GARTNER SEZ: Get A REAL Job

"Cloud computing will become so pervasive that by 2012, one out of five businesses will own no IT assets at all, the analyst firm Gartner is predicting.

"The shift toward cloud services hosted outside the enterprise's firewall will necessitate a major shift in the IT hardware markets, and shrink IT staff, Gartner said.

"`The need for computing hardware, either in a data center or on an employee's desk, will not go away,` Gartner said. `However, if the ownership of hardware shifts to third parties, then there will be major shifts throughout every facet of the IT hardware industry. For example, enterprise IT budgets will either be shrunk or reallocated to more-strategic projects; enterprise IT staff will either be reduced or reskilled to meet new requirements, and/or hardware distribution will have to change radically to meet the requirements of the new IT hardware buying points.`

"If Gartner is correct, the shift will have serious implications for IT professionals, but presumably many new jobs would be created in order to build the next wave of cloud services...."

From NetworkWorld...

Microsoft Buys Some Gartner™ "Research"

"Business analyst Gartner says proprietary office suites will continue to dominate over web-based office suites because there is a significant performance gap between full-function suites and web-based versions. Gartner points out that one of the biggest gaps is the lack of complete offline services.

"In a report titled `The State of Google Apps`, Gartner argues that Google Apps is not an adequate substitute for Microsoft Office.

"In the short term, Gartner says, few big enterprises would be likely to disrupt what they already have in place for Google's offerings. Changing even something such as the email system in the workplace could be costly and cause problems for security, training staff, service levels and technology."

More at smh.com.au...

Gartner: Newbz To Write 25% Of Business Apps

"By 2014, citizen developers will build at least 25 percent of new business applications, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner said that this advance should both enable end users and free up IT resources. However, analysts warned that IT organizations that fail to capitalize on the opportunities that citizen development presents will find themselves unable to respond to rapidly changing market forces and customer preferences.

"Gartner defines a citizen developer as a user operating outside of the scope of enterprise IT and its governance who creates new business applications for consumption by others either from scratch or by composition.

"`Future citizen-developed applications will leverage IT investments below the surface, allowing IT to focus on deeper architectural concerns, while end users focus on wiring together services into business processes and workflows,` said Eric Knipp, senior research analyst at Gartner. `Furthermore, citizen development introduces the opportunity for end users to address projects that IT has never had time to get to — a vast expanse of departmental and situational projects that have lain beneath the surface.`"

From Businesswire...

Gartner Tries To Inflate Server Sales With Dire Predicitons

"Despite an improving economy, companies aren't moving quickly replace servers, PCs and printers, which will likely cause an increase in failure rates over the next two years, according to Gartner Inc.

"In round numbers, the scheduled replacement of some 3 million servers worldwide, or about 3% of all servers, has been delayed, Peter Sondergaard, Gartner's global head of research, said today at the research firm's Symposium/ITxpo 2009 conference here. He added that the number of delayed replacements should reach 10% of all servers by 2010.

"As a result, Sondergaard said, IT operations `are going to have to start to plan for the impact of increased equipment failure rates.`"

From ComputerWorld...

Gartner Smoking Crack Again

"Avatars are creeping into business environments and will have far reaching implications for enterprises, from policy to dress code, behavior and computing platform requirements, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner predicts that by year-end 2013, 70 percent of enterprises will have behavior guidelines and dress codes established for all employees who have avatars associated with the enterprise inside a virtual environment.
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"Avatars are two- or-three dimensional objects that most often resemble a human and are often animated and controlled remotely by a person in a virtual or 3-D Internet environment. In a business setting they are used as visual representations of people.

"`As the use of virtual environments for business purposes grows, enterprises need to understand how employees are using avatars in ways that might affect the enterprise or the enterprise’s reputation,` said James Lundy, managing vice president at Gartner. `We advise establishing codes of behavior that apply in any circumstance when an employee is acting as a company representative, whether in a real or virtual environment. Addendums, specific to virtual environments can be added as required.`"

From Internet Ad Sales...

GARTNER SEZ: Screw Vista

"IT analyst firm Gartner has told businesses to skip Vista and prepare to roll out Windows 7.

"Companies have traditionally been advised to wait until the first Service Pack of an operating system arrives before considering migration.

"However, Gartner is urging organisations that aren't already midway through Vista deployments to give the much-maligned operating system a miss.

"`Skip Vista and target Windows 7,` Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Stephen Kleynhans advise in a research paper. `Preparing for Vista will require the same amount of effort as preparing for Windows 7, so at this point, targeting Windows 7 would add less than six months to the schedule and would result in a plan that is more politically palatable, better for users, and results in greater longevity.`

"Even businesses that are midway through planning a Vista migration are urged to consider scrapping the deployment..."

More at PC Pro...