IT Departments Poised for Major Shifts in 2012

CREDIT: Dreamstime View full size image

A look in the IT industry's crystal ball shows increased mobile development, more security scrutiny over cloud use and a jump in cybercrime. So says information-technology-research company Gartner, Inc., which recently unveiled its top predictions for IT organizations and users in 2012 and beyond.

Highlighting this year's prognostications is a continued shift toward business managers taking more control of their organization's IT budget.

Gartner predicts that 35 percent of most companies' IT expenditures will be managed outside the IT department's budget by 2015.

"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," said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow. "While this might be a difficult prospect for IT departments, they must now adapt or be swept aside."

Other top Gartner predictions for the coming years include:

• By 2016, at least 50 percent of those who use email for work purposes will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile device instead of a desktop computer.Market opportunities for mobile device managementplatform vendors will soar, and there will be increased pressure on those suppliers to accommodate an increasing portfolio of services – including instant messaging, web conferencing, social networking and shared workspaces.

• By 2015, mobile-application-development projects for smartphones and tablets will outnumber native-personal-computer projects four to one.

• By 2016, 40 percent of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service.  To minimize cybercrime risk, it is critical that businesses carefully evaluate cloud services for their ability to resist security threats and attacks.

• By the end of 2016, more than 50 percent of the Global 1000 companies will have customer-sensitive data stored in a public cloud.Looking to trim costs this year, more than 20 percent of organizations already have started selectively storing their customer-sensitive data in a hybrid architecture that combines their on-premises solution with a private or public cloud provider.

• Through 2016, the financial impact of cyberattackswill grow 10 percent per year, due to the continuing discovery of new vulnerabilities.The combination of new vulnerabilities and more-targeted and successful attacks will drive the increase.

• Through 2015, more-than-85 percent of Fortune 500 organizations will fail to effectively exploit big data for competitive advantage.Collecting and analyzing the data is not enough; it must be presented in a timely fashion so decisions can be made that positively impact productivity, profitability and organizational efficiency.

Gartner's predictions are designed to showcase trends and events that will change the nature of business today and in years to come. The topics were selected from across Gartner's research areas as the most compelling and critical predictions.