Sky’s the limit for 2012 Gartner Symposium

Cloud.

That would be the one word summing up the main theme at Gartner Symposium/ITXPO 2013 taking place this week in Orlando.

Cloud rules the show this year across three areas of focus: mobile, social media and Big Data.

The analyst firm’s largest event of the year, and arguably the show that most in the IT ecosystem look to as the most trend setting and informative conference for the year ahead, began Sunday with Monday being the day of keynote speeches, demonstrations and events set across the Walt Disney World Dolphin and Swan resorts, Disney's Yacht & Beach Club Resorts and Disney's Boardwalk Inn.

For four days this week the Magic Kingdom becomes the happiest place on earth for all things technology.

It was clearly evident from the opening bell that cloud would be the talk of the town. And through the first day’s speeches there were some bold predictions.

• Mobile - By 2016, 40% of the workforce will be mobile, with an estimated 300 billion apps downloaded by 2016. iPads will be more common than BlackBerrys in two years, and 20% of companies will use tablets as their primary device for business productivity.
• Social media – By 2016, at least 10 organizations will spend $1 billion on social media. Posts and reviews will be automated and come from non-humans. Social capabilities will be embedded in all applications as we enter a new age of design and collaboration.
• Big Data - Over 30 billion devices will be connected by the end of the decade. This will lead to an incredible surge in data. Real time monitoring and analysis will be critical. Data will become revenue, as it will move from a resource to actionable information.

In regards to the IT spend; every budget in an organization will be linked to the IT budget. Because of this we’ll see a new C-level position become commonplace with businesses implementing a Chief Digital Officer. That role will be present in 25% of companies by 2016. Businesses will survive or fail based on their ability to embrace technology and connect with their customers.

Many attendees aren’t just at the show for what's relevant today. They want to be ahead of the curve for what’s coming tomorrow. Below are the top tech trends for 2013, as revealed at the show.

1. Organizational entrenchment and disruption – End user driven IT. Consumers are forcing IT to make changes and adapt to them.
2. Software defined networks – Allows configuration of the network from one place, central control vs. management of individual devices.
3. Bigger data and storage – Unprecedented data growth, analytics and pattern recognition are key initiatives to decision making.
4. Hybrid Cloud – Composed of services from multiple providers. Today more sources are available than ever before.
5. Client and server architecture – One size does not fit all. One OS does not fit all. Trying to force standardization will not work.
6. The Internet of Things - $10 billion by 2016. Everything has technology in it. Devices can network themselves and share data. Delivery of “always on” society is not a single technology it’s a concept. Real time decision making will be enabled especially in marketing and advertising.
7. Appliance madness – All of these physical and virtual devices will lead to mass complexity.
8. Operational Complexity – through 2014 employee owned devices will be compromised by malware at more than double the rate of attacks on corporate owned devices.
9. Evolution toward the virtual data center.
10. IT Demand – 40% of employee information will be leaked to Facebook. More capacity won’t work; need to focus on optimizing current capacity.

LPP’s Christine Simeone, executive vice president, and Richard Wadsworth, vice president of Business Development and Marketing, will be reporting on the news and trends coming out of the Gartner Symposium all week from Orlando. Rich Wadsworth provided the image above.