Eight consumer-driven technologies have been identified that will impact business in the near future, says Gartner.
A recent Gartner study on this recommends that corporate attitude towards consumer-led technology in the workplace must shift from "unavoidable nuisance" to "opportunity for additional innovation". As part of the study, eight trends can be highlighted:
* Web platforms: The use of Web-based application services will start in the area of personal productivity and spread to enterprise applications. Enterprises will increasingly avail themselves of the data and application services provided by non-traditional enterprise providers, such as Google, Yahoo and Amazon.
* Community communication platforms: Highly successful consumer community sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Cyworld, operate under the assumption that postings and communications are public and visible by default, unless specified otherwise. In the collaboration space, the migration of alternate operating assumptions such as these will be as important as specific functionality.
* Virtual worlds: Although currently over-hyped in relation to their near-term value for most organisations, 3D virtual worlds, such as Second Life, will play a role in marketing and branding (and in some cases corporate applications involving collaborative design) and other types of remote collaboration.
* Portable personalities: Several vendors offer the ability to store the entire image of a PC workspace onto a portable storage medium and have it temporarily run on a different machine, removing all trace of it when the storage is removed. A common usage pattern is for bringing home environments to work, and to bring work environments home.
* Augmented reality: Provides an overlay of relevant digital information by automatically sensing the physical location and orientation of the user, as in GPS. Routine availability of location-based sensing and augmented reality will lead to new enterprise applications.
* User interface technologies: A number of user interface technologies are gaining traction first in the consumer world, and are likely to migrate into the business environment during the next few years. Adoption is being driven by lower prices, commercialising new capabilities and ease of use.
* Green IT: Enterprises will also be affected by changing employee expectations driven by societal trends and the zeitgeist that creates slower but pervasive changes in attitude. Likely candidates include an expectation of environmentally-friendly business practices - "green IT".
* Seamless work/life systems: A second societal trend will be the need for employers to provide technology environments that support the blurring of work and home life.
"Consumerisation of IT" is the theme of the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Africa 2007, which will be held from 27 to 29 August at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.
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