Gartner: 10 Critical IT Trends for the Next Five Years

Trying to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to IT issues is not a job for the faint of heart. That point was driven home at Gartner's IT annual IT Symposium fest here where analyst David Cappuccio outlined what he called "new forces that are not easily controlled by IT are pushing themselves to the forefront of IT spending."

The forces of cloud computing, social media/networking, mobility and information management are all evolving at a rapid pace. These evolutions are largely happening despite the controls that IT normally places on the use of technologies, Cappuccio stated. "IT was forced to support tablets, and end users forced them to support IM and wireless networks a few years ago. And more such technologies are on the horizon," he said.

Cappuccio's presentation listed the following as the "Ten Critical Trends and Technologies Impacting IT During the Next Five Years." The following is taken from Cappuccio's report:

1. Disruption
2. Software Defined Networks
3. Bigger data and storage
4. Hybrid clouds
5. Client server
6. The Internet of Things
7. Appliance madness
8. Complexity
9. Evolution toward the virtual data center>br> 10. IT demand

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