Thank you to all who attended Emerging Trends Symposium/ITxpo last month in Las Vegas. We hope your time with us was even more productive with your participation in the Symposium Communities onsite.

We are pleased to share the following Trip Reports with key conference take-aways and highlights from the event pertaining to each Community:

• Applications Community Trip Report


• Business Intelligence & Information Management Community Trip Report


• Business Process Improvement Community Trip Report


• CIO Community Trip Report


• Enterprise Architecture Community Trip Report


• Infrastructure & Operations Community Trip Report


• Program & Portfolio Management Community Trip Report


• Security & Risk Management Community Trip Report


• Sourcing & Vendor Relationships Community Trip Report

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It's time to wrap up this edition of Emerging Trends Symposium/ITxpo. The five days in our new Las Vegas home seemed to fly by, and the conference megatrends kept everyone talking. Now it's on to Barcelona, 11-14 May. Thanks for checking in!

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Digital natives "are people who've grown up with technology. Creating whole new lives and languages for themselves. They are here to stay and they're not going back," noted Gartner Analyst (and digital immigrant) Jennifer Beck, introducing today's closing keynote session. "You and I as digital immigrants dominate the IT industry. That is changing forever."

Beck interviewed three digital natives - UPenn student Andrew Metcalf, 21, Angela Ngo, 22, a student at UC Berkeley and Derek Ashlong, a 32-year-old social media entrepreneur and musician - each of whom had a unique take on technology's role on their lives.

The funny thing about the term "digital native," noted Beck, is that they don't identify with that term. Rather, they are so accustomed to technology that is not even thought about. "We found these utilities to achieve the things we needed to do on our own," Ngo said, talking about her experiences in founding the Berkeley Project. "Nobody told us how to do this."

Do they have any favorite company? "Apple knows how to tap into the end users," said Ngo.

"It's about picking and choosing what's useful to me," said Metcalf.

"I use a lot of Apple technology," said Ashlong.

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Gartner analysts John Barber and Jon Erensen lead a light-hearted but informative tour through the innards of an Apple iPhone. Their verdict: iPhone is a rugged mix of widely used and innovative components, stirred with Apple's engineering and software prowess to create a device that will not be imitated anytime soon.

During the presentation, Barber tore down the iPhone while Erensen explained the engineering and features. Their first finding: it's tough. Barber was hard pressed to remove the screws holding together the case, tearing it open to get at the components inside.

Inside, phone, networking, and iPod components nestle around the large battery. Erensen noted that Apple made a number of tradeoffs - no user-replaceable battery or flash memory, a basic 2 megapixel camera - to keep cost and performance of the device reasonable. The components themselves are for the most part not the latest and greatest, but pieces chosen for their integration of functions and wide availability.

Where the iPhone does get innovative is its use of proximity and ambient light sensors, an accelerometer and the capacitive touch screen to deliver some of its already iconic user interface features.

Barber and Erensen estimate that the components cost Apple $180, for a device that retails for $399. No wonder why Apple has in short order become the design leader in the mobile phone space.

(ed. note: above photo taken with iPhone)

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We asked several Emerging Trends Symposium/ITxpo attendees:

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MGM Mirage is the name behind some the biggest brands in the gaming industry. It also a major force in Las Vegas: 17 properties on the Strip, and an $8 billion development project CityCenter scheduled for completion in 2009.

MGM Mirage executives Aldo Manzi and CIO Tom Peck shared some of the challenges and opportunities in setting a technology course for this resort giant during this morning's Innovator Interview with Gartner Analysts Betsy Burton and David Cearley.

Cearley asked Manzi how MGM Mirage manages innovation across such a large portfolio. "What makes our company tremendously effective in this space is the portfolio of brands within different market segments. It gives an opportunity to experiment," Manzi said.

Peck talked about innovation from a technology perspective. "It's everybody's job to innovate," he noted. "We like to deliver centralized tools that the P&Ls of the resorts can choose to use."

This approach is partly driven by the heavily regulated nature of the gaming industry. Regulation "slows innovation and time to market. The good thing is that guests know the systems are clean and pure, and have been certified," Peck said.

Clearly, MGM Mirage is looking to raise the technological bar with the CityCenter project. "We have moved upscale with more choices. The expectations of our guests have also increased tremendously," Manzi said. "It's the whole destination resort experience."

Peck added, "the CityCenter model is we want to own that bandwidth to the room. Getting the bandwidth and connectivity to the room right is absolutely critical." Getting it right, he explained, may translate into such innovations as room and player data being tranferred on to a guest's mobile phone. The phone would then become the device that opens the room door, tracks gaming play and provides other functions. "Technology has to help us know our guests better," Peck said.

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Session 24I, "Top-10 Disruptive Technologies for 2008 to 2012," held Tuesday at 4:30 PM in Mandalay F had a tremendous response and unfortunately surpassed the room capacity. For those attendees not able to get in, we have provided a link to the presentation with audio.

Top-10 Disruptive Technologies for 2008 to 2012
Speaker: Carl Claunch & David Cearley
Tuesday 4:30pm

View presentation

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Emerging Trends Symposium/ITxpo also offers an opportunity for technology providers to showcase their emerging technology offerings. Last night, Quest Software took the opportunity to relaunch its Foglight application management offering, with a cocktail reception at Eye Candy in the casino.

Symposium/ITxpo Emerging Trends "is a great forum for our launch, which is why we chose it," said Darin Bartik, senior director of product marketing at Quest. Symposium/ITxpo offers a great opportunity for awareness among Quest's large enterprise core client base, he added.

Foglight, Bartik said, offers a new way to do things. "It's a new view on application management," he said. "The reason we rebuilt it was because of the changes in IT," he said. "As stuff changes faster and faster, the more your applications at risk." For more information, check out quest.com/foglight or the user community at foglight.org

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We asked Emerging Trends Symposium/ITxpo attendees what Megatrend was most important to them and why. Our first set of responses was surprising - find out why...

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Attendees at the Green IT Great Debate session were asked to vote on a number of questions before and after the debate. The difference is results is used to measure who "won."

Overall, about 71% of the attendees believe human activity is driving dangerous climate change. On the question "Does Green IT Matter?" 58% believed it did before the presentation, 20% believed it did not matter, and 22% were undecided. After the debate, the numbers were 50% believing, 39% not believing, and 11% undecided.

Interestingly, when asked if they would spend their organization's budget on the green IT issue, before the debate 54% said they would, 31% said they would not, and 15% were undecided. After, the numbers were 55%, 34% and 11%.

Interesting results indeed, on an emerging, evolving issue. Here's the Gartner position:
Green IT is the optimal use of information and communication technology (ICT) for managing the environmental sustainability of enterprise operations and the supply chain, as well as that of
products, services and resources, throughout their life cycles.

Green IT matters today because:
- Most can save money
- Most can avoid cost
- It reduces operational risks

Green IT will matter even more tomorrow because:
- It reduces strategic risk related to climate change
- It will present strategic opportunities related to climate change

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Attendees at the Green IT Great Debate session were asked to vote on a number of questions before and after the debate. The difference is results were used to measure who "won."

Overall, about 71% of the attendees believe human activity is driving dangerous climate change. On the question "Does Green IT Matter?" 58% believed it did before the presentation, 20% believed it did not matter, and 22% were undecided. After the debate, the numbers were 50% believing, 39% not believing, and 11% undecided.

Interestingly, when asked if they would spend their organization's budget on the green IT issue, before the debate 54% said they would, 31% said they would not, and 15% were undecided. After, the numbers were 55%, 34% and 11%.

Interesting results indeed, on an emerging, evolving issue. Here's the Gartner position:
Green IT is the optimal use of information and communication technology (ICT) for managing the environmental sustainability of enterprise operations and the supply chain, as well as that of
products, services and resources, throughout their life cycles.

Green IT matters today because:

• Most can save money


• Most can avoid cost


• reduces operational risks

Green IT will matter even more tomorrow because:

• It reduces strategic risk related to climate change


• It will present strategic opportunities related to climate change

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Green IT is a myth, and any efforts the IT industry takes to address climate change will have little impact. So argued Gartner Analysts French Caldwell and Charles Smulders during this afternoon's Great Debate. "Green IT is green fiction. It's very difficult to have a conversation about this without biases," said Smulders. "With the IT industry contributing only 2% of the world's carbon output, the industry's energies would be better focused elsewhere."

Caldwell said that the issue could just as easily be framed around power consumption. He added that the proposed spending on green issues in general could solve more pressing needs, like clean water and sanitation in less developed countries. "What's more important: clean or green?" he asked. "Do you want to feel good or do good?"

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During this afternoon's Great Debate, Gartner Analysts Simon Mingay and Martin Reynolds argued the position that the notion of "green information technology" does matter. The issue, they said, is simple: the lowest risk and lowest cost strategy for enterprises to innovate now and not wait. Putting aside the political and emotional aspects, the issue of green is one of risk management. As the concept grows in the public eye, it will become an economic and reputation issue as well as an environmental one.

Given the IT industry is both a significant contributor to carbon output and other waste products (some 460,000 PCs per day need to be disposed, as well as 550 million cell phones per year), Mingay and Reynolds argued that it is only logical that it take steps to address the problem as well.

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Gartner Fellows Martin Reynolds and Jackie Fenn led a lively discussion with researchers from Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems and Xerox during this morning's Keynote, "A Look Inside the Labs."


Each of the panelists - Rich Friedrich of HP, David Douglas of Sun, Guido Jouret of Cisco and Xerox's Steve Hoover - provided an overview of emerging technologies from within their organizations. Sensory networks requiring the communications power of 1,000 of today's Internets, improvements in microprocessor connections, healthcare kiosks driven by high-definition video and reusable paper were some of the concepts demonstrated during the presentation.

The panelists offered some equally interesting responses when asked what the single most important thing they can do to encourage innovation within the enterprise. They pointed to acting as a trusted partner to business, developing enterprise architecture and portfolio management programs, and fostering social networking and collaboration - all things that Gartner has stressed throughout Symposium/ITxpo and in our research.

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This afternoon's Great Debate session, "Should Facebook Be Banned?" (as well as LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) prompted many interesting comments and discussion, if not consensus. Gartner Analysts Nikos Drakos (ban it), Ray Valdes (keep it) and moderator Steve Prentice chewed through many of the thorny issues surrounding the invasion of consumer social networking tools into the workplace.

During the interactive portion of the sessions, 60% of the attendees said they used social networking sites. In addition, 68% of the attendees said their organizations did not ban access to such sites, while 25% did not.

As might be expected, most everyone agreed that outright bans were not a reasonable alternative. Implementing better management techniques and adherence to a corporate code of conduct are considered to be better alternatives. Managing the brand and allotting resources to manage an organization's presence in social networking were also concerns. "Just ignoring it does not make it go away as it continues to grow," noted one attendee.

Before the debate, 68% said Facebook should not be banned. Having listened to the arguments, that number grew to 81%.

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Probably not, but Gartner Analyst Anthony Bradley showed the how new, innovative mashups are entering the enterprise. During his presentation, "Enterprise Mashups: Applications That Change as Fast as Your Business Environment," Bradley defined mashups.

A "mashup" is a lightweight, tactical presentation layer integration of multisourced applications or content into a single, browser-compatible offering. It is a lightweight variant of the older notion of a composite application ("composite app") and the heavier SOA orchestration approach to composite apps. In the usual use of the term, composite apps are built on enterprise platforms, internal-facing and not necessarily Web-based.

The difference in enterprise mashups, Bradley said, is gadgets – both the complex mashups that enterprises are offering to users, and the user community generated offerings that appear when the enterprise opens its APIs to the world at large (a la facebook).

Bradley offered several examples of mashups entering the enterprise world. Studies of projects from Simply Hired, Wells Fargo and government intelligence defense project showed that even the largest of enterprises can move to Socialize.

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In their presentation "Cloud Computing Myths, Magic and Mayhem," Gartner Analysts Darryl Plummer and Thomas Bittman compared the real world to the software and technology world. To paraphrase Darryl, "If you wanted to add electrical service to your house, the electric company would ask how many people live in your house. If you said five people, they would provide service based on five users. If you had a baby and the electric company found out, they would require you to upgrade your service. Is that realistic? Because that is how it works with software..." The cloud concept of "global" class computing transcends software as a service.

The trend toward cloud computing is clearly not for everyone - but according to Plummer and Bittman, everyone should investigate it. The very nature of cloud computing: a blend of technology models and services - will evolve as the users and services that support it replicate and evolve themselves.

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The term "green IT" is something of an oxymoron, but the concept is gaining in importance. Both users and technology providers are becoming more interested in green IT. Gartner analyst Simon Mingay reported on the preliminary findings of a survey to assess the relative greenness of technology and service providers during this morning's session, "How 'Green' Is Your Technology or Service Provider?"

The survey, conducted in partnership with the World Wildlife Foundation (represented during the presentation by Dennis Pamlin, Global Policy Advisor), found 65% of those surveyed held environmental criteria to be just as important as price. "We do not feel that's reflective of buying behaviors," said Mingay.

The bulk of the study was devoted to technology provider self-assessments in five areas: Environmental Basics, Supply Chain Basics, Carbon Basics, Carbon Delivery and Carbon Champions. The Basics cover self-awareness and communications issues, Delivery and Champions focus on business delivery and strategy.

Mingay and Pamlin discussed the profiles of seven technology providers, and even these preliminary results show how some providers have taken steps to get out in front of this issue, while others look at the issue more narrowly or strategically.

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Bold, provocative statements set the tone during the opening sessions of Symposium/ITxpo. CEO Gene Hall and Gartner analysts provided an insightful overview of the issues facing today's IT Leaders – from economic uncertainty to the IT skills shortage to the rise of social computing.

Research Chief Peter Sondergaard pointed out that previous Symposia have highlighted issues, such as economic uncertainty and green IT, that are just now coming to the forefront of the IT mainstream. He also offered some short-term advice. "Get rid of waste and excess within the infrastructure and get it off the books in this quarter or the next," said Sondergaard. The words "Don't panic!" echoed through the crowd, and he added, ' now is the time to prepare for recovery."

The keynote session contextualized today's challenges in terms of the six megatrends: Innovate, Advance, Connect, Globalize, Industrialize and Socialize. We'll be taking a closer look at the megatrends as Symposium progresses.



(top row left to right: Peter Sondergaard, Ken McGee, Anthony Bradley
bottom row left to right: Partha Iyengar, Darryl Plummer, Mary Mesaglio)

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Gartner CEO will open the first full day of Emerging Trends/Symposium ITxpo with a welcome address at 8 am. This will be followed by the Gartner Analyst Keynote: Technology-Powered Business Acceleration, featuring analysts Anthony Bradley, Partha Iyengar, Ken McGee, Mary Mesaglio and Daryl Plummer.

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