ZDnet has an article on Gartner’s top 2010 strategic tech list.
Gartner: Cloud computing, analytics top 2010 strategic tech list
Posted by Larry Dignan @ 5:46 am
Gartner unveiled its top 10 strategic technology list for 2010. Unified communications, servers and specialized systems are out. Client computing, data center do-overs, flash memory and mobile applications are in.
The list, presented Tuesday at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando, by analysts David Cearley and Carl Claunch looks like this:
For the data center crowd, look at #5 “Reshaping the Data Center” From Gartner’s press release.
Reshaping the Data Center. In the past, design principles for data centers were simple: Figure out what you have, estimate growth for 15 to 20 years, then build to suit. Newly-built data centers often opened with huge areas of white floor space, fully powered and backed by a uninterruptible power supply (UPS), water-and air-cooled and mostly empty. However, costs are actually lower if enterprises adopt a pod-based approach to data center construction and expansion. If 9,000 square feet is expected to be needed during the life of a data center, then design the site to support it, but only build what’s needed for five to seven years. Cutting operating expenses, which are a nontrivial part of the overall IT spend for most clients, frees up money to apply to other projects or investments either in IT or in the business itself.
Green IT has morphed into IT for Green which aligns well with Intel’s latest IT is the 2% to save the other 98% of carbon footprint.
Gartner’s topic of advanced analytics fits with why I started discussing modeling on this blog.
Advanced Analytics. Optimization and simulation is using analytical tools and models to maximize business process and decision effectiveness by examining alternative outcomes and scenarios, before, during and after process implementation and execution. This can be viewed as a third step in supporting operational business decisions. Fixed rules and prepared policies gave way to more informed decisions powered by the right information delivered at the right time, whether through customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) or other applications. The new step is to provide simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, not simply information, to empower even more decision flexibility at the time and place of every business process action. The new step looks into the future, predicting what can or will happen.
The focus on flash memory is interesting vs last year they had server hardware.
Flash Memory. Flash memory is not new, but it is moving up to a new tier in the storage echelon. Flash memory is a semiconductor memory device, familiar from its use in USB memory sticks and digital camera cards. It is much faster than rotating disk, but considerably more expensive, however this differential is shrinking. At the rate of price declines, the technology will enjoy more than a 100 percent compound annual growth rate during the new few years and become strategic in many IT areas including consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems. In addition, it offers a new layer of the storage hierarchy in servers and client computers that has key advantages including space, heat, performance and ruggedness.
Collaboration has been replaced by Social Computing.
Social Computing. Workers do not want two distinct environments to support their work – one for their own work products (whether personal or group) and another for accessing “external” information. Enterprises must focus both on use of social software and social media in the enterprise and participation and integration with externally facing enterprise-sponsored and public communities. Do not ignore the role of the social profile to bring communities together.
After going through the Gartner list, I realized their list is a pretty close match to what I blog about to discuss green data centers. I had already registered for the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas on Dec 1 – 4, and it will be interesting to learn how Gartner aligns with approaches that I see working for others.