Analyst firm Gartner says it has identified the top 10 strategic
IT technologies for 2009.
Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential
for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years.
Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for
disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major financial
investment, or high risk of damage from late adoption.
These technologies impact the organisation's long-term plans,
programmes and initiatives, said the analyst. They may be strategic
because they have matured to broad market use or because they
enable strategic advantage from early adoption.
"Strategic technologies affect, run, grow and transform the
business initiatives of an organisation," said David Cearley, an
analyst at Gartner.
"Companies should look at these 10 opportunities and evaluate
where these technologies can add value to their business services
and solutions, as well as develop a process for detecting and
evaluating the business value of new technologies as they enter the
market."
The top 10 strategic technologies for 2009 are:
•
Virtualisation
•
Cloud computing
• Servers beyond blades
• Web-oriented architectures
•
Enterprise mashups
• Specialised systems (heterogeneous server systems where the
owner installs software to accomplish a function)
• Social software and
social networking
•
Unified communications
•
Business intelligence
•
Green IT
More on strategic IT:
Watch David
Cearley discussing Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technologies at the
Gartner Symposium / ITxpo Orlando 2008 (YouTube)
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