges through 2015 so HTML5 is a very long way from being a panacea for cross platform development. Some of HTML5's challenges can be reduced by using JavaScript frameworks such as Dojo, Sencha or JQuery mobile which can hide some platform and browser dependencies. Testing non-trivial HTML5 applications will be complex due to the many platform and browser variations.

" By 2016, 60% of large enterprises will implement limited access network zones to limit the connectivity of personally owned mobile devices.

" in the next five years 65% of corporations will adopt MDM to address security concerns from smartphones and tablets.

" Gartner predicts that through 2017, 90% of enterprises will have two or more mobile operating systems to support. In the past year, many companies have moved to Apple's iOS as their main mobile device platform, with others to follow over the next 12 to 18 months. As other operating systems like Windows 8 mobile platforms grow, MDM will need to be adopted, Gartner said.

" By 2015, 20% of smartphone users worldwide will conduct commerce using context-enriched services on a weekly basis.

Security

" Security investments are going to dramatically increase. An already large security market is about to get much bigger, growing by 56% from current levels in five years time, while cloud security will almost triple.

Gartner analysts said a key reason for this is regulatory compliance. IT leaders need to anticipate and plan for the coming wave of government interventions and regulations. As information technology becomes pervasive in all operations, regulations from the analog world will come to the digital world.

" More than 50% of firms currently providing identity access management as a service (IAMaaS) and cloud-based IAM solutions will be acquired by larger service providers by year-end 2015.

" Through 2013, 80% of cloud security incidents will be due to administrative error by cloud service providers or user management of cloud services.

" For low-security environments, or for workloads that have simple security requirements, relying on the security built into structure or into the public cloud service will be good enough -- just as it was in private cloud infrastructure-traditional insourcing and outsourcing. This will represent roughly 20% of the overall market.

" At the high end, security will be kept separate from private or public cloud infrastructure -- just as we did when internal networks were virtualized. The VMsafe API is an example of a mechanism that requires all security-relevant flows to be externalized so that existing and separate security processes can examine them and enforce security policies. This will represent approximately 20% of the market.

" The vast middle will compromise and run security workloads in the private cloud and public cloud environments, as long as sufficient separation of duties and audit/visibility can be provided.

" There is an urgent need for companies to separate personal and business operations on consumer smartphones and tablets (both company- and user-owned) in ways that will be inexpensive to implement, easy to use, and robust in defense of company policies and data. Several technologies will provide partial solutions to support efforts to manage diverse consumer devices with various advantages to the user and IT manager, but no solution will simultaneously please both. It is too easy for a user to purchase a smartphone with a personal credit card, then use it to access sensitive data via a corporate network.

The only way IT staff can maintain control is by separating mobile computing devices (notebook PCs, PDAs, phones, pagers and others) into three distinct device classes: (1) trusted standard devices provided by the company; (2) tolerated devices, a portfolio of user-purchased devices; (3) unsupported devices that are used in small numbers or have a consumer orientation, for which the PC group cannot provide support. By 2016, 60% of large enterprises will implement limited access network zones to limit the connectivity of personally owned mobile devices.

Cloud

" Overall, there are very real trends toward cloud platforms, and also toward massively scalable processing. Virtualization, service orientation and the Internet have converged to sponsor a phenomenon that enables individuals and businesses to choose how they'll acquire or deliver IT services, with reduced emphasis on the constraints of traditional software and hardware licensing models. Services delivered through the cloud will foster an economy based on delivery and consumption of everything from storage to computation to video to finance deduction management.

Cloud adoption increases steadily but it must be remembered that adoption starts from a small base. This means that it will grow more rapidly than existing IT models but today it still represents less than 3% of overall IT spend and will remain so through 2016. The key thing to consider here is the question of how much of cloud growth will drive the cannibalization of other types of spend. Vendor software licenses, hardware financing and distribution, growth of service provider revenue, and even the movement of major IT services projects to cloud computing all have a major impact on the strategy of the IT segment, Gartner says.

" The worldwide market for public cloud services across all segments grew 20.8% to $91.4 billion in 2011, up from $75.6 billion in 2010. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the fastest-growing segment of public cloud services, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41.7% (2011 through 2016). IaaS spending will surpass $72 billion from 2012 through 2016.

" Growth in the software as a service (SaaS) market is slowing, with annual growth rates of 25.7% in 2011 and 21.3% in 2012 and a five-year CAGR of 17.4%.

Server virtualization

" Through 2014, enterprises will have at least five competitive alternatives for x86 server virtualization infrastructure. By year-end 2015, half of the Global 100 will have at least one service for production use that they consider to be a private cloud computing service, using VMs as a basic building block.

" As of mid-2012, about 75% of installed VMs are VMware-based. VMware is even more dominant in Global 500 enterprises, which generally started virtualizing early, when VMware was the only competitor in the market. Large enterprises also heavily leverage higher-end tools, such as vMotion, and are more demanding in their production use of VMs.

" During the same period, Microsoft has grown to an approximately 18% installed base market share. Microsoft is mainly attracting newcomers to virtualization, which are still mostly smaller enterprises with deployments of 100 or fewer VMs. However, because of the very large pricing gap with VMware, Microsoft is winning some larger enterprises -- especially in peripheral roles (branches and stores).

" Citrix seems to have lost momentum for server workloads, but is gaining momentum for hosted virtual desktops (HVD). Its installed base accounts for about 5% of the VM installed base.

" The rest of the vendors -- Oracle, Novell, Red Hat and Parallels -- account for about 1% of the installed base today -- but they are growing.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.

Tags cloud computingmanagementmobileMicrosoftsmartphonesinternetGartnerGoogleAppleVMwareAndroidNetworkingx86iosoperating systemssoftwareapplicationstelecommunicationData CenterWindowshardware systemsconsumer electronicsConfiguration / maintenanceMobile OSesLAN & WAN

Show Comments
[]