I am in Barcelona, attending Gartner’s European Symposium and Expo. They have two of these each year and the spring event is positioned as broader and more forward looking. It was opened by a tour de force from Peter Cole, (CEO) and six of their top researchers. Later discussions brought home to me that one needs to be very careful when listening to clever people, as sometimes one (i.e. I ) can assume that they mean the same things as yourself, this isn’t always so.

I do wonder however whether their Macro-economic analysis is based too strongly on financial volume and on their boundary definition of IT. Just because our children don’t see what they do as using IT, doesn’t mean that it is not IT.

Another key insight I obtained here, is that there is a debate between those who think that IT as an industry is entering a maturity stage and those who don’t. I should really have known this. Some IT companies are (very successfully) betting their future on the first view. I believe that because IT is dependent on software, which is not constrained by the laws of physics, it will continue to evolve rapidly and that its evolution will remain a source of value and wealth creation in the developed world for a while to come. This means that IT and most importantly, company’s software portfolios will remain a source of differentiation and competitive advantage. Another point made to me is that peer based collaboration or community development may inhibit, ignore or exclude the genius that provokes radical change. It’s an interesting point of view and one that community wranglers may need to think about.

A fair amount of time has been spent talking about “Green IT”. Gartner’s late arrival to this issue can be forgiven due the bravery of launching their programmes in the USA, where they may be able to begin to remove the partisanship from the issue.

ooOOOoo

Originally posted on my sun/oracle blog and published on https://blogdavelevy.info in June 2016

More Futurology, Gartner’s “Emerging Trends”
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One thought on “More Futurology, Gartner’s “Emerging Trends”

  • 14th May 2020 at 3:19 pm
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    I have changed my mind, software is constrained by physics, the speed of light if nothing else and consumes substantial real natural resources.

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