Gartner's Top 10 Predictions

Today, a colleague forwarded me Gartner's Top 10 predictions for 2009. Here's the list and my commentary:

1. By 2012, high-definition-based video meeting solutions will replace 2.1 million airline seats annually

I completely agree. Cisco is installing a Telepresence solution in my home as a pilot

I plan on using these technologies to reduce my travel miles per my 2008 and 2009 goals

2. By 2012, 30 percent of mobile PCs sold in the worldwide consumer market will be priced at less than US$300.

Partially agree - it depends on the application requirements. For web browsing, online storage such as Google's Gdrive, and email, an inexpensive netbook is fine.

For multimedia management or intensive computation, a netbook is not sufficient. Using Photoshop CS4, Final Cut Pro, or MatLab requires more processing power and graphics capability than will be available via netbooks and software as a service solutions.

Thus, if 70% of use will be the basics of browsing and email, the $300 netbook could account for 30% of worldwide mobile PCs.

3. In 2012, the major PC vendors will recycle only one PC for every five they ship.

I partially agree. Recycling is dependent on policy. The Obama administration is likely to encourage Green IT initiatives including recycling. Often, recycling is not cost effective, so subsidies and disposal fees are needed to encourage recycling rather than waste disposal.

4. By 2012, successful enterprises will actively encourage and reward more failures in order to find the optimal approach they want more quickly.

I completely agree. My Signature projects often have audacious goals that have a great deal of ambiguity because so much innovation is required. I explain to my staff that such projects have only general expectations of timeline and deliverables. We iterate by implementing prototypes based on customer requirements, then test, improve and test again. Setbacks are always forgiven.

5. By 2012, as many as one in three of the top 20 business process outsourcing providers will no longer exist.

Business Process Outsourcing differs from Application Service Providers/Software as a Service by transferring some of the risk of operations to the outsourcer. In tough economic times and with the rapid evolution of technology, it's clear that some of these Business Process outsourcers will be on the losing side of the risk equation and will go out of business.

6. By 2011, 30 percent of consulting and systems integration revenue will be delivered via 'cloud computing'.

I completely agree. All my recent efforts to offer scalable applications and storage to large numbers of customers have been based on software as a service/cloud computing principles.

7. From 2009 to 2013, the server virtualisation software market will grow with a compound annual growth rate of 28 percent, rising from US$1.8bn to US$6.2bn.

I completely agree. All my green IT initiatives at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School depend upon massively consolidating physical servers into virtualized farms of geographically dispersed servers. In a recent study by VMWare at Harvard, we believe a 10:1 reduction in physical servers is possible.

8. By year end 2013, 40 percent of enterprise knowledge workers will have abandoned or removed their desk phone.

Last week at Harvard Medical School, I retired my personal desk phone as well as 30% of the landlines in the IT department as a cost saving measure. I use a desk phone about once a month for delivering webinars. Otherwise I'm purely mobile.

As employees become increasing virtual, the idea of a desk with a computer and a phone no longer makes sense.

9. By the end of next year 2010, wireless operators will cease to offer unlimited (flat-rate) mobile data plans.

I partially agree. I use the Blackberry Bold 3G phone and I've found levels of congestion (likely induced by iPhone use). My answer has been to enable WiFi on my Blackberry, roaming on WiFi networks while in buildings and then switching to 3G only while I'm driving. If more folks balance their use of networks between private WiFi networks and the public 3G network, then 3G demand will better match supply and rates may stay flat.

10. By year end 2012, physical sensors will create 20 per cent of non-video Internet traffic.

The internet is an increasingly ubiquitous way to connect everyone and everything. Home healthcare will include blood pressure, weight, and pulse oximeter sensors. Wireless sensor networks will monitoring everything from weather to earthquake activity. The semantic web will be more about data than web pages.


Overall, the Gartner folks have identified important trends. I find that my own life is increasing virtual, traveling the world always connected to a cloud of IT resources via my Macbook Air, Blackberry Bold, and iPod Touch.