Those in search of the latest trends in technology and what it will mean for their businesses have converged on the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo: Emerging Trends in San Francisco this week.
The conference has been built around eight mega-trends identified by Gartner analysts, including the globalisation of supply and demand, the commoditisation of the tech sector, the virtualisation of IT and the socialising of technology.
Martin Reynolds, Gartner vice president, gave me his thoughts on the consumerisation of IT.
He showed how his non-work cellphone could access his office emails with the help of the latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server. It allowed a port to be safely opened to the company’s network that would satisfy the security concerns of the IT department.
He sees consumer-focused companies such as Apple, Google and Sony having a big effect on enterprise IT. The Apple iPhone when it comes out is not expected to be able to connect to business email systems in the way that a Blackberry can. Mr Reynolds said he did not think it would have virtual private network (VPN) software. This would challenge IT when influential executives turned up at work and demanded connectivity to the company network.
Google was doing its best to disintermediate IT, said Mr Reynolds, with its browser-based applications and its provision of a vast infrastructure for users.
He feels Google and others, such as Yahoo, Microsoft, Sony and Amazon, could challenge IT departments and traditional infrastructure providers by offering spare capacity on their own online networks to enterprises.
IT departments need to adjust to some new realities, he said.
"IT is no longer about how we run the computers, it’s about how we make the business better, how do I increase revenues rather than how do I decrease costs."

April 25th, 2007 in Internet | Permalink