Gartner's 2012 Forecast: Cloudy, With Widespread ConsumerizationGartner's 2012 Forecast: Cloudy, With Widespread Consumerization

My Mistake: 10 CIOs Share Do-Over Worthy Moments

Come December, everyone becomes a prophet. The latest seasonal foresight comes from business research firm Gartner, which has just laid out its vision for the year ahead.

There are no big surprises, which also isn't a surprise--surprises by definition resist prediction, so best not to predict them. Yet in aggregate the firm's IT forecast paints a world that is anything but business as usual, at least in the sense of norms established during the PC revolution in the 1980s.

Daryl Plummer, managing VP and Gartner fellow, suggests that consumerization and cloud computing will weaken IT departments.

"As users take more control of the devices they will use, business managers are taking more control of the budgets IT organizations have watched shift over the last few years," he said in a statement. "As the world of IT moves forward, CIOs are finding that they must coordinate their activities in a much wider scope than they once controlled. While this might be a difficult prospect for IT departments, they must now adapt or be swept aside."

This might be translated to read, "Provide iPad support or be fired," but that's a rather crude simplification.

[ Find out what Google did in 2011. Read Google's Daring Dozen: 12 Big Bets In 2011. ]

There's also a growing emphasis on data, which has to be distributed rather than centralized, and kept secure even as there's too much of it to deal with or really understand. Gartner's takeaway seems to be that IT organizations have to become routers rather than firewalls, assisting in computational agility rather than anchoring companies in the safe confines of policy.

Gartner's specific predictions are as follows:

1. By 2015, low-cost cloud services will cannibalize up to 15% of top outsourcing players' revenue.

Gartner sees low-cost cloud services disrupting traditional IT in the same way that low-cost air carriers like Ryanair and Southwest disrupted the major commercial airlines. If that means computing will become as insufferable as modern air travel, abacuses and pneumatic tube networks may see a revival as tools for corporate computing.

2. In 2013, the investment bubble will burst for consumer social networks, and for enterprise social software companies in 2014.

Oh, please let it be sooner. Friend lists and sharing should be organizational options inside my locally run Contacts application, not outsourced services that compromise privacy and undermine honest communication by turning every message into marketing.

3. By 2016, at least 50% of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet, or mobile client instead of a desktop client.

Perhaps, but only if relying on a tablet or mobile device refers to reading email. Tablets and mobile devices are great tools, but if you're actually writing lengthy messages, you're going to be more productive on a traditional keyboard. The real story here is that browser-based email will take over because it's just easier when the system requirements for access translate to "any Internet-capable device with a browser" rather than a specific computer operating system and with specific installed software. Tablets and mobile devices will mostly fill in the gaps, unless the user's concept of communication doesn't extend beyond "Agreed. Sent from my iPhone." 4. By 2015, mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1.

Probably, but there's a bit of misdirection here. These smartphone and tablet projects will tie into enterprise systems, data stores, and the like. A lot of them will just be updated frontends, a new user interface for the same data accessed by desktop applications.

5. By 2016, 40% of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service.

Either that or cloud companies will pursue the same strategy as other corporations that experience a data breach--don't say anything and hope no one notices. But if such certifications come to matter, chances are the companies doing independent security testing will turn out to be as beholden to their clients as companies offering independent credit ratings. Remember the 2008 financial crisis? Too many of those mortgage-backed securities were rated "AAA."

[ Make business intelligence easy to use, deploy, afford, administer, and embed. 5 Resolutions For Better BI in 2012. ]

6. At year end 2016, more than 50% of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud.

The more interesting angle here is how Global 1000 companies will define customer-sensitive data four years hence. Cardinal Richelieu is widely (though not universally) believed to have said, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." Today, that maxim might be rephrased, "If you give me access to six searches related to the most honest of men, I will find something damning." Ultimately, storing any data in the public cloud should be viewed as a risk.

7. By 2015, 35% of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department's budget.

IT departments may want to start looking into alternative revenue streams, like Bitcoin and Facebook Credits.

8. By 2014, 20% of Asia-sourced finished goods and assemblies consumed in the United States will shift to the Americas.

Gartner cites political, environmental, economic, and supply chain risks as reasons for the predicted shift. We welcome the return of the industrial revolution to America and the pollution cleanup opportunities that are sure to follow. Let's hope we can fill the jobs that arise with skilled workers rather than industrial robots.

9. Through 2016, the financial impact of cybercrime will grow 10% per year, due to the continuing discovery of new vulnerabilities.

Here's where we get to do some math: What's more profitable, the theft of personal information for a million individuals or the theft of a cloud service company's database containing a million entries? Answer: As a lawyer, either scenario looks pretty promising.

10. By 2015, the prices for 80% of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge.

Potential business idea: Pedal-powered computers.

11. Through 2015, more than 85% of Fortune 500 organizations will fail to effectively exploit big data for competitive advantage.

Gartner's argument is that there's just too much varied, complicated, fast-moving data and that most firms won't be able to use their information to give their operations an edge. But investing in business intelligence is no substitute for making a great product that meets a real need.

Apply advanced analytics to the sales pipeline, Web traffic, and social buzz to anticipate what’s coming, instead of just looking at the past. Also in the new, all-digital issue of information: A practical guide to biometrics. Download the issue now. (Free registration required.)