By 2010, every business and organisational activity will
revolve around the effective use of web-based content and
applications, according to Gartner.
At next week's Gartner Symposium in Cannes, the analyst firm
will urge corporate IT users to prepare for the "second age of the
internet" by looking at consumer developments and trying to apply
them to their businesses.
The availability of cheap bandwidth, fast desktop hardware,
low-cost open source infrastructure products, web services and Java
standards are creating new possibilities for corporate IT,
delegates will be told.
Speaking to Computer Weekly, Gartner fellow Mark Raskini said,
"We are in a transition stage and CIOs will need to implement new
policies. They must take a view and look at how they can apply the
technology in their own organisations."
End-users will expect to connect home PCs and mobile phone
devices into the corporate network and run applications such as
instant messaging when they are at work. Such technologies are
being used within the business without the IT department having a
formal strategy on how they should be used, said Gartner.
Among the technologies IT directors need to consider is the
Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) specification, which allows
developers to build and distribute applications in a way that was
not possible five years ago, when the industry was promoting the
application service provider model of software delivery over the
internet.
Raskini said, "We now have the ability to create micro
applications that can download to a browser quickly and run
fast."
He also urged IT directors to assess how technology targeted at
consumers, such as the Google search bar, was being run by
end-users within their businesses.
He said the Google Desktop 2.0 search put a search bar in
Outlook and could search e-mail faster than Outlook itself. It
could therefore become the search tool of choice for end-users.
Another concept IT directors should assess is Wikipedia, Raskini
said. Gartner sees this free online encyclopedia as an example of
global collaboration among end-users that allows people to edit web
pages directly. "You should look at how this concept can be applied
in your own business," he said.