Five Megatrends in Enterprise IT

Like Yogi Berra said: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” This is especially true about technology. Things are changing so fast in the tech world it is hard to keep up with the state of today’s IT, which means it is even harder to predict where it is going tomorrow. I like to start my predictions of the future of IT with caveats like those so you realize it is ok to question my every assumption as we try to figure out what is coming next.

Which gets to the point of this post: Enterprise CTOs need to plan for the smart use of resources and need to inform others on coming capability. And doing that requires some insights into the future of IT. So, although there is no really good model for doing that, we have to try.

My favorite model is to start with an assessment of today’s technology, look at the mega-trends sweeping through the IT industry, survey promising work being done in R&D, and then make assessments on what is coming next. Since this is a model full of flaws I like to continually update and check the work and I really appreciate getting feedback from other technologists on what they think. For readers of this blog and followers on Twitter, many of you have already contributed to this brief and that is much appreciated. I have also pestered some of the greatest CTOs in industry to give me their thoughts and find that sharing the briefing with others is a great way to keep a good tech dialog going.

I had a great opportunity to get feedback on the most recent version of my brief at the 2009 DoDIIS conference. I was allowed to present my briefing to a standing room only crowd of technologists, many of whom I have looked up to for years. Immediately afterward I got lots of verbal input and that was very valuable. I was also swamped with e-mail contact and that is also very much appreciated and as I get more feedback from these readers I’ll keep updating the briefing.

For now, would you mind taking a look and providing feedback? It is pasted below.

If you have trouble seeing the embedded clip below visit this URL: http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=ddjnt9hd_165hbcmwqd6

Thanks!

Bob