STAMFORD – In Gartner Inc.’s 2008 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, the IT analyst company has identified 27 emerging technologies and predicts that eight of these will have a transformational business impact and should be strongly considered for adoption by technology planners in the next 10 years.

Some of the technologies to watch include Web 2.0. According to Jackie Fenn, vice-president and Gartner Fellow, Web 2.0 will emerge within two years to have transformational impact, “As companies steadily gain more experience and success with both the technologies and the cultural implications [of Web 2.0].”

She added that in between two and five years, cloud computing and service-oriented architecture (SOA) will deliver transformation in terms of driving deep changes in the role and capabilities of IT.

For example, companies are seeking to consume their IT services in the most cost-effective way so interest is growing in drawing a broad range of services such as computational power, storage and business applications from the “cloud,” rather than from on-premise equipment.

The Gartner report noted that many types of technology providers are aligning themselves with this trend, with the result that confusion and hype will continue for at least another year before distinct submarkets and market leaders emerge.

Additionally, public virtual worlds, which have been suffering from disillusionment after their peak of hype in 2007, will in the long term, “Represent an important media channel to support and build broader communities of interest,” Fenn said.

Technologies and trends at or around the peak of the Hype Cycle in 2008 that will reach the plateau in two to five years include green IT where IT has the opportunity to improve the “greenness” of its own activities, as well as to contribute to broader company and industry environmental initiatives.

The role of social computing platforms is now seriously being examined by companies to see how they will play in future collaboration environments. The scope is also expanding to incorporate the notion of social “platforms,” or environments for a broad range of developers to build on the basic application.

High-end videoconferencing systems from the likes of HP, Cisco and others will utilize large, high-definition (HD) displays and components to show life-size images of participants in meeting rooms or suites. This has proven to be significantly more effective than earlier generations of videoconferencing technology in providing a strong sense of in-room presence between remote participants. However, high cost is currently the barrier to broader adoption.

Another trend to watch for is microblogging as pioneered by Twitter. Microblogging is a relatively new addition to the world of social networking, in which contributors post a stream of very short messages (fewer than 140 characters) providing information about their current activity or thoughts, which can then be subscribed to by others. The phenomenon has caught on among certain online communities, and leading-edge companies are investigating its role in enhancing other social media and channels.

“Following the trend of the last few years, many of the new entries on this year’s Hype Cycle, including microblogging, social networking platforms and cloud computing, are making their impact in the consumer world before they hit businesses,” Fenn said. “Other technologies that have passed the trigger where they start to be interesting to businesses include 3-D printing, surface computing, augmented reality and mobile robots. We expect early adopters to start applying these in novel ways and drive new classes of applications to dramatically change the supply chain by creating products and replacement parts at the point of need.”

This column was written by Vanessa Ho of ConnectIT

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