Top 10 strategic technologies for 2008 and coming years include:

1. Green IT
2. Universal communications
3. Business process modeling
4. Metadata management
5. Virtualization “2.0”
6. Mashup and composite web applications
7. Web platforms and “WOA”
8. Computing fabric
9. “Real World” web
10. Social software

Green IT

IT will be pressured to play a role in reducing carbon emissions

Regulations are multiplying and have the potential to seriously constrain companies in building data centers, as the impact on power grids, carbon emissions from increased use and other environmental impacts are under scrutiny.

Consider potential regulations and have alternative plans for data center and capacity growth.

Some companies are emphasizing their socially-responsible behavior, which might result in vendor preferences and policies that affect IT decisions.

Scheduling decisions for server workloads will begin to consider power efficiency as a key placement attribute.

Unified Communications

More and more enterprises will adopt IP telephony.

Today, 20% of the installed base with PBX has migrated to IP telephony, but more than 80% are already doing trials of some form.

Gartner analysts expect the next three years to be the point at which the majority of companies implement this, the first major change in voice communications since the digital PBX and cellular phone changes in the 1970s and 1980s.

This switch could prove key as enterprises look towards reducing meeting-related travel as part of their mission to become “greener”.

Business Process Modeling

Enterprise efficiency focuses more and more on process improvement.

Top-level process services provided by IT must be defined jointly by a combination of roles (which include enterprise architects, senior developers, process architects and/or process analysts).

Some of those roles sit in a service oriented architecture center of excellence, some in a process center of excellence and some in both. The strategic imperative for 2008 is to bring these groups together.

Gartner expects BPM suites to fill a critical role as a compliment to SOA development.

Metadata Management

Metadata management is a critical part of an enterprise’s information infrastructure. It enables optimization, abstraction and semantic reconciliation of metadata to support reuse, consistency, integrity and share-ability

Through 2010, organizations implementing both customer data integration and product or service information management will link these master data management initiatives as part of an overall enterprise information management (EIM) strategy.

Virtualization “2.0”

Advances in virtualization technologies will continue in 2008.

Virtualization technologies can improve IT resource utilization and increase the flexibility needed to adapt to changing requirements and workloads.

Virtualization technologies are enablers that help encourage broader improvements in infrastructure cost reduction, flexibility and resiliency.

With the addition of automation technologies – with service-level, policy-based active management – resource efficiency can improve dramatically, flexibility can become automatic based on requirements, and services can be managed holistically, ensuring high levels of resiliency.

Mashup and Composite Apps

Mashup technologies will evolve significantly over the next five years, and application leaders must take this evolution into account when evaluating the impact of mashups and in formulating an enterprise mashup strategy.

By 2010, Web mashups will be the dominant model (80%) for the creation of composite enterprise applications.

Web Platform and WOA

Software as a service (SaaS) is becoming a viable option in more markets and companies must evaluate where service based delivery may provide value in 2008-2010.

Web platforms are emerging which will provide service-based access to infrastructure services, information, applications, and business processes through Web based “cloud computing” environments, the so-called “Web-Oriented-Architecture”, or WOA.

Enterprises must also look beyond SaaS to examine how these Web platforms will impact their business in 3-5 years.

Computing Fabric

A computing fabric is the evolution of server design beyond the interim stage, blade servers, that exists today.

Next will be the introduction of technology to allow several blades to be merged operationally over the fabric, operating as a larger single system image that is the sum of the components from those blades.

For example a large server can be created by combining 32 processors and a number of memory modules from the pool, operating together over the fabric to appear to an operating system as a single fixed server.

The fabric-based server of the future will treat memory, processors, and I/O cards as components in a pool, combining and recombining them into particular arrangements to suits the owner’s needs.

Real World Web

The term “real world Web” refers to places where information from the Web is applied to the particular location, activity or user context in the real world.

Such information is intended to augment the reality that a user faces, not to replace it as in virtual worlds. It is used in real-time based on the real world situation, not prepared in advance for consumption at specific times or researched after the events have occurred.

For example in navigation, a printed list of directions from the Web cannot react to changes, but a GPS navigation unit provides real-time directions that react to events and movements

Now is the time to seek out new applications, new revenue streams and improvements to business process that can come from augmenting the world at the right time, place or situation.

Social Software

Social networking focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software.

Social software technologies will increasingly be brought into the enterprise to augment traditional collaboration techniques.

Through 2010, the enterprise Web 2.0 product environment will experience considerable flux with continued product innovation and new entrants, including start-ups, large vendors and traditional collaboration vendors.

Expect significant consolidation as competitors strive to deliver robust Web 2.0 social software offerings to the enterprise.

Social Software Expectations Growing

Recent article points to “significant” trends sweeping campus environment.

Today, many students are “digital natives”, Web 2.0 consumers, who expect their college or university to create a collaborative experience that integrates familiar technologies into their learning environment.

Three of four young adults download and view Internet videos daily.

Burst Media reports that college students spend more time online than they do using any other form of media, including TV and radio.

Five Trends Affecting Application Development

All signs indicate that enterprise IT organizations are finally making room in their budgets for new applications and application-related initiatives.

This presents an opportunity for application development and program management organizations to play a more strategic role.

The 5 trends are:

The diversification of the software supply chain will require new management skills.

Rapidly changing business conditions will require that software be built for change.

Development and delivery cycles will shorten even more.

Disruptive new technologies will extend developers’ reach.

The role of business analyst will change and grow in importance.

Five Trends Affecting IT Operations

Forrester has laid out a vision — the IT to business technology (BT) transformation — in which nearly every element of business operation is embodied in the technology it uses.

Transformation is a laudable vision for sure, but the infrastructure and operations team is the linchpin that will hold it all together.

The 5 trends are:

Virtualization everywhere.

The consolidation of everything.

Standardization and simplification of IT.

Business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) are at the heart of major IT initiatives.

A new wave of technology refresh will kick in.

Seven Trends Affecting the CIO Role

Forrester predicts a continuing bifurcation of the CIO role in 2008.

“Change agent” CIOs will gain more business presence while “general manager” CIOs continue to make improvements to IT reliability, consistency, and cost.

Four trends for change agent CIOs:

Strengthen joint IT-business planning through use of model-based planning.

Restructure organizations to foster alignment.

Foster strategic planning and architecture as key competencies.

Strengthen their roles on the executive team.

Three trends for general manager CIOs:

Structure their organizations to drive standardization.

Improve transparency, measurement, and monitoring to uncover efficiencies.

Assume management of other corporate “shared” services.

Network World Predictions

Network World magazine came up with another list of predictions:

Reprieve for Windows XP

International hacking

Greening of IT

Network evolution

More Linux

More social networking

Consumer vs. corporate IT

More vendor consolidation

Desktop virtualization

E-Voting concerns

What are the Implications for Government IT?

General IT predictions are well and good, but how do they impact Government?

For instance, with all these predictions, how has the Gartner “Hype Cycle for Government” changed?

What other implications are out there?

Other Implications for Government

GIS evolution continues

Legacy system modernization decisions

Staffing and skill gaps caused by retirement

Drive for accountability