Gartner Top Predicts 2007

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Insights to help CIO's adapt to sector changes.

IT Is Transforming Education
IT leaders should prepare for the challenges that will face education in 2007. Predictions for the next five years focus on teaching and learning as well as administrative expectations that reflect the habits of students, instructors and administration.

Energy and Utility Companies Face Unstable Markets and Disruptive Technologies
The energy utility market is facing a confluence of high energy prices, a loss of protective regulation and a search for an effective market-restructuring framework. This will shape IT application portfolios, influencing governance models and challenging technology providers.

Technology, Market Changes Will Drive Bank Innovation
Changes include mobile devices' reach into unbanked markets, key Web 2.0 technology, increased regulatory constraint on banks, the decline of magnetic stripes on payment cards and looming change in the core banking vendor landscape.

New Investment Services Ecosystem Will Spur Flexible, Responsive Technologies
The emerging decentralized, connected and geographically distributed marketplace will drive investment services firms to adopt more-flexible and responsive technologies.

Healthcare Payers and P&C Insurers Face Changing IT Investment Needs
In our yearly Predicts initiative, Gartner's Insurance Advisory Services team probes the role of IT to advance consumer-directed health plans and streamline processes for property and casualty insurers.

Healthcare Providers Must Improve Efficiency of Operations
Care delivery organizations must continue to focus on operational improvements to deliver appropriate financial performance as well as increasing clinical quality.

Healthcare Providers Must Evaluate Technology Trends
Leading care delivery organizations will examine hardware, information and networking opportunities in their quest to remain competitive during the next three years.

Agility and Product Differentiation Ensure Auto Industry's Success
The automotive industry continues to prepare for a radical transformation. A company's success will be determined by its ability to accelerate product innovation, establish agile IT and business processes, and redefine roles.

Life Science Manufacturers Better Leverage IT for Competitive Advantage
As the life science industry continues its transition to a more agile and responsive business model, technology remains an important element in success.

Consumer Goods Solutions Pose New Opportunities
For consumer goods firms, this decade has been characterized by belt tightening. Gartner predicts shifts in strategy toward investments in innovation solutions, real-time responsiveness and improved focus on customers via enhanced collaboration.

Manufacturing CIOs Must Focus on Flexibility
The continuing rise of China and India triggers critical reforms to manufacturing value chains and IT markets. A greater focus on IT for creativity, standardized manufacturing IT environments and time-based IT competition is required. The CIO organization and function must adapt.

The Media Industry Confronts the Challenge of Digital Distribution
Companies in the media industry have seen their business models disrupted by the change from analog to digital distribution. Digital distribution offers many new business opportunities to media companies, along with many challenges to their business models.

Retailers Confront Obstacles on the Path to Agility
Increased emphasis on agility is required to adopt new technologies and processes to manage and improve retailer customer propositions. In 2007, many retailers will confront technical, consumer and organizational hurdles in attempting to achieve their goals.

Source : Gartner

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