Top 12 Trends for 2002

Business Continuity Planning. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, organizations of all sizes became acutely aware of new (as well as previously existing) risks. Maintaining a dynamic business continuity plan — accounting for security, disaster recovery, and information availability — will now be standard operating procedure for the intelligent enterprise.

Web Services Buy-In. Web services infrastructure has emerged through growing vendor support for maturing specifications. In 2002, the availability of tools — principally, Microsoft Visual Studio .Net — will energize B2B Web services development in the massive Windows developer community, culminating in significant pilot deployments by Q4.

Hard-Line ROI. In the late 1990s, ROI was largely ignored as organizations scrambled to keep apace with the competition, and many models relied on "soft" metrics. (Remember Web site "stickiness?") In 2002, balanced scorecards, hard-payback models such as economic value-added, ROI tools, and fast-track implementation programs will become increasingly common.

Government Influence: Public Sector IT. For years, many enterprise IT vendors have seen revenue from government sources grow in proportion to other verticals. Now, the renewed importance of IT in the public sector will not only accelerate such growth, but encourage vendors to treat governments as glamorous customer references.

Don't Believe the Hype: B2B's Not Dead. Sure, public trading exchanges were universally unsuccessful and collaborative commerce software companies suffered grievously. But, with worldwide economic and political uncertainty at its highest level in decades, staying responsive to change — for example, locating new suppliers and updating forecasts — will demand a close reliance on intelligent B2B solutions.

Intelligent IT for Privacy and Security. The media is already awash with news about the new lure of "intelligent" technologies such as pattern matching (for biometrics) and data mining (for passenger profiling and information extraction). Equally interesting, and probably more hush-hush, will be the application of realtime analytics to the confidentiality of distributed customer information within corporations.

Knowledge: Pass It Around. Companies have a new priority to improve collaboration among employees and with customers. Although progress toward eliminating technology barriers is well underway — the broader trend toward integrating scattered data sources and applications is undeniable — the business, cultural, and (in some cases) security challenges involved will remain formidable.

Realtime Anything. It's simply not acceptable to make stakeholders (whether customers, partners, or decision-makers) wait for the latest information. In 2002, "in real time" will become one the most common phrases found on press releases from CRM, business intelligence (BI), and enterprise application integration (EAI) companies alike.

Verticalized Analytic Applications. As the differences narrow between analytic application solutions, BI vendors such as Business Objects SA, Sagent Technology Inc., and Hyperion Solutions Corp. are integrating domain knowledge culled from customer bases into their data models to accelerate implementation; that approach will proliferate in 2002.

The Faster Enterprise: 64-Bit Computing Gets Legs. Intel's Itanium processor, the first member of the IA64 family, was a commercial disappointment. However, in 2002, the availability of a 64-bit Windows OS (released in late 2001), Itanium's successor (code-named McKinley), and more enterprise software packages designed for IA64 will drive growth.

Intelligent Content Delivery. Growing numbers of information consumers expecting fast, personalized data delivery from internal and external sources are already straining the information supply chain. In 2002, networking and storage technologies will increasingly converge to help prioritize content delivery and optimize application performance based on business needs.

Linux in the Enterprise (Sort Of). Linux, which received a bear hug from IBM and its partners in early 2001, is still an early-adopter OS in the intelligent enterprise. While concerns about technical support will probably keep Linux on the sidelines where mission-critical applications and databases are involved, it will become increasingly popular as 2002 IT infrastructure — in Web servers, network appliances, and content-management systems.

— Justin Kestelyn

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