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“Cloud computing” tops Gartner’s (News - Alert) recently released top 10 strategic technologies and trends for 2010. That bodes well for providers of on-demand call center solutions.

 

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

These technologies impact an organization's long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They may be strategic because they have matured to broad market use or because they enable strategic advantage from early adoption.

“Companies should factor the top 10 technologies into their strategic planning process by asking key questions and making deliberate decisions about them during the next two years,” said David Cearley, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, in a release. “However, this does not necessarily mean adoption and investment in all of the technologies. They should determine which technologies will help and transform their individual business initiatives.”

“This list should be used as a starting point and companies should adjust their list based on their industry, unique business needs and technology adoption mode,” added Carl Claunch, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “When determining what may be right for each company, the decision may not have anything to do with a particular technology. In other cases, it will be to continue investing in the technology at the current rate. In still other cases, the decision may be to test/pilot or more aggressively adopt/deploy the technology.”

Gartner defines cloud computing as “a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers. Cloud-based services can be exploited in a variety of ways to develop an application or a solution. Using cloud resources does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does re-arrange some and reduce others. In addition, consuming cloud services enterprises will increasingly act as cloud providers and deliver application, information or business process services to customers and business partners.”

 

The research firm is careful to distinguish the two main “styles” of cloud computing, “public cloud computing” – this includes the applications that software vendors deliver to organizations on a subscription basis, using the cloud or software-as-a-service model, which are delivered via the Internet or dedicated network and available to everyone willing to pay – and “private cloud computing,” which is where an enterprise or organization develops its own private cloud computing infrastructure and hosts the applications itself, sometimes making them available to outside people or entities, such as partners and affiliates.

A more recent report from Gartner predicts that over the next three years most enterprises will use a mix of public and private cloud computing, with more money being spent on private cloud computing, as it requires investment in new equipment and infrastructure.

The advantages of cloud-based call center solutions have been well-documented: Cloud computing allows organizations to deploy call center technologies quickly and easily, with minimal upfront investment. Because the vendor is responsible for maintaining all hardware and network infrastructure, as well as application performance, this model reduces the strain on company IT departments. In addition these solutions offer superior scalability – as well as improved integration capabilities. What’s more, organizations automatically get the latest and most advanced call center applications without having to perform expensive upgrades or purchasing new software licenses.

 

This year “cloud computing” bumped “virtualization” for the number one spot on Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies list. From the standpoint of cloud-based call center technologies, this is an interesting change, as these technologies facilitate what is called the “virtual call center,” meaning that the call center software environment can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection – however it should be noted that Gartner’s report is referring to virtualized computing environments (i.e. VMware, etc.) within the organization, as opposed to the virtualization that is inherent to cloud-based services delivered via the public Internet.

 

Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies for 2009 were:

 

1.  Virtualization

2.  Cloud computing

3.  Servers (beyond blades)

4.  Web oriented architectures

5.  Enterprise mashups

6.  Specialized systems

7.  Social software / networking

8.  Unified communications

9.  Business intelligence

10. Green IT

 

The research firm’s top 10 strategic technologies for 2010 include:

 

1. Cloud computing

2. Advanced analytics

3. Client computing

4. IT for green

5. Reshaping the data center

6. Social computing

7. Security

8. Flash memory

9. Virtualization

10. Mobile applications

 

For more information, check out this release.