Gartner's IT predictions -- 'adapt or be swept aside'

Consumerization and the continued advance of cloud services will mean that IT budgets are no longer the exclusive domain of IT– a trend that impacts telco back-office as much as any IT organization.

As with policy management, which is shifting from network to IT department (CP: Telco back office – via policy, charging, SDM – driving growth, innovation), other services will shift the requirements to the business managers themselves. The rise of tablets and smartphones will drive this, as the way that we do business itself changes.

The impact on the CIO’s office will be dramatic. CIOs will need to become adept at managing a distributed environment and will need to learn new skills such as relationship management, according to the company.

Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow, says the IT organization of the future “must coordinate those who have the money, those who deliver the services, those who secure the data and those consumers who demand to set their own pace for use of IT."

Specifically, Gartner predicts that low cost cloud services will cannibalize 15 percent of outsourcing revenues by 2015; that the “investment bubble will burst” for social networks in 2013 and for enterprise social networks a year later; tablets will continue to rise, the PC will fall but even by the end of 2015 most Fortune 500 companies will still not have to got to grips with the potential of ‘big data’.

Security will remain center stage, with more than half of Global 1000 companies storing sensitive customer data in the public cloud at the end of 2016 providing a target. The value of cybercrime will continue to rise by 10 percent a year until the end of 2016 and 40 percent of enterprises will demand proof of security testing as a precondition of using any cloud services.

The IT budget shift is the trend that will have greatest impact on the telecom world. Certainly there has been much discussion about the new role of the CIO as visionary and business manager. If Gartner’s predictions come true, then a CIO will need to become a mini President, managing the investments and needs of the business amongst different budget holders. From the business’ point of view, this could herald an age when they become the IT department’s customer. Change is never easy.