Gartner's Predictions Predict Exactly What We've Been Doing... Uncanny!

Today, via my Google Alert, via ZDNet (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6560), Gartner has published a list of what they view as the top 10 strategic technologies for 2008. #7 is "Web Platforms"... and I think they're right on the money. Especially since we'll be launching our Complete Web Platform in 2008!

The article has this poignant quote:

Longer term, however, Web platforms will be the model for the future. Ultimately everything–infrastructure, information, widgets and business processes–will be delivered as a service. All of these intertwined APIs will give us a acronym: WOA (Web oriented architecture.) “Put this on your radar screen and start with some ‘what if’ models,” says Cearley. These Web platforms will also make mashups more common in the enterprise. In fact, Cearley argues that enterprises will need an architecture just to manage mashups.

Check out the similarities behind the above statement and our platform vision as outlined in my blog post "From Libraries to Platforms". I'd say our vision has once again been validated, which is a Good Thing. What it means for us is that, well, we were right (and not meaning to sound arrogant, but we knew that), but also that the world is starting to agree. That is a Great Thing.

I also read an article this morning in Information Week where they did a poll among CIOs, and the #1 concern in the US today is "Recruiting, developing and retaining IT talent". The article goes on to talk about the looming decline of IT professionals in America because of all the baby boomers retiring and not many kids taking tech courses in college. What I thought was interesting is how the proliferation of the Web Platform, and the hosted infrastructure, and the exposing of intuitive powerful application (mashup) development tools via a browser could be a powerful means to combat that scenario. What I see is that more and more non IT people will be implementing their ideas by themselves, which is already starting to happen anyway, and the role of the "tech" department will change dramatically. We may not find ourselves in quite the poor state that all these doomsday predictions would have us in.

For anyone interested in keeping up with our progress, please subscribe to this blog's RSS feed, and also remember to keep tabs on the platform's official blog (this one here is just my personal blog): WidgetsAndMashups.com.

 

Technorati Tags: WebPlatform Webwidgetry MashupStudio Web2.0 Gartner ZDNet

-Ryan Gahl
I work as a professional software engineering consultant, specializing in web-based (inter/intra/extranet) applications, Ajax, and C#. My services can be purchased by calling the following number: 1-262-951-6727
I am becoming an expert engineer.