Web 2.0 technologies and business models dominate emerging technologies together with Real World Web and Applications Architecture
JavaScriptSearch Wednesday, August 9, 2006; 04:01 AM
Research company Gartner, Inc. announced its 2006 Emerging
Technologies Hype Cycle which assesses the maturity, impact and
adoption speed of 36 key technologies and trends during the next ten
years. This year’s hype cycle highlights three major themes that are
experiencing significant activity and which include new or heavily
hyped technologies, where organisations may be uncertain as to which
will have most impact on their business.
The three key technology themes identified by Gartner, and the
corresponding technologies for enterprises to examine closely within
them, are:
1. Web 2.0
Web 2.0 represents a broad collection of recent trends in Internet
technologies and business models. Particular focus has been given to
user-created content, lightweight technology, service-based access and
shared revenue models. Technologies rated by Gartner as having
transformational, high or moderate impact include:
* Social Network Analysis (SNA) is rated as high impact (definition:
enables new ways of performing vertical applications that will result
in significantly increased revenue or cost savings for an enterprise)
and capable of reaching maturity in less than two years. SNA is the use
of information and knowledge from many people and their personal
networks. It involves collecting massive amounts of data from multiple
sources, analyzing the data to identify relationships and mining it for
new
information. Gartner said that SNA can successfully impact a business
by being used to identify target markets, create successful project
teams and serendipitously identify unvoiced conclusions.
* Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is also rated as high impact
and capable of reaching maturity in less than two years. Ajax is a
collection of techniques that Web
developers use to deliver an enhanced, more-responsive user experience
in the confines of a modern browser (for example, recent version of
Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Safari or Opera). A narrow-scope
use of Ajax can have a limited impact in terms of making a
difficult-to-use Web application somewhat less difficult. However,
Gartner said, even this limited impact is worth it, and users will
appreciate incremental
improvements in the usability of applications. High levels of impact
and business value can only be achieved when the development process
encompasses innovations in usability and reliance on complementary
server-side processing (as is done in Google Maps).
* Collective intelligence, rated as transformational (definition:
enables new ways of doing business across industries that will result
in major shifts in industry dynamics) is expected to reach mainstream
adoption in five to ten years. Collective intelligence is an approach
to producing intellectual content (such as code, documents, indexing
and decisions) that results from individuals working together with no
centralized
authority. This is seen as a more cost-efficient way of producing content, metadata, software and certain services.
* Mashup is rated as moderate on the Hype Cycle (definition: provides
incremental improvements to established processes that will result in
increased revenue or cost savings for an enterprise), but is expected
to hit mainstream adoption in less than two years. A "mashup" is a
lightweight tactical integration of multi-sourced applications or
content into a single offering. Because mashups leverage data and
services from
public Web sites and Web applications, they’re lightweight in
implementation and built with a minimal amount of code. Their primary
business benefit is that they can quickly meet tactical needs with
reduced development costs and improved user satisfaction. Gartner warns
that because they combine data and logic from multiple sources, they’re
vulnerable to failures in any one of those sources.
2. Real World Web
Increasingly, real-world objects will not only contain local processing
capabilities—due to the falling size and cost of microprocessors—but
they will also be able to interact with their surroundings through
sensing and networking capabilities. The emergence of this Real World
Web will bring the power of the Web, which today is perceived as a
"separate" virtual place, to the user's point of need of information or
transaction.
Technologies rated as having particularly high impact include:
* Location-aware technologies should hit maturity in less than two years.
Location-aware technology is the use of GPS (global positioning
system), assisted GPS (A-GPS), Enhanced Observed Time Difference
(EOTD), enhanced GPS (E-GPS), and other technologies in the cellular
network and handset to locate a mobile user. Users should evaluate the
potential benefits to their business processes of location-enabled
products such as personal navigation devices (for example, TomTom or
Garmin) or Bluetooth-enabled GPS receivers, as well as WLAN location
equipment that may help automate complex processes, such as logistics
and maintenance. Whereas the market sees consolidation around a reduced
number of high-accuracy technologies, the location service ecosystem
will benefit from a number of standardized
application interfaces to deploy location services and applications for a wide range of wireless devices.
* Location-aware applications will hit mainsteam adoption in the next
two to five years. An increasing number of organizations have deployed
location-aware mobile business applications, mostly based on
GPS-enabled devices, to support queue business processes and
activities, such as field force management, fleet management, logistics
and good transportation. The market is in an early adoption phase, and
Europe is slightly ahead of the United States, due to the higher
maturity of mobile
networks, their availability and standardization.
* Sensor Mesh Networks are ad hoc networks formed by dynamic meshes of
peer nodes, each of which includes simple networking, computing and
sensing capabilities. Some implementations offer low-power operation
and multi-year battery life. Technologically aggressive organizations
looking for low-cost sensing and robust self-organizing networks with
small data transmission volumes should explore sensor networking. The
market is still immature and fragmented, and there are few standards,
so suppliers will evolve and equipment could become obsolete relatively
rapidly.
Therefore, this area should be seen as a tactical investment, as mainstream adoption is not expected for more than ten years.
3. Applications Architecture
The software infrastructure that provides the foundation for modern
business applications continues to mirror business requirements more
directly. The modularity and agility offered by service oriented
architecture at the technology level and business process management at
the business level will continue to evolve through high impact shifts
such as model-driven and event-driven architectures, and corporate
semantic Web. Technologies rated as having particularly high impact include:
* Event-driven Architecture (EDA) is an architectural style for
distributed applications, in which certain discrete functions are
packaged into modular, encapsulated, shareable components, some of
which
re triggered by the arrival of one or more event objects. Event objects
may be generated directly by an application, or they may be generated
by an adapter or agent that operates non-invasively (for example, by
examining message headers and message contents). EDA has an impact on
every industry. Although mainstream adoption of all forms of EDA is
still five to ten years away, complex-event processing EDA is now being
used in financial trading, energy trading, supply chain, fraud
detection, homeland security, telecommunications, customer contact
center management, logistics and sensor networks, such as those based
on RFID.
* Model-driven Architecture is a registered trademark of the Object
Management Group (OMG). It describes OMG's proposed approach to
separating business-level functionality from the technical nuances of
its implementation The premise behind OMG's Model-Driven Architecture
and the broader family of model-driven approaches (MDAs) is to enable
business-level functionality to be modeled by standards, such as
Unified Modeling Language (UML) in OMG's case; allow the models to
exist independently of platform-induced constraints and requirements;
and then instantiate those models into specific runtime
implementations, based on the target platform of choice. MDAs reinforce
the focus on business first and technology second. The concepts focus
attention on modeling the business: business rules, business roles,
business interactions and so on. The instantiation of these business
models in specific software applications or components flows from the
business model. By reinforcing the business-level focus and coupling
MDAs with SOA concepts, you end up with a system that is inherently
more flexible and adaptable.
* Corporate Semantic Web applies semantic Web technologies, aka
semantic markup languages (for example, Resource Description Framework,
Web Ontology Language and topic maps), to corporate Web content.
Although mainstream adoption is still five to ten years away, many
corporate IT areas are starting to engage in semantic Web technologies.
Early adopters are in the areas of enterprise information integration,
content management, life sciences and government. Corporate Semantic
Web will
reduce costs and improve the quality of content management, information
access, system interoperability, database integration and data quality.
“The emerging technologies hype cycle covers the entire IT spectrum but
we aim to highlight technologies that are worth adopting early because
of their potentially high business impact,” said Jackie Fenn, Gartner
Fellow and inventor of the first hype cycle. One of the features
highlighted in the 2006 Hype Cycle is the growing consumerisation of
IT. “Many of the Web 2.0 phenomenon have already reshaped the Web in
the consumer world”, said Ms Fenn. “Companies need to establish how to
incorporate consumer technologies in a secure and effective manner for
employee productivity, and also how to transform them into business
value for the enterprise”.
The benefit of a particular technology varies significantly across
industries, so planners must determine which opportunities relate most
closely to their organisational requirements. To make this easier, a
new feature in Gartner’s 2006 hype cycle is a ‘priority matrix’ which
clarifies a technology’s potential impact - from transformational to
low – and the number of years it will take before it reaches mainstream
adoption. “The pairing of each Hype Cycle with a Priority Matrix will
help organisations to better determine the importance and timing of
potential investments based on benefit rather than just hype,” said Ms
Fenn.
2006 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies
Despite the changes in specific technologies over the years, the hype
cycle's underlying message remains the same: Don't invest in a
technology just because it is being hyped, and don't ignore a
technology just because it is not living up to early expectations.
“Be selectively aggressive — identify which technologies could benefit
your business, and evaluate them earlier in the Hype Cycle”, said Ms.
Fenn. “For technologies that will have a lower impact on your business,
let others learn the difficult lessons, and adopt the technologies when
they are more mature.”
The “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2006” report is one of 78
hype cycles released by Gartner in 2006. More than 1,900 information
technologies and trends across more than 75 industries, technology
markets, and topics are evaluated by more than 300 Gartner analysts in
the most comprehensive assessment of technology maturity in the IT
industry. Gartner's hype cycles assess the maturity, impact and
adoption speed of hundreds of technologies across a broad range of
technology, application and industry areas. It highlights the
progression of an emerging technology from market over enthusiasm
through a period of disillusionment to an eventual understanding of the
technology's relevance and role in a market or domain. Additional
information regarding the hype cycle reports is available on Gartner’s
Web site at http://www.gartner.com/.
Each Hype Cycle Model follows five stages:
1. "Technology Trigger"
The first phase of a Hype Cycle is the "technology trigger" or
breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant
press and interest.
2. "Peak of Inflated Expectations"
In the next phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates
over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some
successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more
failures.
3. "Trough of Disillusionment"
Technologies enter the "trough of disillusionment" because they fail to
meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the
press usually abandons the topic and the technology.
4. "Slope of Enlightenment"
Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some
businesses continue through the "slope of enlightenment" and experiment
to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.
5. "Plateau of Productivity"
A technology reaches the "plateau of productivity" as the benefits of
it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes
increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations. The
final height of the plateau varies according to whether the technology
is broadly applicable or benefits only a niche market.
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