• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, February 24, 2012

The Gartner Predicts 2012 special report highlights how the control of technology and technology-driven decisions is shifting out of the hands of IT organizations. New forces that are not easily controlled by IT are pushing themselves to the forefront of IT spending. Specifically, the forces of cloud computing, social media and social networking, mobility and information management are all evolving at a rapid pace. Business unit stakeholders often recognize the value of new technology before IT departments can harness it. In addition, emerging markets are growing rapidly in terms of technology expenditures and influence:

• The cloud offers new delivery styles and options that are industrialized in a value chain that renders on-premises IT systems and expertise as only part of the overall delivery of IT capabilities to the company
• Social computing is allowing collaboration, and a shift of behavioral patterns of users and the communities in which they work
• Mobility offers new access channels to applications and data, and at the same time provides end users with a wide variety of device choices

The combination of cloud, social computing and mobility can be used to increase geographic diversity and raise the productivity of virtual teams. Users expect to get access to personal, work, business applications and data from any device, anytime and anywhere.

This is a summary review of the Gartner top predictions from the Gartner Predicts 2012 Special Report. As users take more control of the devices they will use, business managers are taking more control of the budgets IT organizations have watched shift over the past few years.

Selected from across Gartner research areas as the most compelling and critical predictions, the full report features the trends and topics in 2012 which speak to the reduction of control IT has over the forces that affect it:

• By 2015, low-cost cloud services will cannibalize up to 15% of top outsourcing players' revenue
• In 2013, the investment bubble will burst for consumer social networks, and for enterprise social software companies in 2014
• By 2016, at least 50% of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile client, instead of a desktop client
• By 2015, mobile application development (AD) projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1
• By 2016, 40% of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service
• At year end 2016, more than 50% of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud
• By 2015, 35% of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department's budget
• By 2014, 20% of Asia-sourced finished goods and assemblies consumed in the U.S. will shift to the Americas
• Through 2016, the financial impact of cybercrime will grow 10% per year, due to the continuing discovery of new vulnerabilities
• By 2015, the prices for 80% of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge
• Through 2015, more than 85% of Fortune 500 organizations will fail to effectively exploit big data for competitive advantage

For additional information from Gartner, please visit here, or sign in.