Each year, Gartner Emerging Trends Symposium/ITxpo is founded on a framework of six megatrends that Gartner sees as critical to how business and technology will evolve in the near and long term.
For 2008, we express these megatrends as calls to action, as we believe strongly that our attendees and clients should seize upon the opportunities these megatrends represent for their organization, or act to mitigate their risks if that’s the case.
The 2008 Megatrends
ADVANCE
Redefining IT organizations and competencies
When technologies and trends emerge, everything must adapt or face the consequences of not adapting. Those consequences can be severe. So our look at emerging trends includes a focus on how IT organizations and business organizations must adapt to capitalize on emerging trends. Elements such as organizational structure and working effectively across distances and time will take on new meaning and importance. There’s no doubt organizations will need to find entirely new talent pools, and train and equip existing ones in novel ways.
A mere sampling of the trends and technologies we’ll focus on includes:
- Distributed Workforce
- Green IT
- Business Process Modeling
- Digital Natives
- Type Z
- CIO to COO
- Versatilists
CONNECT
Consumerizing and securing communications & devices
The hyperconnected enterprise is coming. We already live in an age of always-on availability, for good or ill. PDAs, smartphones, instant messaging, home networking, videoconferencing … these all already ensure we can be reached. The continuing trend to Connect will take this to a new level, with location intelligence, pervasive IT and more. While the benefits of this are clear, the risks are still emerging, and securing the data and communications that are becoming more distributed, more routine … and therefore more vulnerable … will become paramount.
A mere sampling of the trends and technologies we’ll focus on includes:
- Hyperconnected Enterprise
- Consumerization
- Location Intelligence
- Collaboration
- Pervasive IT
- Security 3.0
- Portable Personalities
GLOBALIZE
Provisioning and sourcing worldwide
Nowadays the world is your backyard. Or so it would seem, as offshoring and global procurement nestle into ever further reaches of the world, from not just China and India, but the whole of Southeast Asia, Europe West and East, and Latin America, as well. The digital economy has no bounds, and increasingly the constraints of the physical economy are melting away, as well. What does this mean for your business? The revenue opportunities are endless, but how do you tap into them? The cost savings on the operational side can be appealing, as well, but will they prove too good to be true?
A mere sampling of the trends and technologies we’ll focus on includes:
- Emerging Markets IT
- Multisourcing
- Offshoring
- Commoditization
- V-Commerce
INDUSTRIALIZE
The agile enterprise platform edges into the cloud
Already IT-intensive, your average organization will become even more so. Indeed, the “average organization” won’t be particularly average at all. Conventional organizational and business structures are adapting, and newer more agile organizations today often bear no resemblance to their conventional cousins. Virtual organizations of loosely tied entities abound. Some traditional enterprises are morphing into hybrids. What an organization “owns” or “does” becomes less certain and, frankly, less important than it has been. What becomes more important is what the enterprise “can do” for the consumer, suppliers and partners. Enabling all of this change are emerging trends in IT.
A mere sampling of the trends and technologies we’ll focus on includes:
- Cloud Computing
- Enterprise 2.0
- Virtualization
- Real World Web
- Networked Virtual Environments
- Capacity on Demand
INNOVATE
New business methods, trends and technologies
Consider the business success stories of the early part of this century. Without fail, they are organizations that have seized an emerging trend, technology, business model, or platform and bested their competition with it, or struck entirely new ground. The innovative and agile organizations among us haven’t simply been lucky; they’ve had the foresight and courage to take a calculated risk and follow through. From Web-based business models to unprecedented collaboration systems to virtualization and beyond, recognizing an edge in the market – and moving to the edge to grasp it – makes tomorrow’s success story.
A mere sampling of the trends and technologies we’ll focus on includes:
- Alternative Delivery Models
- Tera Architectures
- Capacity on Demand
- Software as a Service
- Innovation Management
- Utility Computing
- Application Streaming
SOCIALIZE
Building value in knowledge & people networks
With all the buzz about mobility, social networking and online communities, it’s important to take a reality check: What value are we really deriving from these trends? More and more, that’s the question savvy organizations are asking themselves. From viral marketing to content analytics to collaboration and more, organizations are leveraging what seems unstoppable anyway: The proliferation of knowledge and people networks inside organizations, among organizations, and outside organizations altogether. What value will you derive?
A mere sampling of the trends and technologies we’ll focus on includes:
- User Generated Content
- Social Networking
- Community Source
- The Metaverse
- Relationship Assets
- Hyperconnected Enterprise
- Collective Intelligence
Communities
- Great minds think alike. Communities are complimentary with your conference registration.
