A Little Prognostication on Gartner’s 2011 Predictions

Every year without fail Gartner and other analyst firms issue their 2011 predictions on hot trends in technology. The 2011 Top Strategic Technologies release from Gartner piqued my interest enough to do a bit of prognosticating myself.  [A notable absence from the list of 2011 predictions: the jet pack and / or teleporting as a major mode of transportation. I guess I’ll stick with the Audi.]

Here are my thoughts on a select few technologies:

Cloud computing. No surprise that this technology was first on the list. The only thing that will hold back could adoption is that the top-down elasticity model has to evolve (building flexible storage fast enough to support a cloud framework). Right now the ability for companies to have flexible storage is highly limited.

Social analytics. I think Gartner misses one key part of this trend – the ability to mine data from social networks to create new products and services for businesses. Sentiment analysis engines are emerging by the day but I think we’ve yet to scratch the surface of how cool these technologies can get to tap into the customer feedback that’s emerging on channels like Twitter every second of every day.

Next-generation analytics. BI platforms are going to need to consume much more data than many people expected possible. While analytics has great potential, predictive models are only as powerful as the amount of data they can consume in real time.

Context-aware computing. Progress has been at the forefront of this movement with our Responsive Process Management Suite. Location-based marketing initiatives for retail companies are only one example of what can be achieved when companies have the ability to gain insights into their customers and serve up content that’s relevant to their individual shopping habits. The possibilities are endless here and we’re especially excited about this at Progress!

Maybe next year my jetpack prediction will finally happen…