Асоціація підприємств інформаційних технологій України

Analysts Examine the Rise of the Citizen Developer During Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, 2-5 November in Cannes

Orlando, Fla., October 22, 2009 — By 2014, citizen developers will build at least 25 per cent 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 organisations that fail to capitalise 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."

Gartner Says Distinctions in Unified Communications and Collaboration Will Disappear by 2013

More Than 50 Per Cent of Vendors in the Space Will Fail to Meet Collaborative Workers’ Needs

Analysts Discuss How Organisations Can Adopt An Effective UCC Strategy at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009, 2-5 November, in Cannes

Egham, UK, 22 October 2009 — Distinctions between the components of unified communications and collaboration (UCC) will no longer exist by 2013, according to Gartner, Inc. Analysts said that more than 50 per cent of the vendors in this space will fail to meet all the communications needs of collaborative workers.

“Business end-users typically treat the UCC components – voice, messaging, conferencing, instant messaging (IM)/presence, applications, clients, social networks and collaboration tools – in silos,” said Jeff Mann, research vice president at Gartner. “They can no longer work this way as UCC represents a fusion of different communications cultures and work styles. The artificial separation they are used to will become a thing of the past.”

Gartner analysts will discuss how organisations can develop a strategy to adopt UCC effectively at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009, held on 2-5 November in Cannes, France.

STAMFORD, Conn., September 28, 2009

Despite the global economic downturn, the number of household broadband connections continues to grow robustly, and one in five households worldwide will have a fixed broadband connection in the home by the end of 2009, according to Gartner, Inc.

A total of 422 million households will have a fixed broadband connection in the home in 2009, up from 382 million households in 2008, and the market will steadily grow with nearly 580 million households having a fixed broadband connection by 2013.

"Consumers may be watching their household expenditure, but dropping their broadband connections is not on the top of their agendas as a way to reduce outgoings," said Amanda Sabia, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Multiple motivations are conspiring to keep broadband growth strong, such as PCs being more affordable, migration from dial-up, affordably priced broadband subscriptions, aging populations requiring broadband connectivity, and even as a result of an economic boost from country-specific economic and broadband-specific stimulus plans."

Gartner, міжнародна консалтингова компанія у сфері ІТ, опублікувала прогноз щодо спеціалістів, які будуть потрібні ІТ ринкові через кілька років.

На думку аналітиків Gartner організаціям слід розвивати підготовку фахівців, які будуть поєднувати знання в соціальних науках (психологія, соціологія, мистецтво) з технічними та бізнесовими навиками.

-GARTNER PRESS RELEASE-

Gartner Says Organisations Should Leverage Social Sciences to Place Next-Generation Technology Jobs

Stamford, Conn., August 24, 2009 — As individuals and organisations progress in their adoption and leverage of the web, new work streams and needs will arise, resulting in companies utilising social sciences to fill next-generation technology jobs, according to Gartner, Inc.

The sprawling use of consumer technology is spurring the demand for new skills in the workplace. Gartner said that during the next five years, consumer adoption of technology will accelerate as individuals and groups become more comfortable and adept at using it to manage their family, social, and business relationships. At the same time, organisations will struggle to keep pace as they integrate rapidly changing behaviours and technology into an already established business culture and infrastructure.

Key Issues for Data Centre Professionals to Be Discussed at Gartner Data Center Summits 5-6 October in London and 1-4 December in Las Vegas

STAMFORD, Conn., June 11, 2009 — In the face of organisational budgetary cuts, there are seven effective ways organisations can reduce costs in the data centre during a 12- to 18-month period, according to Gartner, Inc.

"While responding to contracting budgets, IT managers are expected to deliver an ever-increasing level of service to users, and many are charged with showing tangible financial savings as part of cost-cutting measures," said Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner. "Significant savings can be made in the data centre. For example, removing a single x86 server will result in savings of more than $400 a year in energy costs alone."

Gartner has identified seven important ways to cut data centre costs:

1. Rationalise the Hardware

Hardware rationalisation will result in savings in several areas. First, it will help with asset and inventory management and provide a clear picture of the boxes that are being used effectively and those that are not. Second, server rationalisation should lower maintenance and support charges. Third, server rationalisation will lower energy costs, typically more than $400 per server, per year. Finally, hardware rationalisation projects usually yield savings of 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the overall hardware costs, when measured post project.

2. Consolidate Data Centre Sites

Організації стають дедалі більш залежними від своїх зовнішніх постачальників. Проте, покладання на постачальників стає все більш ризикованим, особливо в теперішніх економічних обставинах.

Gartner виділяє 4 основних сфери ризику і рекомендує, на що слід звертати увагу в кожній з цих сфер. Деталі - нижче (англійською).

Gartner Says Vendor Risk Management Is Becoming a Core Enterprise Competency - Gartner Identifies Four Key Vendor Risk Criteria Areas and What to Look for in Each

Stamford, Conn., June 11, 2009 – Organisations are becoming more reliant on external vendors to provide goods and services necessary to run their businesses and maintain competitiveness, but reliance on vendors can be a risky proposition, especially with the current economic challenges, according to Gartner, Inc.

"As organisations increase reliance on vendors for products and services, the more they become exposed to greater risk relating to delivery disruption or vendors' inability to deliver the goods and services for which they are contracted," said Helen Huntley, research vice president at Gartner. "It is crucial for organisations that use external vendors to understand the risk factors that enable them to judge the exposure they have with each vendor should the vendor go under or face challenges that may lead to delivery disruption."

STAMFORD, Conn., May 28, 2009 — Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to reach $198 billion in 2009, a 22.4 per cent decline from 2008 revenue of $255 billion, according to the latest projections by Gartner, Inc. This outlook is slightly better than the first quarter projections, when Gartner forecast semiconductor revenue to decline 24.1 per cent in 2009.

"First quarter PC shipments came in better than expected, which led to an improved outlook for microprocessors, but we believe most of this improvement was due to the fact that inventories had been run down too far, rather than true demand returning," said Bryan Lewis, research vice president at Gartner.

"We are expecting 4.9 per cent growth in second quarter semiconductor sales based on recent semiconductor company guidance, and this positive movement has caused us to move away from our 1Q09 worst-case scenario of a record down year in 2009. While this is positive news, the semiconductor industry is clearly not out of the woods, as there is minimal evidence that demand is returning, except in China," Mr Lewis said.

Inventory burn in the PC market in the fourth quarter of 2008 and in January and February 2009 pushed component demand significantly below PC demand, driving down prices across the board. Gartner analysts said PC vendors that started cutting inventory early were able to achieve significant savings on bill of materials. As the inventory correction swings in the opposite direction, Gartner expects component prices to stabilise through the year.

Egham, U.K., 20 May 2009 — Worldwide mobile phone sales totalled 269.1 million units in the first quarter of 2009, a 9.4 per cent decrease from the first quarter of 2008, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphone sales surpassed 36.4 million units, a 12.7 per cent increase from the same period last year.

“There were some signs of a recovery in markets such as North America and China, but overall sales in the first quarter of 2009 registered the biggest quarter-on-quarter contraction since Gartner began monitoring the market on a quarterly basis in 2001,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at Gartner, based in Egham, UK. “This was also the first time the market contracted year over year during the first quarter, a period traditionally helped by strong seasonality in the Asia/Pacific market.”

Gartner Highlights Top 5 Tips for Cost Cutting in E-Commerce Without Losing Customer Loyalty

Stamford, Conn., May 11, 2009 – IT organisations responsible for e-commerce are challenged in 2009 to improve online customer experiences to make up for closed locations and lost sales personnel, while cutting IT expenditures by 5-25 per cent, according to Gartner, Inc.

Gartner has identified five tips in which IT leaders in charge of e-commerce operations can meet this challenge in this year’s tough economic climate. Gartner has also provided associated savings estimates for large businesses with e-commerce budgets of more than $1 million for software and services, and for small businesses with budgets of less than $1 million.

Tip 1 – Use off-the-shelf products, not custom development, for commodity functions

By eliminating custom-development efforts for commodity functions (such as shopping cart management, search, product merchandising and management) and replacing these with commercial, off-the shelf, or open-source e-commerce applications, Gartner estimates that large businesses can save 35 per cent of ongoing maintenance and licence costs, and small businesses can save 25 per cent of these costs in 2009, and 20 per cent in the future. The one-time cost to implement this strategy is $250,000 to $350,000 in software, on average, with a one-time cost for implementation services.

“Except for market leaders, such as Amazon and eBay, custom development is likely to be a waste of effort and money because it supports functions that do not enable a differentiated online customer experience,” said Gene Alvarez, research vice president at Gartner. “For example, a developer who supports a commodity function, such as shopping cart management, would be better to develop rich internet shopping capabilities or improve site design for search engine optimisation so that the site can rank higher in a Google-based search.”

Stamford, Conn., May 7, 2009 — The market for software as a service (SaaS) is forecast to reach $9.6 billion in 2009, a 21.9 per cent increase from 2008 revenue of $6.6 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. The market will show consistent growth through 2013 when worldwide SaaS revenue will total $16 billion for the enterprise application markets.

"The adoption of SaaS continues to grow and evolve within the enterprise application markets as tighter capital budgets in the current economic environment demand leaner alternatives, popularity increases, and interest for platform as a service and cloud computing grows,” said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner.

“Adoption of the on-demand deployment model has grown for nearly a decade, but its popularity has increased significantly within the last five years,” Ms Mertz said. “Initial concerns about security response time and service availability have diminished for many organisations. As SaaS business and computing models have matured, adoption has become more widespread.”

SaaS adoption varies between and within markets. Although usage is expanding, growth remains most significant in areas characterised by horizontal applications with common processes, among distributed virtual workforce teams, and within Web 2.0 initiatives.

Office suites and digital content creation (DCC) remain the fastest-growing markets for SaaS. Office suites are projected to total $512 million in 2009, up from $136 million in 2008, while DCC is forecast to total $126 million in 2009, up from $70 million in 2008. The content, communications and collaboration (CCC) market continues to show the widest disparity of SaaS revenue across market segments, generating $2.5 billion in 2009, up from $2.16 billion in 2008 (see Table 1).

Table 1

Gartner Says Organisations Can Save More Than $500,000 Per Year by Rationalising Data Integration Tools

Overlap Creates Excessive Software Licensing, Maintenance, and Skills Costs

Egham, UK, 22 April 2009 — Organisations that have implemented substantial data integration architectures can save more than $500,000 annually by rationalising tools in the short term and adopting a shared-services model in the longer term, according to Gartner, Inc. Deployment of multiple and functionally overlapping data integration tools creates excessive cost in terms of software licensing, maintenance, and skills of up to $250,000 per tool annually.

“Organisations often purchase and implement new data integration tools in a fragmented way without considering extending investments already made in other parts of the business, resulting in multiple tools from various vendors,” said Ted Friedman, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “The first step is for IT teams focused on data integration to save money by rationalising tools. Further, there is a greater longer-term opportunity to substantially reduce costs and increase efficiency and quality by moving to a shared-services model for the associated skills and computing infrastructure.”

As organisations in all industries continue to focus heavily on cost optimisation, various aspects of IT represent potential for removing cost. The imperative to increase efficiency, combined with the historically fragmented and tactical approach to data integration that is commonplace in most businesses, is now driving organisations to rethink how they have approached this discipline.

Gartner recommends that organisations consider executing three elements of rationalisation in the short term:

1. Rationalise Data Integration Tools

Gartner Says 20 Per Cent of Commercial E-Mail Market Will Be Using a SaaS Platform By the End of 2012

Stamford, Conn., April 7, 2009 — The Software as a Service (SaaS) model for e-mail solutions is proving attractive for many customers and will represent 20 per cent of the commercial e-mail market by the end of 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. In 2007, the SaaS e-mail market represented 1 per cent of the commercial e-mail market.

Gartner analysts said that the impact of the SaaS model for e-mail will have direct and material consequences for traditional third-party product vendors, effectively cutting the addressable market for traditional third-party applications by one-fifth. However, by 2012, the move to the SaaS model for e-mail will create opportunities for new third-party applications.

“The lost opportunity to the traditional third-party market may be more than 20 per cent because the earliest adopters of the e-mail SaaS model are small or midsize businesses (SMBs), which can represent up to 40 per cent of the market when measured by the number of companies which are likely prospects,” said Matt Cain, research vice president at Gartner. “However, SMBs are less likely to buy third-party tools compared to larger organisations.”

According to Gartner, there are four general categories within the third-party community for e-mail services that will be affected to a greater or lesser extent by the move to the SaaS model for e-mail.

Applications Core to Running Premises-Based E-mail

Examples include disaster recovery, reporting, backup, spam and virus filtering. In this case, the need for most third-party management applications goes away in a SaaS deployment as the vendor provides all core level two and three help desk duties, supplies all required services for redundancy and recovery, provides all reporting options, performs all version upgrade functions, and protects the perimeter with its own spam and virus filters.

Gartner Says Worldwide Cloud Services Revenue Will Grow 21 Per Cent in 2009

Cloud Services to Be Discussed at Gartner Outsourcing & IT Services Summit 2009, 15-16 June in London

Stamford, Conn., March 26, 2009 – Worldwide cloud services revenue is on pace to surpass $56.3 billion in 2009, a 21.3 per cent increase from 2008 revenue of $46.4 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. The market is expected to reach $150.1 billion in 2013.

“Cloud computing is a broad and diverse phenomenon. Much of the growth represents a transfer of traditional IT services to the new cloud model, but there is also scope for creation of substantial new businesses and revenue streams,” said Ben Pring, research vice president for Gartner. “Cloud computing enables a shift in IT provision from direct purchase and payment for services to provision of services which are free at point of use and where revenue is derived from advertising. Services supported by advertising are currently, and will remain, the largest component of the overall cloud services market through 2013.”

Cloud computing is a style of computing where scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are provided "as a service" to external customers using internet technologies.

Business processes delivered as cloud services are the largest segment of the overall cloud services market, accounting for 83 per cent of the overall market in 2008. The segment, consisting of cloud-based advertising, e-commerce, human resources and payments processing, is forecast to grow 19.8 per cent in 2009 to $46.6 billion, up from $38.9 billion in 2008.

Analysts Warn Against Basing SaaS Deployment Decisions on Unproven Theories

STAMFORD, Conn., February 19, 2009 — The rise in popularity of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model has resulted in a number of assumptions about this emerging model, but it has been difficult for many companies to separate truth from fiction, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner analysts have examined the top-five assumptions to provide a bit of a reality check on the state of the SaaS industry.

“In recent years there has been a great deal of hype around SaaS,” said Robert DeSisto, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “As a result, a great number of assumptions have been made by users, some positive, some negative, and some more accurate than others. The concern is that some companies are actually deploying SaaS solutions, based on these false assumptions.”

Gartner has taken the top-five assumptions that users make and provided a fact check on their accuracy.

Assumption 1 — SaaS is less expensive than on-premises software.

Fact Check: True during the first two years but may not be for a five-year TCO. SaaS applications will have lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for the first two years because SaaS applications do not require large capital investment for licenses or support infrastructure. However, in the third year and beyond, an on-premises deployment can become less expensive from an accounting perspective as the capital assets used for the on-premises deployment depreciate.

Assumption 2 — SaaS is faster to implement than on-premises software.

STAMFORD, Conn., February 23, 2009 — Worldwide vertical market IT spending is projected to total $2.7 trillion in 2009, a 0.5 per cent increase from 2008, according to Gartner, Inc. Utilities, healthcare and government are expected to be the strongest-growing segments of the market in 2009.

Table 1. Worldwide IT Spending by Vertical Markets, 2009 (Millions of Dollars)