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Analyst Gartner has issued a bunch of predictions for business technology, basically a series of areas where executives and IT professionals will need to take action in 2008. Apparently, the full impact of the trends may not appear this year, but executives need to act now so that they can fully exploit the opportunities, claimed Gartner.

These predictions are selected from more than 100 predictions that Gartner presents and reviews every year. They focus on general technology areas rather than on specific industries or roles.

To begin with, Gartner has predicted that the year 2011 will see Apple Computer double its US and Western Europe unit market share in computers. The reasons being the company's software integration, continuous innovation in hardware and software, and an ecosystem that focuses on interoperability across multiple devices.

By 2012, 50 percent of wandering workers will leave their notebooks at home in favor of other lighter, smarter devices. While the market will have more and more Internet-centric pocketable devices, and server- and Web- based applications that can be accessed from anywhere, anytime.

80 percent of commercial software will contain open source code by 2012, providing “significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment.”

On the software-as-a-service front, Gartner is estimating that by 2012, businesses will be spending a third of their application budget on subscription products, as opposed to product licenses.

By 2011, early adopters of technology will forgo capital expenditure, instead purchasing 40 percent of their IT infrastructure as service. Increased high-speed bandwidth will make it practical to locate infrastructure at other sites, while still receiving the same response times. Also, with service oriented architecture (SOA) becoming more common, cloud computing will take off, unshackling applications from specific infrastructure, explains Gartner.

By 2009, Gartner predicts that, more than one third of IT organizations will have one or more environmental criteria in their top six buying criteria for IT-related goods. In the future, IT organizations will shift their focus from the power efficiency of products to asking service providers about their measures to improve energy efficiency.

By 2010, three-quarters of IT shops won’t buy PC hardware unless it meets standards for lower carbon emissions and “full life-cycle energy” usage. Technology providers are only now beginning to analyze their products’ full life-cycle energy usage, but within two years enterprises will be able to use the information to inform purchasing decisions, Gartner predicts.
By 2011, suppliers of large global enterprises will need to prove their 'Green' credentials through an audited process to retain 'preferred supplier' status. By 2010, as much as half of all software, hardware, and services acquisitions made by IT will be decided by end-user preferences.

Lastly Gartner predicts that, through 2011, the number of 3-D printers in homes and businesses will grow 100-fold compared to 2006 levels. The technology lets users send a file of a 3-D design to a printer-like device that will carve the design out of a block of resin.

In short - increasing consumerization, personalization, software as a service provision, energy efficiency and open standards.