Gartner's top 10 strategic technologies for 2008

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Patrick Thibodeau outlines the analyst firm's picks

By Patrick Thibodeau | Orlando | Monday, 22 October, 2007

Gartner has put "Green IT" at the top of its list of 10 strategic technologies for next year, and the research firm says that if businesses don't improve datacentre energy efficiency, governments may force them to do so.

But social networking technologies are also on the list, along with some further-off technological developments, such as server designs that use a resource-sharing approach called a computing fabric.

Here's Gartner's list:

1. Green IT This is a path that more and more companies are taking as a socially responsible strategy. A green approach is multifaceted and can affect datacentre operations in a number of ways, such as moving workloads based on energy efficiency and using the most power-inefficient servers only at times of peak usage, said Carl Claunch, an analyst.

But datacentres also face the threat of regulatory action to curb power usage. The problem, says Claunch, is that you can't predict what may trigger regulation or when mandates will arrive.

2. Unified communications The move to unified communications systems is happening as the world shifts from analogue to digital over IP networks. But it's not just the obvious things that will converge, such as telephony and messaging. Companies may make security videos part of this convergence, which may give businesses, for instance, new ways to analyse a retail outlet's traffic patterns. This video data would require a lot of storage, so using it in this way could prompt IT managers to introduce the security team to the networking group.

3. Business process management This is not a technology; it's a way of using technologies to enable companies to simulate, model and design the processes that run their businesses. A key trend is the evolution of the business process management suite, Cearley says. This may include model-driven development, content and document management, collaboration capabilities, system connectivity, business intelligence activity monitoring and management, rules and systems management.

4. Metadata management This is becoming important as companies integrate data, for example, customer and product data and warehouse data.

5. Virtualisation Virtualisation technology is critical, but not just for consolidation; it also offers a way to mirror production systems for disaster recovery. In Gartner's view, Virtualisation is now into its 2.0 version, as software vendors begin to ship their software in virtual machines with the operating system and needed middleware. This approach avoids the "deleterious effects of one piece of software on another", Claunch says.

6. Mashups Mashup tools allow users to take things from multiple websites and combine them together to create a web-centric composite application. "You want to start building mashability into everything you do," Cearley says.

7. The web platform This is the model for services in the future. An example, says Cearley, is the recent cloud computing announcement by Google and IBM, which are jointly offering a platform for use by universities for application development initiatives, including Web 2.0 projects. "Put this on your radar screen," Cearley says.

8. Computing fabric A server design that is still a work in progress, computing fabric involves treating memory, processors and I/O cards as a pooled resource instead of a fixed arrangement. Blade servers allow you to do some of this pooling with I/O, Claunch says. "Be aware of this, because blades are not the final step," he says.

9. Real World Web This is the name of the computing experience made possible by ubiquitous access to networks of even-increasing bandwidth via mobile technologies. Thanks to the Real World Web, users can have ready access to all kinds of information, including travel information or the location of a jar of pickles in a grocery store.

10. Social software Social software includes podcasts, blogs and wikis — anything that fosters the development of social networks.