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Research
Publication Date: 23 July 2010
ID Number: G00201568
© 2010 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates.
All Rights Reserved. Reproduction and distribution of this publication in any form
without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to
be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as t
o the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although
Gartner's research may discuss legal issues related to the information technology business, Gartner does not provide legal
advice or services and its research should not be construed or
used as such. Gartner shall have no liability for errors,
omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The opinions expressed herein
are subject to change without notice.
Hype Cycle for Web and User Interaction Technologies,
2010
Ray Valdes, Gene Phifer, Jim Murphy, Eric Knipp, David Mitchell Smith, David W. Cearley
The Web continues to evolve along
multiple dimensions
—
social, mobile,
programmable and real time
—
not just outside the enterprise, but also within. These
trends reinforce each other, and the resulting scale is unprecedented.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Analysis
................................
................................
................................
................................
.......
4
What You Need to Know
................................
................................
................................
..
4
The Hype Cycle
................................
................................
................................
...............
6
The Priority Matrix
................................
................................
................................
............
9
Off The Hype Cycle
................................
................................
................................
........
11
On the Rise
................................
................................
................................
...................
11
Context Delivery Architecture
................................
................................
............
11
Us
er Experience Platforms
................................
................................
................
13
Citizen Developers
................................
................................
............................
14
Customer
-
Centric Web Strategies
................................
................................
.....
15
Context
-
Enriched Services
................................
................................
................
16
Portal Fabric
................................
................................
................................
......
18
App and Widget
Advertising
................................
................................
..............
20
Web Content Product Recommendation Engine
................................
................
21
HTML5
................................
................................
................................
..............
22
Mobile Web Applications
................................
................................
...................
23
At the P
eak
................................
................................
................................
....................
25
Cloud APaaS
................................
................................
................................
....
25
Compute Infrastructure Services
................................
................................
........
27
Private Cloud Computing
................................
................................
...................
29
Semantic Web
................................
................................
................................
...
30
Augmented Reality
................................
................................
............................
32
Cloud Service Integration
................................
................................
..................
34
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
................................
................................
.............
37
Social
-
Data Portability
................................
................................
.......................
39
Customer Service Process Integration
................................
...............................
41
RIA Rich Client
................................
................................
................................
..
42
Web 3.0
................................
................................
................................
............
43
Social Network Payment System
................................
................................
.......
45
Cloud Computing
................................
................................
..............................
46
Web
-
Oriented Architecture
................................
................................
................
47
Clou
d/Web Platforms
................................
................................
.........................
48
Enterprise Mashups
................................
................................
..........................
49
Web Experience Analytics
................................
................................
.................
52
Consumer Web Mashups
................................
................................
..................
53
Sliding Into the Trough
................................
................................
................................
...
54
Composit
e Applications
................................
................................
.....................
54
Microblogging
................................
................................
................................
....
57
RIA Platforms
................................
................................
................................
....
59
Web Widgets
................................
................................
................................
.....
61
Federated Portals Across Vendor Families
................................
........................
62
Government Data Interoperability
................................
................................
......
63
Second
-
Generation Portlet Standards (JSR 286 and WSRP v.2)
.......................
65
Social Software Suites
................................
................................
.......................
67
Service
-
Oriented Business Applications
................................
.............................
68
B2B Web Services
................................
................................
............................
70
Climbing the Slope
................................
................................
................................
.........
72
Federated Portals Within Vendor Families
................................
.........................
72
Mobile Application Development
................................
................................
........
73
SOA
................................
................................
................................
..................
74
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Advanced Web Services
................................
................................
...................
76
Corporate Blogging
................................
................................
...........................
78
Web Analytics
................................
................................
................................
...
79
Web and Application Hosting
................................
................................
.............
81
Entering the Plateau
................................
................................
................................
......
82
Enterprise
Portals
................................
................................
..............................
82
Portlets
................................
................................
................................
..............
84
Appendixes
................................
................................
................................
....................
86
Hype Cycle Phases, Benefit Ratings and Maturity Levels
................................
..
88
Recommended Reading
................................
................................
................................
.............
89
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Hype Cycle Phases
................................
................................
................................
.......
88
Table 2. Benefit Ratings
................................
................................
................................
.............
88
Table 3. Maturity Levels
................................
................................
................................
.............
89
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Web and User Interaction Technologies, 2010
................................
.......
8
Figure 2. Priority Matrix for Web and User Interaction Technologies, 2010
................................
..
10
Figure 3. Hype Cycle for Web and User Interaction Technologies, 2009
................................
.....
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ANALYSIS
What You Need to Know
The Web is pervasive in our personal lives and professional lives
—
not just in the daily activities
of knowledge workers and technical professionals in industrialized countries, but also increasingly
across diverse demographics and global geographies.
The
Web channel is the preferred mode of communication with enterprises and organizations,
chosen by customers, prospects, business partners, potential employees, investors, regulators
and other interested parties. Within the walls of the organization, intran
ets and enterprise portals
are new modes of collaboration based on aggregated corporate knowledge.
The Web is evolving along multiple dimensions simultaneously:
The social Web:
Every website is becoming a social site, and every social site is
evolving into
a social platform. Users engage in connections and conversations that are
distributed in real time, layered with metadata, and supported by interoperable protocols
and middleware. Enterprises follow the lead of consumer
-
oriented sites, and make
connection
s to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as deploy internal information
systems that adopt those modes of interaction. Web designers and user experience
architects need to incorporate principles of "social experience design" into their
repertoire.
The
mobile Web:
Higher bandwidth, more powerful devices and compelling software
result in explosive growth of mobile Web usage, which is outpacing access from desktop
and conventional devices. Changes are occurring at all levels of the technology stack,
from i
nfrastructure to devices to platforms to social conventions.
The programmable Web:
Sites seek to syndicate and push content and logic to other
sites, and to aggregate the same from others. These are enabled through APIs,
protocols, tools and platforms. Con
nections to enterprise information systems are
fleshed out. Web architects need to think not just about getting users to come to their
destination sites, but also pushing content and logic out to partner sites and to the
distributed social Web.
The Web sta
ck "in the cloud":
Cloud computing gains more traction, and all elements
of the software technology stack (CPU, storage, messaging, application platform,
personal productivity, collaboration tools, business applications, development tools,
identity and sec
urity infrastructure) are shifting to utility
-
oriented services in the cloud.
Large and small vendors are offering cloud
-
based, on
-
demand, elastically scalable
services that complement and, in some cases, replace on
-
premises offerings.
The Web of rich
experience:
The high
-
quality, effective user experience has become a
competitive differentiator among public (business
-
to
-
consumer) websites as well as
independent software vendors. Technologies such as Ajax, plug
-
in
-
based rich Internet
applications (RIAs)
and HTML5 share the spotlight (see "HTML5 and the Future Of
Adobe Flash"). Emerging technologies, such as augmented
-
reality interfaces, continue
to grow.
The Web of places and things:
For most of the past decade, there has been a flow of
information from
the analog world (the real world) to the digital world, as more and more
content is available online in electronic form (newspapers, books, technical references,
software, videos, TV shows) and as services (search). In recent years, the trend has
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been to g
o beyond content objects (books) to tagging real
-
world objects (places,
people).
The enterprise Web:
Gartner's core audience is not interested in technology for its own
sake, but in the use and impact of technology in enterprises and organizations. One
imp
ortant area is that of portal technology, including standards and interoperable
protocols.
The Web continues to be the mainstay of most enterprise user experience strategies. The
ubiquity and increasing utility of the Web browser makes it the most appropri
ate tool for
interacting with customers, trading partners and employees. Although the Web enjoys a
significant presence in enterprises, there are still many opportunities for improvement, including
better processes and tools for content management, deploym
ent, and the management of
international, decentralized and multilingual websites, as well as websites for handicapped users.
Infusing traditional Web architectures with RIA technologies, including Ajax, Flash, Silverlight and
Java, is becoming increasingl
y common for employee
-
facing Web environments, and is a best
practice for improving the usability of customer
-
facing environments, when applied in the context
of a user
-
centered design process and methodology.
Browser technology is improving through the em
erging set of standards around HTML5 and
CSS3 (see "HTML5 and the Modern Web"). This is the rising tide (foundational technology) that
will lift all boats (applications that need greater interaction and responsiveness). However, there is
still progress to
be made in enterprises in terms of awareness and adoption of user
-
centered
design processes and methodologies that make effective use of new user interface technologies.
Enterprise Web developers need to balance two complementary disciplines: tracking the
evolving
technologies around user experience, and adhering to a design process and methodology that
can deliver effective user experience (see "A Value
-
Driven, User
-
Centered Design Process for
Web Sites and Applications").
One interesting application of us
er experience strategies is for customer
-
facing websites.
Successful high
-
end, consumer
-
oriented sites, such as Amazon, Expedia, Facebook and Google,
have long used the principles of user
-
centered design based on objective data about user
behavior, gravita
ting around core usage scenarios linked to business value. These proven
principles for success are now starting to "trickle down" onto enterprise development scenarios.
Customer
-
centric Web strategies is an area of enterprise investment, even in times of e
conomic
recession. Enterprises are becoming aware of the need to extend their traditional customer
websites beyond the basic and typically offered marketing and e
-
commerce functionalities into
areas such as social software, mobility and social media. Lever
aging the wisdom of crowds, and
the ability to access those crowds in whatever chosen medium, are important elements of
customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (see "Key Issues for Customer Centric Web
Strategies").
Web technologies continue to have a p
rofound impact on application development (AD) and
operations, and they are some of the drivers behind the move to agile practices, the use of
application life cycle management (ALM) and an increase in collaborative technology in
development. The use of dy
namic languages, such as JavaScript, PHP and Perl, have seen
broader enterprise adoption, along with Web frameworks, such as Spring MVC, Struts and JSF.
Open
-
source software is playing a key role in many different categories related to AD. Hype
Cycle techn
ology analyses related to Web AD include cloud/Web platforms, Web
-
oriented
architecture (WOA) and composite.
The area of Web
-
based composite applications has seen significant change. Mashup approaches
and technologies are now used in the enterprise. The ma
shup vendor landscape has changed
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dramatically, with the entrance of the megavendors. The simple concepts of WOA make
enterprise mashups a huge productivity boost for developers and end users.
The hype of Web 2.0 of past years has been translated into busi
ness value, albeit within the
constraints of organizational structure and legacy corporate culture. Web 2.0 technologies, such
as blogs, wikis and social networks, are now used by progressive mainstream businesses. Use of
Web 2.0 community approaches is gr
owing in certain areas, such as the use of user
-
generated
reviews and ratings, and crowdsourcing for product designs. New Web 2.0 business models
continue to emerge (for example, the exploitation of product information for mashup purposes by
exposing the d
ata via representational state transfer [REST]ful APIs). These can be seen in Hype
Cycle technology analyses of activity
-
specific social applications, distributed social Web, social
-
software suites, corporate blogging and content syndication in the enterpr
ise.
Of course, there are many challenges and inhibitors to the full adoption of Web 2.0. Fear and
cultural issues abound; however, with appropriate planning and focus, these can be overcome.
A major way in which the Web is impacting the enterprise
is
by p
roviding the context for cloud
computing. The shift of IT resources from on
-
premises to cloud
-
based, although well under way,
has a lot more to offer. What has been seen thus far is only a small portion of what has yet to
unfold (see "Gartner Reference Arc
hitecture for Cloud
-
Enabled Application Platforms").
A common question is: "What's beyond Web 2.0?" We already know it isn't Web 3.0, as the step
-
function change that got us to Web 2.0 is not likely to recur. However, new, innovative
technologies and appro
aches are launched every day (see "Facebook Tries to Paint the Entire
Web With Social Context"). Cutting across all these technologies and trends is the large scale of
operations. Data centers of major Web players are growing, and the reach is broadened to
every
geography. Mammoth scale is an aspect of the many evolutionary changes to the Web, and is
itself a trend.
The Hype Cycle
This Hype Cycle covers a broad collection of Web
-
oriented technologies and methodologies. It is
an update of the 2009 Hype Cycle
.
Some technology analyses that are of particular interest include:
Context
-
aware computing
—
Gartner introduced this term in 2007, and has described
the set of related concepts in research and in detailed technology profiles. Some of the
high
-
level profil
es are included in this Hype Cycle. Although context
-
aware computing is
an emerging approach, successful high
-
end, consumer
-
oriented sites, such as
Facebook, Amazon and Google, have put some of these principles into production (see
"Fundamentals of Context
Delivery Architecture: Introduction and Definitions, 2010
Update").
User experience platforms
—
A user experience platform is an integrated set of
technologies that provide, support, manage and deliver user interaction across
applications, processes, cont
ent and other users. This is an emerging concept, first
described by Gartner in 2009, and debuts in this year's Hype Cycle for Web and User
Interaction Technologies (also see "Generation 7 Portals: Unifying the User
Experience").
Citizen developers
—
Gartn
er defines a citizen developer as a user, operating outside
enterprise IT, who creates new business applications from scratch or via composition,
usually by leveraging a new generation of fourth
-
generation language (4GL)
-
style
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computing platforms, many of
which are cloud
-
based (see "Citizen Developers Are
Poised to Grow").
HTML5
—
The browser must evolve to meet escalating requirements for rich,
responsive interaction, posed by Web applications that are no longer content
-
centric, but
engagement
-
oriented. Ga
rtner covered this topic in published research earlier this year,
and with the debut of this technology profile.
Mobile Web applications
—
As the mobile sector becomes more fragmented due to
many competing platforms (from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, R
esearch In Motion
[RIM] and HP/Palm), developers are turning to cross
-
platform Web applications that use
HTML5 and mobile
-
enabled browser engines (that support GPS, tilt, proximity and other
sensors).
Cloud computing
—
Gartner has covered the cloud
-
computi
ng wave in a great deal of
research during the past couple of years, and devotes an entire Hype Cycle to this
phenomenon. In this 2010 Hype Cycle for Web and User Interaction Technologies, there
are selected technology profiles representing the major aspec
ts of cloud computing
(e.g., platform as service, infrastructure as service, etc.).
Social Web
—
The social Web is becoming pervasive both in the consumer sector and,
more recently, in enterprises. There is an entire Hype Cycle on this topic. Here, we
incl
ude some key technology profiles relating to this transformational trend, including
social
-
data portability and social
-
network payments.
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Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Web and User Interaction Technologies, 2010
Source: Gartner (July 2010)
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The Priority Matrix
Many Web
-
oriented technologies and methodologies will soon see mainstream adoption. Some
of the more
impactful items include enterprise portals, Web 2.0 and mashup applications. These
deserve attention, as they provide significant value to the enterprise and can be a competitive
weapon.
Other items on the Hype Cycle are highly impactful, but will see main
stream adoption further out
(such as cloud/Web platforms, social applications, WOA and cloud computing). Although the
mainstream adoption of these technologies is a few years away, there will be a significant value
stream for many years into the future.
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Fi
gure 2. Priority Matrix for Web and User Interaction Technologies, 2010
Source: Gartner (July 2010)
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Off The Hype Cycle
Virtual worlds, such as Second Life, were widely hyped in 2009 and earlier. However, some of
them (e.g., Second Life) have fallen into
near invisibility, while at the same time, others have
become part of the mainstream (e.g., highly targeted ventures such as Club Penguin, now a part
of the Walt Disney Company). Although Gartner continues to track this category, the technology
profiles we
re dropped from this Hype Cycle to make room for other entries.
Similarly, the mainstream acceptance of content syndication based on Really Simple Syndication
(RSS) has resulted in dropping this technology profile from this Hype Cycle.
On the Rise
Context
Delivery Architecture
Analysis By:
William Clark; Anne Lapkin
Definition:
Context
-
aware computing is about improving the user experience for customers,
business partners and employees by using the information about a person or object's
environment, activit
ies, connections and preferences to anticipate the user's needs and
proactively serve up the most appropriate content, product or service. Enterprises can leverage
context
-
aware computing to better target prospects, increase customer intimacy, and enhance
associate productivity and collaboration. From a software perspective, context is information that
is relevant to the functioning of a software process, but is not essential to it. In the absence of this
additional information, the software is still operat
ional, although the results of the software's
actions are not as targeted or refined.
Most context
-
enriched services are implemented in siloed systems, where a particular person,
group or business process profits from being situationally aware. To replicat
e, scale and integrate
such systems, certain repeatable patterns emerge that will require a new enterprise solution
architecture known as context delivery architecture (CoDA).
Gartner defines CoDA as an architectural style that builds on service
-
oriented
architecture (SOA)
and event
-
driven architecture (EDA) interaction and partitioning styles, and adds formal
mechanisms for the software elements that discover and apply the user's context in real time.
CoDA provides a framework for solution architects that
allows them to define and implement the
technology, information and process components that enable services to use context information
to improve the quality of the interactions with the user. The technologies may include context
brokers, state monitors,
sensors, analytic engines and cloud
-
based transaction processing
engines. As context
-
aware computing matures, CoDA should also define data formats, metadata
schemas, interaction and discovery protocols, programming interfaces, and other formalities. As
an
emerging best practice, CoDA will enable enterprises to create and tie together the siloed
context
-
aware applications with increased agility and flexibility. As with SOA, much of the pull for
CoDA will come from packaged
-
application and software vendors ex
panding to integrate
communication and collaboration capabilities, unified communications vendors and mobile device
manufacturers, Web megavendors (e.g., Google), social
-
networking vendors (e.g., Facebook),
and service providers that expand their roles to
become providers and processors of context
information.
The CoDA architecture style considers information, business and technology domain viewpoints.
The technology domains are application infrastructure, communications infrastructure, network
services and
endpoints (devices). Thus, CoDA provides a framework for architects to discover
gaps and overlap among system components that provide, process and analyze contextual
information. A key challenge of CoDA will be information
-
driven, not technology
-
driven. T
his key
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challenge will revolve around what information sources can provide context, then what
technologies enable that information to be provided in a secure, timely and usable manner, and
how this information can be folded into processes.
Position and Ado
ption Speed Justification:
Gartner introduced the term CoDA in 2007, based
on developments in areas such as mobile communications and cloud computing. By 2011, we
expect that aggressive enterprise architects and project managers will weave elements of CoDA
into their plans to orchestrate and build context
-
enriched services that rely not only on federated
information models, but also on federated delivery services. CoDA relies on SOA as an
underpinning and also is related to EDA, because enterprise architect
ures need to be agile and
scalable to support context
-
aware computing. SOA and EDA have not yet reached the Plateau of
Productivity. We expect CoDA to reach the Plateau of Productivity gradually, after 2014.
User Advice:
Although CoDA, is an emerging archi
tectural style, Type A organizations can
benefit in the short term by applying its principles as they experiment with use of context
information to provide improved user experiences in both customer
-
facing services and enterprise
productivity. Leading
-
edge
organizations need to begin to incorporate CoDA constructs in
infrastructure and services to gain competitive advantages with the early use of context
-
aware
computing. Type A organizations should now be identifying which information sources, both
within t
he enterprise and external to it (e.g., from social
-
software sites), will provide context
information to a range of applications. Build competencies in CoDA's technology domains,
particularly in communications, because the migration of voice from silos to
general applications
will be a key transformation, opening up further opportunities to create applications enhanced by
context
-
enriched services. An understanding of mobile development will also be key. The
refinement of your enterprise architecture to inc
lude CoDA constructs assumes prior investment
in SOA. Most mainstream, risk
-
averse organizations should not invest in building a CoDA
capability, but should explore the acquisition of context
-
enriched services through third parties.
Business Impact:
Contex
t awareness is a distinguishing characteristic of some leading software
solutions, including Amazon e
-
commerce, Google Search, Facebook, Apple and others. During
the next three to five years, context
-
aware computing will have high impact among Type A
busin
esses in two areas: extending e
-
commerce and mobile commerce initiatives toward
consumers, and increasing the efficiency and productivity of the businesses' knowledge workers
and business partners. Context
-
aware computing will evolve incrementally, and wil
l gain
momentum as more information sources become available and cloud
-
based context
-
enriched
services begin to emerge. However, these will be siloed and will not use a standard or shared
CoDA model. Emergence of formal CoDA protocols and principles will t
ranslate into a new
technology category and feature set, affecting all application infrastructure and business
application providers.
Benefit Rating:
Transformational
Market Penetration:
Less than 1% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
Ap
pear; Apple; Google; IBM; Interactive Intelligence; Nokia; Pontis; Sense
Networks
Recommended Reading:
"Fundamentals of Context Delivery Architecture: Introduction and
Definitions, 2010 Update"
"The Seven Styles of Context
-
Aware Computing"
"Context
-
Enriche
d Services: From Reactive Location to Rich Anticipation"
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"Fundamentals of Context Delivery Architecture: Provisioning Context
-
Enriched Services, 2010
Update"
User Experience Platforms
Analysis By:
Gene Phifer
Definition:
A user experience platform (UXP) is
an integrated set of technologies used to provide
interaction between a user and a set of applications, processes, content, services or other users.
A UXP comprises several components, including portal products, mashup tools, content
management, rich Inte
rnet application (RIA) tools and mobile tools. It may be delivered as an
integrated set of technologies from one or more vendors, as a suite of products from a single
vendor or as a single product. A UXP may also be self
-
assembled by the enterprise. Howeve
r,
the lack of standards will require significant integration effort. Most enterprises will prefer to buy
their UXP, rather than build one. The UXP represents the convergence and evolution of many
user interaction/presentation layer technologies and is a c
ritical competitive platform for the
world's most influential technology providers.
The UXP addresses the enterprise need for a consistent, integrated, versatile and optimized
approach to user interaction across a wide range of scenarios and devices. Tradi
tionally, user
interface/user experience tools have been stovepiped, with little to no integration, and different
approaches and languages for providing similar functionality across platforms. The UXP attempts
to solve that problem with integration and cro
ss
-
platform capabilities.
However, the UXP is not just about technologies. A UXP also supports the methodologies used to
create a best
-
in
-
class website, such as user
-
centered design and usability testing. Understanding
the success of a website requires goo
d analytics, and a UXP also includes these capabilities.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
The UXP is a new concept, which emerged in
2009. There have been early instantiations; however, the UXP is in the early phases of its life
cycle. In fact, t
here isn't even a UXP market yet. Although the demand for the UXP is visible,
vendors have not met this demand en masse. The UXP market should emerge during the 2012
through 2013 time frame.
User Advice:
Inventory the various tools used for presentation ma
nagement and presentation
-
layer composition across all supported devices and channels. Determine synergies where
common vendors are identified. Demand plans from your vendors for these products and
determine where integration will occur. Explore UXP option
s as the future for many of these tools,
then build a road map and plan for adoption of a UXP during the next few years.
Business Impact:
Tools and methodologies for delivering the user experience are expensive, in
software licenses, as well as developer t
raining and duplicative/overlapping work. However, the
biggest downside is the impact on the users who have to deal with inconsistent user experiences
and different look/feel/behavior across different sites and devices. A UXP provides significant
efficienc
ies in developing and maintaining the user experience, and provides a consistent user
experience across sites, channels and devices.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
edge IPK; IBM; Micr
osoft; Oracle
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Citizen Developers
Analysis By:
Eric Knipp
Definition:
Gartner defines a "citizen developer" as a user operating outside enterprise IT and its
governance, who creates new business applications for consumption by others from scratch or by
comp
osition. In the past, end
-
user application development (EUAD) usually involved Microsoft
Excel spreadsheets and Access databases. Next
-
generation citizen developers leverage shared
services and fourth
-
generation language (4GL)
-
style development platforms,
sometimes
delivered as cloud
-
computing services. This shift enables end users to unlock tacit knowledge
and release IT resources to do what each does best, if the management culture permits it.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Born from enterprises' need to automate and
improve business processes on shoestring IT budgets, citizen developers use high
-
level
platforms to author new solutions in a business area, outside the traditional enterprise IT service
organization. For the ci
tizen developer, applications are rapidly built out of necessity, as scarce IT
resources for systematic development are often unavailable. Citizen developers follow limited, if
any, formal processes for application life cycle management and governance. Ins
tead, they
concentrate on quick turnaround of opportunistic applications that contribute to sustaining
competitive advantage in his or her workgroup or department.
Although business user application development (BUAD) has operated below the radar for years
,
citizen developers are empowered by new forces, including mass customization, the
industrialization of infrastructure through cloud computing, the evolution of developer tools and
changing workforce demographics. These emerging trends
—
which have been h
eartily endorsed
by vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, WaveMaker Software and Zoho
—
enable citizen
developers to extend their reach further than ever before.
The citizen developer is separated from the professional developer by a mastery of a business
fun
ction and the tacit knowledge this mastery implies. The typical citizen developer is employed
within a business area and, therefore, has a strong knowledge of the business, the industry and
the competitive forces that drive customer preferences, the compet
itive environment and
enterprise strategies. In contrast, the professional developer in an enterprise IT service
organization often has only a basic or general knowledge of these business dynamics. The
traditional IT requirements gathering, estimation and
development process exists to extract
knowledge and expectations from users and transform them into software deliverables. Citizen
developers recognize that this often
-
inefficient process is ineffective for a "long tail" of
applications never prioritized b
y the business due to IT resource constraints.
Today's rapidly changing business climate demands greater agility in process automation.
Although agile development techniques help IT respond to business needs more rapidly, a lack of
dedicated resources ofte
n impedes success. The tacit knowledge locked in business areas is
difficult to translate into project requirements, causing end users to turn to alternative,
uncontrolled solutions, such as Microsoft Excel and Access or, worse, unmanaged cloud
platforms (
see "Spreadsheet Controls Need a Boost"). The ranks of citizen developers will surge
as simple application development (AD) platforms proliferate.
User Advice:
IT leaders fear that end users, who cannot and will not conform to security and
programming best
practices, will build applications that expose the organization to unnecessary
risks. Although such an outcome is possible with IT
-
facilitated citizen developers, it is virtually
assured if IT chooses to ignore the problem. Instead of avoiding risk, manag
e it by educating
citizen developers on where they must tread lightly, and offer platforms with the "sharp edges"
removed:
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Be proactive and engage with the business about requirements for citizen developer
tools, tool selection, tool support and criteria f
or creating safe, manageable applications.
Offer an internally hosted, private version of application middleware suited for citizen
developers, such as WaveMaker Software, LongJump or Oracle APEX.
Provide "play" environments that enable citizen developers
to create and test solutions
before they share them with a broader community.
Implement monitoring on production servers to detect resource
-
draining citizen
developer applications and develop procedures to handle them.
Create a mechanism to transition popu
lar, opportunistic applications to IT
-
managed,
systematic applications.
Business Impact:
Beyond BUAD, citizen developer activities that may occur without the IT
department's involvement revolve around platforms specifically designed to deliver programming
capabilities to end users without professional IT experience. Offerings in this space may require
no footprint behind the firewall
—
for example, Zoho Creator, WaveMaker Cloud Edition and
Qrimp provide 4GL
-
style development capabilities, using only a basic
browser with a what you
see is what you get (WYSIWYG) interface.
The most
-
advanced and sustainable type of citizen developer initiatives involve the IT
organization from the start. By engaging with business areas interested in citizen developer
activities
, IT leaders can ensure that those capabilities are delivered in a secure, managed and
consistent way. The application of "just enough" governance, access to enterprise service
-
oriented architecture (SOA) investments, and the availability of skilled facili
tators and internal IT
consultants contribute to the creation of a safe environment for citizen developers to unleash their
innovative potential. Under such circumstances, citizen developers are typically not expected to
have a development or IT background
; instead, they leverage platforms made specifically for
people with their skill sets, such as mashup platforms or 4GL development environments.
Benefit Rating:
Transformational
Market Penetration:
Less than 1% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample
Vendors:
LongJump; Oracle; Qrimp; WaveMaker Software; Zoho
Recommended Reading:
"Citizen Developers Are Poised to Grow"
Customer
-
Centric Web Strategies
Analysis By:
Michael Maoz
Definition:
A customer
-
centric Web strategy (technology strategy and business
strategy) is a
cohesive approach to ensuring that a website is intuitive to the visitor of that site, placing the
customer at the center of the relationship. It focuses on tying the customer, prospect or partner
deeply into the enterprise or organization,
and harmonizes the various interaction channels. It
starts with improvements to the website, but extends beyond it to other related interaction
channels and external services, such as social networking and other forms of social media. The
technologies, int
egrations, analysis, content, communication and business applications are
designed and deployed through a collaborative effort between the business and the external
customer to achieve this goal of serving the customer need consistently with business goals
. It
will be used to optimize advertising via e
-
mail, search or other online approaches.
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Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
A customer
-
centric Web is still a very immature
concept and strategy for most businesses outside of online retail, where the
concept is maturing.
The challenge (beyond the process synchronization required) is that the technologies are not
available as a suite, but rather cobbled together. There have been good reasons for this: the
need to rapidly innovate because of the evolvin
g nature of user interaction patterns; emerging
technologies, such as real
-
time analytics, social networking and recommendation/reputation
engines; and highly fragmented reporting structures for the people tasked with building Web
capabilities. Creating a
Web presence that draws customers in because it is engaging,
responsive, reliable and intuitive to their needs will be a strong business differentiator.
User Advice:
Create an inventory of tools, technologies and applications required to deliver a
customer
-
centric Web. Appoint a project leader who has the approval of the board or CEO to run
a customer
-
centric Web effort. Tap the community of customers, prospective customers, partners
and employees as a way of uncovering the true impact and effectiveness of
your website. Look
for redundancies in systems, and overlapping organizational responsibilities. Test ideas by
measuring the impact before deploying fully.
Business Impact:
The business impact is high, because businesses waste a tremendous
amount of money
on marketing, sales and technical support as a way of overcoming the
weaknesses in their websites. The desire to better control and optimize spending, and measure
costs and Web effectiveness, will drive customer
-
centric Web programs.
Benefit Rating:
High
M
arket Penetration:
Less than 1% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
Accenture; Deloitte
Recommended Reading:
"A Framework for Creating the Future Customer
-
Centric Web"
Context
-
Enriched Services
Analysis By:
William Clark; Anne Lapkin
Definition:
Context
-
enriched services use information about a person or object to proactively
anticipate the user's need and serve up the content, product or service most appropriate to the
user. The IT industry is beginning to recognize a pattern where au
gmented reality offerings,
mobile location
-
aware ads, mobile search and social mobile sites fall under the umbrella term
"context aware." Context
-
enriched services are the fundamental unit of software for improving
user experiences through context, and are
an implementation foundation for context
-
aware
computing. These terms denote services and APIs that use information about the user to
optionally and implicitly fine
-
tune the software action with better situational awareness. Such
services can proactively
push content to the user at the moment of need, or suggest products and
services that are most attractive to the user at a specific point in time.
Context is relative and describes the environment, history or setting in which a user interaction
occurs. Fro
m a software perspective, context for a service is information (data) that can add value
to the functioning of the service, but is not essential to it. In the absence of context information,
the service is still operational, but may not provide results tha
t are as finely targeted. The
currency and quality of the context information will determine the value it adds to the service.
Most applications that benefit from context
-
enriched services will subscribe to them using service
-
oriented architecture (SOA) te
chniques and implementations.
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Context
-
enriched services will also require sophisticated reasoning to determine how software
actions should be changed to make them more appropriate for the user's context.
The more current and selective the context informati
on, the more precise the functioning of the
service. Context
-
enriched services are provided by context brokers, which are designed to
retrieve, process and stage this information so that subscribing functions can use relevant context
in addition to process
ing incoming data. When an application uses context
-
enriched services, it is
a context
-
aware application. As a best practice, context
-
enriched software services have the
modularity and accessibility of SOA and use SOA
-
related standards.
Position and Adopti
on Speed Justification:
Context enrichment refines the output of services
and improves their relevance. We observe implementations today in mobile computing, social
computing, identity controls, search and e
-
commerce
—
the areas in which context is emergin
g
as an element of competitive differentiation. However, the current context
-
aware solutions are
fragmented
—
they are individually designed, custom
-
developed and deployed, and, because of
their competitive importance, are often not widely distributed or a
dvertised. The movement in
social computing to open and share social
-
relationship (social graph) information is an early step
toward the standardization of context
-
aware computing APIs; however, most of the required
standardization effort has not yet begun
. Context
-
enriched services will require multiple stages of
innovation and platform technology evolution before their essential benefit is well
-
understood in
the broad mainstream computing markets.
In 2010, we are seeing the beginning of generic services,
whereas before all these services were
custom
-
built. Context
-
enriched services have advanced significantly during the past year, moving
from an early post
-
trigger position to a point half way up the Slope of Enlightenment. We are
seeing an increasing numbe
r of applications that, while they may not use the term context
-
aware
computing, are clearly using context information to improve the user experience. These include
Apple's recent developer guidance regarding location
-
aware advertising, the augmented reali
ty
systems that give you information on an object shown in the camera lens of your phone, and the
ability of Google Android
-
based phones to augment services based on the user's contacts,
behavior and other components of context information.
In the long ter
m, there will be a shift from reactive to proactive services, so push and subscribe
will be more prevalent, and the number and richness of information sources will rise.
User Advice:
Context
-
enriched services will begin with simple scenarios (one category, such as
location) and evolve into compound patterns (e.g., taking into account location, presence and
group behavior). Application developers and service providers should take advan
tage of the wide
range of contextual opportunities in their e
-
commerce, security, social
-
computing and mobile
-
computing systems. Some early context processing can be achieved using event processing and
complex
-
event
-
processing technologies; enterprises nee
d to plan to incrementally develop or
source more context enriched services in step with their ambition levels of improving user
experience.
Business Impact:
Context
-
enriched services will be transformational for solution providers.
Context enrichment is t
he next frontier for business applications, platforms and development
tools. The ability to automate the processing of context information will serve users by increasing
the agility, relevance and precision of IT services. New vendors that are likely to em
erge will
specialize in gathering and injecting contextual information into business applications. Most
context
-
aware applications are likely to arrive as incremental enhancements to SOA, without a
major disruption to prior architecture. However, the new k
inds of business applications that will
emerge as the function of full context awareness may end up being revolutionary and disruptive
to established practices.
Benefit Rating:
Transformational
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Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity:
Emb
ryonic
Sample Vendors:
Appear; Apple; Google; Pontis; Sense Networks
Recommended Reading:
"Context
-
Aware Computing: The Future is Now"
"Key Issues for Context
-
Aware Computing, 2010"
"Context
-
Enriched Services: From Reactive Location to Rich Anticipation"
"
Context
-
Aware Computing: It's Time to Carefully Choose Your Vendors"
"Apple Note Signals Move to Claim Context
-
Aware Advertising"
Portal Fabric
Analysis By:
Jim Murphy
Definition:
The portal fabric is an emerging phenomenon involving portals and Web resour
ces
that adapt to users' preferred interaction patterns, rather than forcing them to change their
behaviors based on the individual portals. The average user accesses many portals and Web
resources
—
work, banking, travel, government and megaportals. Each
is stovepiped from the
others, and interoperability among them is either nonexistent or limited to content syndication via
Really Simple Syndication (RSS), Atom, portlet
-
level syndication through Web Service for
Remote Portlets (WSRP) and rapidly emerging
representational state transfer (REST)
-
based
approaches. When all these portals and Web resources can syndicate content, data and user
information with each other, the result will be thought of as the portal fabric. In the portal fabric,
users become the c
enter of their own portal universes, rather than changing their behaviors to
suit the portal or website with which they're interacting.
In the same way that traditional portals provide content aggregation, the portal fabric enables
portal aggregation. All
the portals and Web resources the user cares about can be aggregated
into a single portal shell or other Web
-
based user interface, taking the form of a personal portal
(or MyPortal). With the portal fabric in place, access to any portal is provided by an a
ggregation
feature. Portlets, widgets and gadgets, as well as sections of portal pages, portal pages, Web
pages and entire portals, can be aggregated. The emergence of the portal fabric will enable the
"Follow
-
Me Portal," where the portal experience extend
s beyond the traditional Web browser and
follows the user to any network device.
In terms of technology and standards, significant progress will be necessary to realize the portal
fabric. Universal, federated identity management providing key security and
personalization data
will be an essential enabling factor for the portal fabric. WSRP provides basic portlet
-
level
syndication, but other interoperability standards also must be in place for the portal fabric to
become a reality. The portal fabric will req
uire federation across private and public networks, and
it will require trust, especially for highly secure transactions. Federation and syndication
requirements are increasing, as social objects become a new form of data for which enterprises
will seek in
teroperability.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Although some elements of the portal fabric have
shown progress in 2010, other elements will take time to materialize. Horizontal portal vendors
that have embraced relevant portal standards are wel
l
-
positioned to enable users of their
technologies to become nodes in the portal fabric; however, additional work is required,
especially in portal
-
centric user information and federated identity management. Second
-
generation portlet standards like WSRPv2
show promise as a mechanism for portlet
-
level
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syndication, but evolving REST
-
based integration approaches are likely to play an important role.
Some consumer
-
oriented megaportals, especially those embracing and enabling mashups, are
also positioned to part
icipate in the portal fabric.
The portal fabric vision presumed that portal vendors would deliver the necessary middleware for
portal interoperability and federation across vendor families. But competition among fewer, mostly
large providers in the enterpr
ise portal space remains a countervailing factor, working against the
emergence of the portal fabric. Several important portal vendors show low inclination for
interoperability in a market that is only becoming more complex with the emergence of new
requir
ements like social
-
object interoperability entering the picture.
However, the portal fabric concept is starting to emerge in certain vertical and functional
categories. For example, consumer
-
centric portals and social platforms, like Facebook, LinkedIn
and
Twitter, are gaining interoperability through standards like OpenSocial, Activity Streams and
Salmon protocol. In vertical industries like healthcare, the portal fabric is an exigency, rather than
an option. The entire complex healthcare value chain, amon
g providers, insurers, government
organizations, pharmaceuticals and device manufacturers, will only accomplish the goals of
universal healthcare, reduced costs of healthcare, and better patient outcomes through
collaboration and cooperation, rather than c
ompetition. As the center of the healthcare universe,
patients and their doctors must be able to access medical records and services across a wide
range of repositories and systems from various providers.
User Advice:
Participation in the portal fabric wil
l be crucial for organizations hoping to engage
users in their Web environments, and early participants will gain a competitive advantage in some
industries. Organizations should pay attention to evolving standards for portal interoperability and
federatio
n, which will be crucial factors in enabling the portal fabric. For example, REST
-
based
integration approaches in consumer Web widgets are emerging as alternatives to WSRP, but
standards for these integration approaches are only just beginning to form. Wit
h a few fledgling
alternatives, including iWidgets, EMML, and OpenSocial, it may be too early to place bets. In any
case, enterprises will want to make use of them once further visibility into emerging standards is
available.
Organizations must also prepar
e themselves by addressing security, identity management and
privacy policies upfront. Among other intricacies, the incorporation of consumer
-
facing portals into
the portal fabric is likely to require alternative, single
-
sign
-
on approaches, such as OpenID,
Facebook Connect and InfoCard. The industry will also need to agree on a single set of
standards for the capture and sharing of portal
-
centric user information. Universal, federated
identity management capturing portal
-
centric user information will be a c
ornerstone of the portal
fabric This cornerstone will be supplied by third parties, although it's unlikely that any single
provider will "own" user security, identity and presence outright. Enterprises should track the
evolution of portal interoperability
standards and leverage federated identity management as
business requirements dictate. Press portal product vendors to implement portal fabric features
as standards emerge.
Business Impact:
Vendors providing aggregation mechanisms for the portal fabric wil
l own the
user experience. Early adopters that provide aggregation of relevant nodes of the portal fabric
can achieve competitive advantages in their industries. Other providers besides traditional
horizontal portal players may seek this role, including co
nsumer Web personal portal providers.
Some enterprises will provide aggregation of the portal fabric, while others will expose their
content and data for aggregation by others. From a user perspective, the ability to aggregate
multiple portals and Web reso
urces will result in the ability to correlate and orchestrate them into
on
-
the
-
glass composites, including enterprise mashups. Finally, vendors that offer mashup
-
enabling technologies will serve a valuable role in transitioning enterprises from "walled gar
dens"
to full participants in the portal fabric.
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Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Embryonic
Recommended Reading:
"The Portal Fabric Will Enable Each User to Be the Center of the
Portal Universe"
App and Widget
Advertising
Analysis By:
Andrew Frank
Definition:
The concept of an app
—
a small downloadable application designed with a specific
purpose in mind
—
has now been adopted and refined by Apple through its iOS platform and App
Store. The result has produced
a new economy and set of user expectations that have eclipsed
certain earlier concepts of a widget, which tended to refer to code modules embedded in a Web
page or desktop container. TV manufacturers still use the term "widget" to refer to applications
tha
t can run in a TV/remote
-
control environment, although "app" may eventually supersede this
usage as well.
In 2009, Gartner chose to maintain continuity with previous Hype Cycles by maintaining the use
of the term "widget advertising" to cover also ads in m
obile apps. In 2010, we acknowledge the
evolution of language and focus resulting from the rise of the mobile app market and have added
the term "app" to the definition for clarity. (We will avoid terminological distinctions between apps
and widgets by con
sidering the union of the two.)
Beyond the idea that app ads are commercial messages embedded in apps (or widgets) on any
device, the standards, formats, metrics, targeting and best practices remain very much in flux.
Position and Adoption Speed Justificat
ion:
Last year, widget advertising was deemed past the
Peak of Inflated Expectations and headed for the Trough of Disillusionment. This positioning
reflected the disillusionment both advertisers and widget/app developers were experiencing with
widget adver
tising, which had been faithfully following the Hype Cycle pattern for about three
years. At that time, mobile apps were predominantly being monetized through Apple's App Store,
with a relatively minor amount of in
-
app advertising provided by third parties
(mostly AdMob, now
owned by Google). Since then, Apple has revitalized the category's hype level with its release of
the media
-
friendly iPad and the announcement of iAds, its in
-
app network for the iOS platform.
Apple's vision for in
-
app advertising has i
nspired advertisers to look at the category in a new light.
Thus, we have taken the rare step of repositioning this technology ahead of the Peak of Inflated
Expectations in acknowledgment of the discontinuity Apple has brought to the category.
Despite Appl
e's penchant for generating enthusiasm, iOS is not the sole platform of interest for
in
-
app ads. The world of media apps (that is, apps that are targeted at consumers rather than
enterprises and are thus amenable to third
-
party advertising) can be viewed a
s divided between
the platforms supplied by Facebook and Apple. Facebook claims it has more than 550,000 active
applications on its platform, and that 70% of its user base
—
over 280 million users
—
engage
with platform applications each month. As a result
, developers such as Zynga have been able to
raise extraordinary sums to scale up its app operations (Zynga raised $147 million from Softbank
in June 2010).
Apple, for its part, announced in June 2010 that over 225,000 apps were available in its App
Store,
with over 5 billion downloads. (Android, which competes with Apple's mobile platform, has
about 70,000 apps.) Apple CEO Steve Jobs has also estimated that app usage on its platform
could yield 1 billion impressions per day for its iAds app advertising net
work. iAds promises to
raise the bar on the creative quality of app advertising by supporting OS
-
based app suspension,
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full
-
screen video and rich interactivity, and embedded transactions. But, in a clear sign of hype,
brands are rushing in to be among the
first wave of participants before the platform has proven
truly effective or transparently measurable.
Significant obstacles to productivity remain
—
most notably, the lack of standards
—
that will slow
progress ahead. However, as competition heats up in a
reas such as media tablets and TV widget
(or app) platforms such as Google TV, we expect interest in app advertising to increase, and
pressure to mount on organizations such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the
Media Rating Council (MRC) to
define standards for formats, templates and metrics as they have
for other interactive channels.
User Advice:
While advertisers and media companies should remain eager to experiment with
new forms of app advertising, both should remain cognizant that, for
advertising to scale into a
large and stable business, it must be based on interoperable standards that can maximize reach
and minimize the costs associated with platform
-
specific development. It must also be supported
by a certified independent metrics pr
ovider applying standard methodologies to be used as
contract fulfillment currency. Until these conditions are met, app advertising should be considered
a type of special project.
Business Impact:
App advertising could eventually displace some portion of t
he online display
ad market and create new higher
-
yield opportunities for publishers and developers. It could also
light the way to portable cross
-
media advertising formats, as app platforms spread to new mobile
devices and broadband
-
connected TVs.
Benefit
Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
Adobe; Apple; Ensequence; Facebook; Google; Greystripe; Medialets;
Offerpal Media; RockYou; Slide; Zynga
Web Content Product Recommendation Engine
Analysis
By:
Bill Gassman
Definition:
A Web content product recommendation engine provides an algorithmic derived list of
items to be published in a Web page or other online content such as e
-
mail or display advertising.
The algorithm can be configured to provide
items that most others have searched for, put into a
shopping cart, purchased or recommended to others. Recommendations can be biased by stock
-
on
-
hand, brand or price affinity and user profile dimensions, such as geography, time of day or
historical behavi
or. The algorithmic engine can be run as a cloud
-
based service or on
-
premises.
Recommendations are fed into content management systems or substituted directly into dynamic
content formats.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Although this is the fir
st year that this technology is
being tracked in our Hype Cycles, it has been adopted in high
-
end retail sites for some time. In
addition, manual approaches are used by some organizations. The cost to deploy is still fairly
high, keeping it away from low v
olume sites, but prices should fall as demand picks up. Evolving
uses include service resolution recommendations, greater ties with customer and transaction
information from back
-
office systems and context aware computing. Placement in the pre
-
peak
hype se
gment is justified by the relatively low penetration of commercial products but increasing
number of vendors coming to market.
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User Advice:
Start with an ROI calculation to see if an uplift of 5% in website revenue will justify
the cost. This is a conserva
tive but realistic result. Dedicate at least one full
-
time resource to
learn and operate the tool, and to train others to work with the rules that bias the
recommendations. Develop an attribution model with a control that takes into account how many
people
would buy an item anyway. Adopt the advanced features such as inventory and margin
data integration once the basic skills are mastered.
Business Impact:
The potential is high, but most organizations we have spoken with are
realizing a 2% to 5% uplift in r
evenue. As the algorithms improve, along with context
-
aware
computing and integration with back
-
end systems, so will the customer experience and uplift
yield.
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sampl
e Vendors:
ATG; Baynote; Certona; Coremetrics; MyBuys; Omniture; RichRelevance
Recommended Reading:
"Tutorial: Web Content Product Recommendation Engines"
"Coremetrics' Intelligent Offer Recommendation Engine"
HTML5
Analysis By:
David Mitchell Smith
Definition:
HTML5 is the proposed specification for the next generation of HTML. Although the
process of creating the specification began in 2004, it is only in the first part of 2010 that HTML5
has moved to the foreground of industry conversation and ente
rprise technology managers'
agendas. HTML5 is important, as it brings to the Web much of the rich Internet application (RIA)
-
like capabilities that have required additional software.
HTML5 is not one thing. At one extreme, the hype and aura around the term
can lead to using it
to mean one particular feature (e.g., video). At the other extreme, treating it as if is one very large
inseparable thing will lead to a "wait till it's done" approach, which will prove to be a bad one for
most companies.
Position and
Adoption Speed Justification:
HTML5 has been in the headlines recently and
has garnered extremely charged opinions as a result. The extreme opinions abound, ranging
from "HTML5 will make everything else (especially Flash, see "HTML and the Future of Adobe
Flash") irrelevant," to "it will take over a decade for HTML5 to be ratified, so we don't need to pay
attention to it until then." The reality is, as usual, somewhere in between, and is time
-
and
scenario
-
dependent.
The working subset and de facto standar
ds may be driven by mobile devices. Operating system
(OS) fragmentation remains a significant issue in mobile. However, the vast majority of mobile
browsers for smartphones is based on (or will be based on WebKit). OS fragmentation increases
the need for a
viable cross
-
platform strategy. The common technology base of WebKit and the
evolution of working subsets and the de facto nature of HTML5 pieces may fit this need.
HTML5 usage and stability will be driven first in mobile environments, then on the desktop
.
HTML5 usage and stability will be driven by desktop and mobile use scenarios, and there will be
different drivers for both environments.
User Advice:
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Developers should familiarize themselves with the components of HTML5 and which of
these are supported i
n which browsers.
Exploit available features of HTML5 now, but recognize that they are based on a draft
standard and are subject to change.
Consider HTML5 when designing applications that require the broadest reach across
the most browsers and devices
Busi
ness Impact:
There is visible momentum around HTML5; however, as with most
technologies, especially on the Web, this largely is occurring outside the enterprise sector
—
among progressive Web designers and among mobile application developers. Web developer
s
are starting to design around new elements in HTML5, such as Canvas, offline mode and video.
Some websites are also starting to abandon support for older browsers such as IE6, even though
those browsers still have significant enterprise share, due to lac
k of support for HTML5.
Developers of RIA
-
based sites that rely on Flash and Silverlight are also starting to evaluate
HTML5 as a possible alternative, over the long
-
term, to continued reliance on Flash and
Silverlight. Mobile developers are interested in
HTML5 as a cross
-
platform technology that avoids
reliance on "native" applications; this is especially poignant with recent changes to Apple's
developer terms of service (TOS) limiting the use of third
-
party programming tools for iPhone
applications.
Benef
it Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
Less than 1% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
Adobe; Apple; Google; Microsoft; Palm; Research In Motion
Mobile Web Applications
Analysis By:
David Mitchell Smith; William Clark
Definition:
Mobile Web applications refer to applications for mobile devices that require only a
Web browser to be installed on the device. They typically use HTML and Ajax (and, increasingly,
HTML5 components), although they may make use of augmented rich Internet a
pplication (RIA)
technologies, such as Flash, JavaFX and Silverlight, but are not written specifically for the device.
Rich, mobile Web applications have roughly equivalent usability to PC
-
rich Web applications (or
RIAs), when designed specifically for the
smaller form factor. Simple mobile Web applications
limit the use of RIA technologies and aim to present information a readable, actionable format.
Mobile Web applications differ from mobile native applications in that they use Web technologies,
and are n
ot limited to the underlying platform for deployment.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
For many years, there has been hope for mobile
Web applications going mainstream. While acceptance in some geographies has been higher
than in others, the expe
rience had been less than ideal, until the introduction of the iPhone by
Apple. Its Safari browser, along with good JavaScript support and overall ease of use, has made
the difference. When the iPhone was introduced, the only way to develop for it was via
Web
programming. Although, subsequently, Apple has moved emphasis toward native applications
(via the Apple App Store), its contribution greatly raised the bar for mobile Web applications. In
addition, Apple and other vendors (for example, PhoneGap, WebApp
.Net, CiUI and MotherApp)
have libraries that allow for a richer
-
than
-
expected user experience, using primarily HTML and
Web technologies. Often, these are used in conjunction with extensions or native code wrappers
for JavaScript that enable mobile Safari
applications to access the accelerometer, geolocation,
multitouch and, in the future, camera, sound and vibration functions.
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Google's Gmail is a Web application without any wrapper that uses Safari's HTML5 functions and
SQLite offline storage to provide a
user experience comparable to the native iPhone Mail
application, without any installation or upgrade. Improvements in other platforms and browsers
(e.g., Google's Android and Palm's webOS), continue this push. Research In Motion (RIM) has
acquired a WebK
it
-
based browser, and is in the process of integrating it into its BlackBerry
smartphones. Nokia has long been focused on the mobile Web, and has continued its efforts and
emphasis on widgets. Nokia's Web Runtime (WRT) framework allows Web applications to
approximate a rich user experience through asynchronous and synchronous functions for
accessing on
-
device resources, such as the user's contact list. Microsoft has incrementally
improved its browser support, and continues to gradually improve its offerings
as it moves toward
its Windows Phone 7 release. The real movement will happen as critical mass for various pieces
of HTML5 materializes; however, testing and interoperability issues will remain due to
implementation differences. For example, the HTML5 spe
c leaves some caching implementation
details to the browser supplier; thus, there will be differences in how offline modes operate. The
proliferation of WebKit
-
based browsers in mobile will help with this. HTML5 is early in the Hype
Cycle, but is seeing ad
option of components of the specification now. The hype has not yet
peaked.
User Advice:
The mobile Web experience is driven by consumer applications first. It is a result of
the direct impact of consumerization on the organization. Organizations wishing t
o address mass
-
scale opportunities through mobile Web adaptation platforms need to consider Netbiscuits,
InfoGin, Volantis Systems and Usablenet. The iPhone points the way toward a new
consciousness of richer user interfaces and services on mobile clients.
Portability among applications in the mobile world remains a challenge. Gartner recommends
Web standard approaches when portability and ease of development are goals.
Other issues such as form factor (small screens are not optimal) and connectivity (inter
mittent
and costly in many cases) also need to be factored into decisions.
HTML5 and Web technologies make most sense for uses when reach across multiple platforms is
a strong requirement. Native approaches make more sense when needing to take advantage of
the leading
-
edge device capabilities.
Business Impact:
Mobile presence, as a result of the success of the iPhone, has become a
critical requirement for reaching consumers and, increasingly, business users. The mobile Web,
as first delivered in a satisfact
ory way by the iPhone, has made mobile Web clients feasible.
While many organizations may have started down a mobile Web path with early
-
generation
technologies such as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), the advent of native applications for
the iPhone a
nd other smartphones has recently been the focus. Online strategies must
increasingly take into account not just a native mobile application experience, and need to reach
more platforms; a mobile Web experience is a good way to do this. The major reasons t
o go with
mobile Web applications are to hedge your bets regarding platforms and to support multiple
platforms. Another consideration is security, because direct access to device software introduces
additional security concerns. Java has not delivered its
promise of cross
-
platform deployment in
mobile (Java Platform, Micro Edition does provide some standardization) in the mobile sector.
Flash and Silverlight are choices only for a subset of devices (i.e., not the iPhone). Mobile Web
applications can, in cer
tain scenarios and with careful attention to application programming
interfaces and extensions, provide a rich user experience that does not equal native applications,
but approximates it at a fraction of the development effort and with greater portability
and
flexibility.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of target audience
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Maturity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
Apple; Google; InfoGin; Microsoft; Netbiscuits; Nokia; Palm; Research In
Motion; Usablenet; Volantis
Recommended Reading:
"Magic Quadrant for Mobile Consumer Application Platforms"
"Using the Web to Improve the Customer Experience"
At the Peak
Cloud APaaS
Analysis By:
Yefim Natis; Eric Knipp
Definition:
Cloud application platform as a service (APaaS) is a development and dep
loyment
environment for cloud
-
based business applications (it's an extended application server "in the
sky"). Cloud APaaS, as the name implies, is offered to IT organizations as a service. Business
applications developed and deployed using a cloud APaaS ar
e business applications as a service
(also known as software as a service [SaaS]). Cloud APaaS is a general
-
purpose platform for
building SaaS applications, which intermediates such concerns as multitenancy and scalability
that complicate the architecture
of global
-
class SaaS projects. Although many older SaaS
applications use embedded proprietary enabling technology and not a general
-
purpose cloud
APaaS, this practice is rapidly becoming outdated.
Cloud APaaS is, in principle, a specialized application ser
ver (and dedicated development
toolset) that is deployed "in the cloud" and offered as a service to software developers. The
technology internal to cloud APaaS that facilitates the service is referred to as a cloud
-
enabled
application platform (CEAP). Some
CEAPs are offered as general
-
purpose products for use by
the cloud APaaS providers, SaaS providers or private
-
cloud IT developers. Other CEAPs are
used only as internal technology to power a particular cloud APaaS and not offered for sale by
themselves. I
n all cases, however, there is a CEAP (proprietary to the cloud APaaS or generally
available) that enables delivery of the cloud APaaS. In addition to cloud APaaS, some providers
also offer cloud
-
enabled data stores, integration middleware, portal technolo
gy and other cloud
application infrastructure services. Cloud APaaS is part of a larger
-
scope application
infrastructure platform as a service (PaaS), which encompasses other middleware
-
style service
offerings, such as database as a service and message
-
ori
ented middleware as a service (see
"Application Infrastructure for Cloud Computing: A Growing Market, 2010"). The more application
infrastructure technology a provider offers, the closer it is to offering a comprehensive PaaS.
Position and Adoption Speed J
ustification:
With the introduction of Force.com by
salesforce.com and Google's App Engine, the cloud APaaS option has become known to the
majority of leading
-
edge IT organizations and most independent software vendors (ISVs). The
Windows Azure operating s
ystem (OS) includes the .NET application platform technology as well
and, although limited in cloud elasticity and multitenancy, begins to further expand the
mainstream cloud APaaS options to software developers. The recent entry of VMware, now in
partners
hip with salesforce.com to offer the VMforce "Spring/Tomcat in the cloud" service, further
increases competition in this market (see "VMware and Salesforce.com: The Beginning of a
Beautiful Friendship?"). In addition to the larger enterprise
-
oriented softw
are firms, myriad startup
firms specializing in various flavors of cloud APaaS abound (see "Who's Who in Application
Platforms for Cloud Computing: The Cloud Specialists"). The interest in cloud APaaS is further
advanced by the growing awareness and intere
st in cloud computing in general, of which cloud
APaaS is a notable part
—
the key component of the cloud middle layer of application
infrastructure PaaS.
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Although current industry attention is focused on the shared
-
hardware, virtualization
-
based model
of
cloud APaaS (for example, the Windows Azure OS and VMforce; see "Reference Architecture
for Multitenancy: Enterprise Computing 'in the Cloud'"), the more
-
advanced shared
-
everything
model (for example, Force.com and App Engine) is gaining traction as well.
There is more
understanding and recognition to be developed here, and, likely, more inflated expectations to
develop as well, but we believe that behind the advancing hype is real market
-
changing
innovation: the gradual transformation of a data center from
a custom platform to a shared
service (although lack of standards will likely serve as a delaying obstacle to large
-
scale
mainstream adoption for a few years).
As with all innovation, leading
-
edge organizations are adopting cloud APaaS first, and the
main
stream IT organizations are cautious and awaiting code and portability standards and
assurance of safety. The industry is likely several years away from well
-
accepted safety of cloud
APaaS for mission
-
critical, mainstream IT projects. However, the clear ad
vantage of ease of use,
rapid time to results, low cost of entry, massive scalability and reliability, and greatly reduced
system support burdens make cloud APaaS especially attractive to startup ISVs and small and
midsize businesses. The new ISV applicati
on as a service will lead to a growing number of
applications that are available only as SaaS and are enabled by a cloud APaaS (and/or the
underlying CEAP), instead of a traditional precloud application server. These unique cloud
-
only
applications will hel
p lead the way for cloud and cloud APaaS acceptance by mainstream IT
organizations in the next five years.
User Advice:
Users of SaaS applications should use the in
-
cloud programming capabilities
offered by the SaaS provider to custom
-
extend the applicatio
n (salesforce.com, NetSuite and
most others offer such specialized programming tools with their cloud applications). These cloud
development offerings are a good place to start getting familiar with the new model of software
development as a service, witho
ut incurring undue risks.
ISVs and, especially, smaller startup ISVs should look at the cloud APaaS opportunity as a
serious long
-
term, game
-
changing option. Its low cost of entry, low burden of operations, and high
degree of productivity and scale enable
less
-
technical ISVs to concentrate on their business
expertise and leave the IT issues to others. The risk of today's cloud APaaS is an always
-
present
degree of vendor lock
-
in. Until there is a standard and shared programming model for cloud
application de
velopment, this risk will remain present, although the less
-
agile shared
-
hardware
cloud APaaS offerings provide substantially greater backward compatibility and dual deployment
opportunity (i.e., on
-
premises/off
-
premises) than the more
-
cloud
-
native shared
-
everything
platforms.
Large
-
enterprise IT departments are typically well
-
invested in managing their IT infrastructure,
and they are not looking to eliminate their data centers. Still, some will likely find attractive the
productivity and the low project in
itiation and system management costs of a cloud APaaS,
compared with traditional on
-
premises application projects. Most users should plan for a hybrid
environment and assure that their application integration infrastructure is prepared to manage
both on
-
pr
emises and cloud
-
based resources.
IT users should be careful evaluating the long
-
term total cost of ownership of cloud APaaS: Its
subscription costs may gradually increase. The pricing strategies for cloud APaaS are also
evolving, and a future change in th
e pricing model can increase the total costs as well. On the
other hand, the increasing competition as new vendors enter the space will likely drive down
costs, at least for some period. If standards emerge, allowing the development and sale of
generalized
cloud APaaS services, prices will also be driven down. In the next two years, the real
costs of cloud APaaS will fluctuate over time, across providers and use patterns.
The frequently raised objection to the use of a cloud APaaS for business system projec
ts is the
mistrust by enterprises of the cloud providers' ability to manage their sensitive business data and
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to provide adequate service
-
level guarantees. Indeed, today, not enough proof exists to ensure
the market of full safety from intrusion for the cl
oud
-
managed data; furthermore, the existing cloud
APaaS leaders do not provide service
-
level agreements (SLAs) matching the quality of service
available in advanced enterprise IT settings. However, users should expect that the emergence of
new technologies
and processes, which ensure dependable protection of data integrity in SaaS
applications, is only a matter of time; moreover, in the long term, professional management of
data by cloud
-
based providers will likely prove more secure than the custom processe
s
developed by most enterprises in
-
house.
Business Impact:
Cloud APaaS is a part of a fundamental and discontinuous change in the
application platform market. It is part of a larger SaaS and cloud
-
computing phenomenon,
amounting to one core change
—
the tr
ansition from IT solutions that are conceived, deployed
and managed under the control of an enterprise IT department to IT solutions that are built using
shared platforms, services and components to deliver significant economies of scale. Just as with
serv
ice
-
oriented architecture's advanced local software sharing (reuse), cloud computing extends
this notion to sharing of a greater variety of computing resources and sharing within much
-
larger
pools of users. It is a step toward greater industrialization of
IT; here, common solutions will be
shared at low costs, and differentiating solutions will be assembled from partly shared and partly
custom software components (the hybrid model). Most IT organizations are or will become, in the
next five years, partly de
pendent on cloud
-
sourced services, and some of them will begin
developing some of their own custom applications on cloud APaaS as well, especially for new
Web
-
facing projects. This will lead to a change in IT organizations and IT skills requirements, and
w
ill result in new models for budgeting and tracking of IT initiatives.
For platform vendors, the change is the new buyer landscape (dominated at first by ISVs). For
application vendors, the change is the relief from multiplatform and multiversion customer
support
burdens, but, additionally, dependence on new technologies and possibly new platform vendors.
Software giants will compete both to establish the next programming standard emerging in the
cloud APaaS space (just like Java Platform, Enterprise Editio
n [EE] and .NET have battled for on
-
premises platform domination for the past decade) and to defend their on
-
premises strengths
from new cloud
-
based challengers. Users will depend more than ever on their ability to perform
application integration across pl
atforms, architectures and languages.
Benefit Rating:
Transformational
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
Apprenda; ForeSoft; Google; Heroku; Iron Mountain; LongJump; Microsoft;
Qrimp; salesforce.com; VMware
Recommended Reading:
"Application Infrastructure for Cloud Computing: A Growing Market,
2010"
"Reference Architecture for Multitenancy: Enterprise Computing 'in the Cloud'"
"Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers"
"Introducing SaaS
-
Enabled Appli
cation Platforms: Features, Roles and Futures"
Compute Infrastructure Services
Analysis By:
Lydia Leong
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Definition:
Compute infrastructure services are a type of infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
offering. They offer on
-
demand computing capacity from a service provider. Rather than buying
servers and running them within its own data center, a business simply obtains t
he necessary
infrastructure from a service provider in a shared, scalable, "elastic" way and accesses it via the
Internet or a private network.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Four main use cases exist for cloud
-
based
compute infrastructure serv
ices: Web hosting, high
-
performance computing, test and
development infrastructure, and general production infrastructure.
The most rapidly maturing use case is Web hosting, as it is convergent with the general Web
hosting market. Features and capabilitie
s formerly available only on dedicated hardware are now
being extended to shared cloud resources.
The use of these services for test and development infrastructure is growing for pilot projects,
rapid application development environments and formal lab env
ironments. As test and
development
-
specific features and management tools improve, formal development environments
will become more common. Batch
-
oriented, compute
-
intensive workloads, such as modeling,
simulation, scientific computing and one
-
time process
ing needs such as transcoding, are highly
cost
-
effective in the cloud.
However, before cloud computing for general workloads can achieve mainstream adoption,
security, risk and compliance issues must be overcome and costs driven down even further.
Most o
f the companies that offer these services are based in the U.S. Although global demand is
robust, adoption will be slowed by a lack of strong competition in other regions, as well as by
fragmentation resulting from users' desire to keep data and processing
in
-
country.
User Advice:
Cloud providers' capabilities vary significantly, but enterprise
-
class clouds, with
strong service
-
level agreements backed by financial penalties, high levels of security, and solid
service and support, have emerged. Businesses ca
n safely adopt these services; the risks are
not significantly greater than other outsourced hosting approaches, assuming the cloud service
used matches the service
-
level and security needs of the application.
Businesses should consider pilot projects for
test and development, compute capacity
augmentation, and Web content and applications. Successful pilots can be expanded into
broader production use.
This market is evolving extremely quickly, so the suitability of these services should be re
-
evaluated a
t least once every six months. Hybrid public
-
private cloud offerings, enabling "cloud
bursting" for on
-
demand capacity and business continuity, will become available at the end of
2010.
Business Impact:
Cloud compute infrastructure services will be broadly
advantageous to IT
organizations. The cost benefits, driven primarily by automation, will be particularly significant for
small and midsize businesses. Larger enterprises will benefit primarily from greater flexibility,
rather than direct cost reduction.
In the short term, the benefits will be driven primarily by rapid provisioning that requires minimal
manual intervention. Over the longer term, more system management tasks will be automated,
leading to more efficient infrastructure management.
The meter
ed
-
by
-
use attribute of these services will result in more efficient use of capacity. The
self
-
service nature of these services will empower employees outside of IT operations, improving
developer productivity and making it easier for business buyers to obt
ain infrastructure.
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Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
Amazon; AT&T; GoGrid (previously ServePath); Rackspace; Savvis;
Terremark; Verizon Business
Private Cloud Computing
Analysis By:
Tho
mas Bittman; Donna Scott
Definition:
Cloud computing is a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT
-
enabled
capabilities are delivered as a service to customers using Internet technologies. In the broadest
terms, private cloud computing is a form
of cloud computing in which service access is limited,
and/or the customer has some control/ownership of the service implementation. This contrasts
with public cloud computing, where access to the service is completely open, and the service
implementation
is completely hidden from the customer. For our purposes here, the focus will be
on private cloud computing that is internal to an organization
—
in other words, the customer has
control/ownership of the service, and service access is limited to the inter
nal organization.
However, two other variants of private cloud computing (not discussed here) are community cloud
computing (in which a third
-
party provider offers services to a limited set of customers) and virtual
private cloud computing, in which a thir
d
-
party provider offers the services, but the customer has
some control over the implementation, usually in terms of limiting hardware/software sharing.
Organizations building a private cloud service are trying to emulate public cloud
-
computing
providers,
but within their control and on
-
premises. In most cases, this is based on a virtualization
foundation, but private cloud computing requires more (see "The Architecture of a Private Cloud
Service"), including standardization, automation, self
-
service tools
and service management,
metering, and chargeback, to name a few. Many of these technologies are still evolving, and early
deployments often require custom tools. Regardless, the biggest challenges with private cloud
computing tend to be process
-
related, cu
ltural, political and organizational.
Unlike public cloud providers, which maintain a small number of offered services, enterprises
have many complex and interrelated services to deliver. A private cloud
-
computing service can fit
within a broader portfolio
of services delivered by a real
-
time infrastructure.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Although some of the technologies required for
private cloud computing exist, many do not, or are immature. Many early examples of private
cloud
-
computing serv
ices are focused on development and test provisioning. However, the
private cloud has become a marketing buzzword for most of the largest IT vendors, and many
new products have shipped or will be shipped in 2010 to address technology gaps. Since private
cl
oud computing is a natural evolution for the hot server virtualization trend, no vendor wants to
miss the "next big thing." The hype is already tremendous, and it's going to increase during the
next year.
Enterprise interest is already high, with 76% of re
spondents in a recent poll saying they plan to
pursue a private cloud
-
computing strategy by 2012 (see "Private Cloud Computing Plans From
Conference Polls").
User Advice:
Let service requirements lead your private cloud
-
computing plans, rather than
technol
ogies (see "Getting Started With Private Cloud: Services First").
Create a business case for developing a full private cloud service, versus using public cloud
services, or modernizing established architectures.
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Consider the long
-
term road map for your pri
vate cloud service (see "Private Cloud Computing:
The Steppingstone to the Cloud"). Build with the potential to take advantage of hybrid sourcing
(using both your private cloud services and public) at some point in the future.
Start slowly with development
/test lab provisioning; short
-
term, low
-
service
-
level agreement
computing requests; and simple, non
-
mission
-
critical Web services (e.g., self
-
service requests
and dynamic provisioning for Web environments). Pilot a private cloud implementation to gain
supp
ort for shared services and to build transparency in IT service costing and chargeback.
Implement change and configuration management processes and tools prior to implementing
private cloud services to ensure that you can standardize on the software stacks
to be delivered
through self
-
service provisioning and adequately maintain them.
Business Impact:
Most private cloud implementations will evolve from a virtualization
foundation. Virtualization reduces capital costs, but private cloud computing will reduce the cost
of operations and enable faster service delivery. It's primarily attractive to the busi
ness, because
it enables agility
—
self
-
service ordering of frequently requested services, as well as dynamic
provisioning. Test lab provisioning is an early example of a private cloud service that enables
testers to improve time
-
to
-
market and efficiencies
, while labor costs associated with provisioning
are reduced.
Private cloud computing also changes the relationship between the business and IT, transforming
how IT is consumed. The shift to services (rather than implementation and assets), pay
-
per
-
use
and
chargeback enables the business to focus on rapidly changing service requirements and
consuming IT based on variable costs, while IT can focus on efficient implementation and
sourcing (including the potential to leverage public cloud services in the futur
e, without negatively
affecting the business).
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
Abiquo; Adaptive Computing; BMC; CA; DynamicOps; Elastra; Eucalyptus;
HP; IBM; newScale; Novell; Surgient
; VMLogix; VMware
Recommended Reading:
"The Architecture of a Private Cloud Service"
"Private Cloud Computing: The Steppingstone to the Cloud"
"The Spectrum of Public
-
to
-
Private Cloud Computing"
"Getting Started With Private Cloud: Services First"
"Building Private Clouds With Real
-
Time Infrastructure Architectures"
"Q&A: The Many Aspects of Private Cloud Computing"
"Private Cloud Computing Plans From Conference Polls"
Semantic Web
Analysis By:
Rita E. Knox; David Cearley
Definition:
The Semantic We
b is a grand vision for the future of the Web, as well as a collection
of individual technologies to implement that vision. The Semantic Web was first described in
detail by Tim Berners
-
Lee in 2000. It envisions a shift from a "Web of documents" to a "Web
of
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data," where information is richly described by tags or links embedded in documents and Web
pages or other data structures. The Semantic Web uses an array of technology standards,
formats and languages (for example, XML, Resource Description Framework [
RDF] and Web
Ontology Language [OWL]) to define information properties and relationships, and connect Web
components to each other.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Semantic Web standards define how to connect content
components without regard for what
the components themselves contain or define. Those
specifics are developed and maintained by groups with domain expertise. For example, the
subgroup for publishing works on branding and digital rights; and a healthcare subgroup works on
disease monitoring
and linking patients to clinical trials. There's no structural similarity or
relationship between the different subgroups or overarching model that's evolving. Domains have
their own semantic models (for example, Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine [SNOM
ED] for
healthcare, and eXtensible Business Reporting Language [XBRL] for finance) that provide
specific value, but are not attempts to define syntactic or semantic models that can cover all
information.
A major advance in the Semantic Web, the one that ha
s pushed it along on the Hype Cycle, has
been the explosion of social networking and social tagging with sites such as Facebook,
YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Wikipedia and Twitter. Users directly and indirectly add tags by
making comments, adding pointers to
other websites, and embedding links in everything they
communicate about.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Since its unveiling, the Semantic Web has been
full of promise, but largely unfulfilled. In the last few years this has changed, as interes
t in and
awareness of semantic tagging and mining technologies has grown.
Enterprises are investigating how to mine their huge content corpora to extract
intellectual property, prior thinking, research findings and other information that may be
relevant to
solving today's problems. Some content dates back many years and includes
both electronic and non
-
electronic records.
Some enterprises are revisiting their data to see if they have in the past conducted
research or pursued product development relevant to
what they're investigating in 2010.
This is to learn from the earlier work but also to avoid pursuits that may lead to failure or
suspended projects, as they have in the past.
A few enterprises are working to make their corporate memory accessible to all w
ho
need it. They are looking to Semantic Web technologies to see how they might do this.
Even with this growing interest in exploiting semantic technologies, it will be a long time before a
significant part of the Web is semantically tagged with rich OWL/R
DF ontologies. It is social
tagging that is preceding formal processes. This "informal" Semantic Web of linked references
lacks the "reasoning power" afforded by RDF. The tags don't capture the explanation for why the
content is linked. The links aren't la
beled
—
with "is," "has" or "happened earlier"
—
as they are
with RDF. This tagging achieves the goal of creating a web of connected information, but leaves
finding and navigating the connections to the users.
The formal principles of the Semantic Web are
being adopted earlier by some groups, such as life
sciences, where there are complex data relationships and the value of highly structured
ontologies is high. Web pages are adding semantics via semantic hypertext. Maturing
technologies and standards, along
with a broader view of the Semantic Web that embraces
multiple approaches to creating linked data (for example, tagging schemes using microformats),
are generating a renewed interest in semantics. As Semantic Web experiences a resurgence with
the "social"
Web, we expect to see it climb up the Hype Cycle curve.
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User Advice:
Identify existing ontologies that are specific to your domain and use them where
there is a need to define extensive formal vocabularies or complex data relationships. If possible,
use v
ocabularies that are specific to a smaller community (for example, business partners or
suppliers) but have growing adoption and developing support by vendors. Industries where there
is the most activity and that are most likely to be financially valuable
include life sciences,
healthcare, library sciences, defense, government and financial services.
Business Impact:
Delivering information across the Web with machine
-
readable and
interpretable semantics offers the potential for enhanced application/site int
eroperability,
automation of information discovery, more contextually relevant searches, and search options
that are difficult or impossible without rich semantic information. In addition to tagging data
elements with basic vocabularies (for example, taggi
ng items to identify personal and
organizational information), Semantic Web ontologies enable the creation of more
-
sophisticated
concepts, enabling systems to infer relationships across data sets where they have not been
explicitly defined
—
thus improving
the quality of content management, information access,
system interoperability and database integration.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
Less than 1% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
IBM; Mondeca; Ontoprise; Oracle; Reuters; SAS; SchemaLogic; Thetus;
TopQuadrant
Augmented Reality
Analysis By:
Tuong Nguyen; Jackie Fenn; CK Lu
Definition:
Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that superimposes graphics, audio and other
virtual enhancem
ents over a live view of the real world. It is this "real world" element that
differentiates AR from virtual reality. AR aims to enhance users' interaction with the environment,
rather than separating them from it. The term has existed since the early 1990
s, when it
originated in aerospace manufacturing.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Although AR has existed for the past two decades,
it has become practical in the mobile space only in the past year. The maturity of a number of
mobile technologie
s
—
such as GPS, cameras, accelerometers, digital compasses, broadband,
image processing and face/object recognition software
—
has made AR a viable technology on
mobile devices. As all these technologies converge in maturity, AR has also benefited from a
growing number of open operating systems (promoting native development), the increasing
popularity of application stores (increasing awareness and availability of applications), and the
rising availability of overlay data, such as databases, online maps an
d Wikipedia. The
combination of these features and technologies also allows AR to be used in a number of
different applications, including enhancing user interfaces, providing consumers with information
and education, offering potential for marketing and a
dvertising, and augmenting games and
entertainment applications.
We expect AR's visibility and the hype surrounding AR to increase in the next two years. For
example, the AR browser vendor Layar boasts more than 700,000 active users. The vendor is
working
with LG (to preload its application on new Android devices) and Samsung (to be
supported on bada). Nokia is also promoting AR via its Point & Find solution.
Despite the hype and potential, a number of factors will slow adoption. Device requirements for
AR
in mobile devices are rigorous and will restrict usage to higher
-
end devices. Furthermore,
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although mobile services provide a great use case for AR, the experience is restricted for the
aforementioned reason. Mobile devices have smaller screens than other
consumer electronics
devices, such as laptops and even handheld gaming consoles, restricting the information that can
be conveyed to the end user. The interface (a small handheld device that needs to be held in
front of you) limits usage to bursts, rather
than continued interaction with the real world. GPS
technology also lacks enough precision to provide perfect location data but can be enhanced by
hardware such as accelerometers and gyroscopes or magnetometers. As with other location
-
based services (LBSs)
, privacy is a potential concern and a hindrance to adoption. As a newer
solution, there are also issues with compatibility. Competing AR browsers are using proprietary
API and data structure, making the AR information from one vendor's browser incompatibl
e with
that from other browsers.
User Advice:
Communications service providers
(CSPs):
Examine whether AR would enhance the
user experience of your existing services. Compile a list of AR developers with which
you could partner, rather than building your o
wn AR from the ground up. Provide end
-
to
-
end professional services for specific vertical markets, including schools, healthcare
institutions and real
-
estate agencies, in which AR could offer significant value. A
controlled hardware and software stack from
database to device will ensure a quality
user experience for these groups. Educate consumers about the impact of AR on their
bandwidth, to avoid being blamed for users going over their data allowance.
Mobile device manufacturers:
Recognize that AR provides
an innovative interface for
your mobile devices. Open discussions with developers about the possibility of
preinstalling application clients on your devices, and document how developers can
access device features. Build up alliances with AR database owner
s and game
developers to provide exclusive AR applications/services for your devices. Secure
preloading agreements and examine how you could integrate AR into your user
interfaces or operating systems.
AR developers:
Take a close look at whether your busin
ess model is sustainable, and
consider working with CSPs or device manufacturers to expand your user base, perhaps
by offering white
-
label versions of your products. Integrate AR with existing tools, such
as browsers or maps, to provide an uninterrupted us
er experience. Build up your own
databases to provide exclusive services through AR applications. Extend your AR
application as a platform that individual users and third
-
party providers can use to create
their own content. Explore how to apply AR through
different applications/services to
improve the user experience, with the aim of predicting what information users need in
different contexts.
Providers of search engines and other Web services:
Get into AR as an extension of
your search business. AR is a n
atural way to display search results in many contexts.
Mapping vendors:
Add AR to your 3D map visualizations.
Early adopters:
Examine how AR can bring value to your organization and your
customers by offering branded information overlays. For workers who a
re mobile
(including factory, warehousing, maintenance, emergency response, queue
-
busting or
medical staff), identify how AR could deliver context
-
specific information at the point of
need or decision.
Business Impact:
AR browsers and applications will be
the focus area of innovation and
differentiation for players in the mobile device market in 2010. There are interesting branding
opportunities for companies and businesses. Points of interest (POIs) can be branded with a
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"favicon" (that is, a favorites or
website icon) that appears when the POI is selected. Companies
such as Mobilizy are offering white
-
label solutions that allow core Wikitude functionality to be
customized. AR products such as Wikitude can lead to numerous LBS advertising opportunities.
CSP
s and their brand partners can leverage AR's ability to enhance the user experience within
their LBS offerings. This can provide revenue via a la carte charges, recurring subscription fees
or advertising. Handset vendors can incorporate AR to enhance user
interfaces, and use it as a
competitive differentiator in their device portfolio. The growing popularity of AR opens up market
opportunity for application developers, Web service providers and mapping vendors to provide
value and content to partners in the
value chain, as well as opportunity for CSPs, handset
vendors, brands and advertisers.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
Less than 1% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
GeoVector; Layar; Mobilizy; Nokia; TonchiDot
Recommended
Reading:
"Emerging Technology Analysis: Augmented Reality Shows What
Mobile Devices Can Do"
"Cool Vendors in Consumer Mobile Cloud Services, 2010"
"Context
-
Aware Computing Context Drives Next
-
Generation User Interfaces"
Cloud Service Integration
Analysis B
y:
Benoit Lheureux; Jess Thompson; Eric Knipp
Definition:
Cloud service integration is not new, per se, but it is a relatively new application of
integration software or integration as a service to IT project scenarios that involve the direct
integration o
f cloud service with each other (cloud
-
to
-
cloud service integration), or with on
-
premises applications and data (cloud service to on
-
premises integration). Cloud service
integration is increasingly an IT enabler for SaaS (e.g., salesforce.com), PaaS (e.g.,
Google App
Engine), cloud service brokerage (e.g., StrikeIron) and a wide range of other cloud service.
Cloud service integration can be solved using integration technology and service that are similar
to integration solutions used to implement on
-
premise
s (internal or integration) and traditional e
-
commerce (B2B integration) projects. Such integration functionality includes:
Secure, reliable communications to connect cloud
-
based and on
-
premises functionality
Translation tools to convert business data (whe
n required, which is more often the case
than not)
Service orchestration or process flow to disposition service and process events
—
e.g.,
routing (propagating) a customer update or order approval from one application to
another
Optional governance
technology to define and manage policies related to remote
execution of service and access to data
Adapter technology to integrate with various on
-
premises applications and data
Such integration functionality can be delivered as software, service, or a com
bination of both.
Cloud service providers typically offer multiple approaches to cloud service integration
—
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typically, a combination of the Web APIs, some form of lightweight, on
-
premises integration
technology, plus a choice of cloud service integration
delivered either as software or service from
one or more third
-
party technology providers. Another popular form of cloud service integration
solution is packaged integration
—
i.e., prebuilt solutions (from vendors such as Appirio and
Celigo), such as inte
grating contact information between salesforce.com and Google. Cloud
service providers vary widely in terms of the quality and breadth of solutions they offer for cloud
service integration. Any IT user of cloud service from more than one provider must addr
ess a key
issue: leverage cloud service integration from one or more of their providers, or use their own?
Many IT users leverage on
-
premises integration software, e.g., from Informatica or Software AG,
to address cloud service integration
—
most providers
of integration appliances or middleware
originally targeted at on
-
premises integration problems have been enhanced in recent years to
also integration with at least popular cloud provider such as salesforce.com. Regardless of which
options for integration
a cloud provider offers, IT users should consider their own requirements
and preferences, which may include in
-
house and B2B integration skills and infrastructure or
leveraging some form of integration as a service, either from their cloud provider or fro
m a third
-
party provider.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
The rapid adoption of cloud service including
SaaS
-
based functionality during the past few years, combined with increasing demand from end
users for improved integration of business data
and processes between cloud service and on
-
premises applications and data, has created an acute need for solutions to address cloud service
integration. The trigger for such solutions occurred several years ago, and rapid adoption of these
solutions has re
vealed itself in a high
-
profile way via so
-
called "vendor ecosystems" of cloud
-
computing/SaaS providers that offer solutions to this problem. For example, salesforce.com
customers that need a cloud service integration solution can now choose from dozens of
technology partners and solutions (see "Seeding the Cloud: B2B Flexibility Drives SaaS
Adoption"). Google offers its own Secure Data Connector in conjunction with IT partners to
address cloud service integration requirements for Google Apps and applicatio
ns deployed within
Google App Engine (see "Google App Engine Comes Closer to Enterprise Adoption"). IBM
recently acquired Cast Iron Systems (acquired by IBM in May 2010) to strengthen its cloud
service integration capabilities within its WebSphere product
line and has indicated that it plans to
also leverage Cast Iron's cloud service integration in cloud service offerings that are in
development. Cloud service integration is also a key enabler for cloud service brokerage, where
providers intermediate and ad
d value to cloud service prior to consumption (see "Three Types of
Cloud Brokerages Will Enhance Cloud Services").
Although cloud service integration has been around only a few years, marketing hype and IT end
-
user interest have been high and are pushing u
sers' expectations quickly to the Peak of Inflated
Expectations on the Hype Cycle.
Most solutions that are targeted at the cloud service integration requirement have evolved from
some form of integration software or service, including enterprise service bu
s suites, B2B
gateway software or integration as a service (IaaS; see "Magic Quadrant for Application
Infrastructure for Back
-
End Application Integration Projects", "Magic Quadrant for B2B Gateway
Providers" and "Magic Quadrant for Integration Service Prov
iders"). For example, Boomi, Cast
Iron Systems, Informatica and Pervasive Software
—
prominent providers of cloud service
integration solutions
—
all extended or shifted their go
-
to
-
market strategies and integration
solutions portfolios a few years ago fro
m more
-
traditional forms of integration. They each heavily
leveraged integration functionality previously sold for use in noncloud
-
based integration projects,
and used that as the basis for new solutions developed more specifically to solve cloud service
i
ntegration problems. This included adding new capabilities, such as cloud
-
based integration
development tools and support for Web APIs published by cloud
-
computing and SaaS vendors
and packaged integration for frequently occurring cloud integration scenari
os. Vendors such as
Cast Iron Systems and Pervasive Software also now deliver their solutions in a hybrid delivery
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model that includes integration software and integration as a service, which allows users to mix
on
-
premises integration software with IaaS,
where necessary, to meet diverse cloud service
integration project requirements. There are a large number of diverse providers for solutions of
cloud service integration, some of which we provide analysis with "Who's Who in Cloud
-
Computing/SaaS Integration
, Volume 1", "Who's Who in Cloud
-
Computing/SaaS Integration,
Volume 2" and "Cool Vendors in Multienterprise B2B, 2010".
The impact of this approach is that many cloud service integration solutions, unlike many other
new IT solutions, are already relatively
mature. Many aspects of core functionality, such as
translation and adapters for integrating with on
-
premises applications, benefit from years of prior
multigenerational product development. However, available features, such as support for Web
APIs and ne
w cloud
-
based integrated development tools, may still be in early generations.
Because the core technology is sound, companies implementing cloud service integration
solutions
—
including IT end users and as well cloud providers including SaaS, PaaS and cl
oud
service brokerage
—
can be confident that these solutions are likely sufficiently mature to support
their B2B projects. These factors are driving cloud service integration rapidly along the Hype
Cycle from its prior position near the Technology Trigger
up to the Peak of Inflated Expectations,
after which we expect it to quickly pass through the Trough of Disillusionment and then move up
onto the Plateau of Productivity.
User Advice:
When available, consider packaged integration as a solution for specifi
c, usually
pairwise, integrations between cloud service and on
-
premises applications and data.
In conjunction with the advice above, cloud providers should look for opportunities to
develop packaged integration solutions to simplify integration for their c
ustomers,
particularly for IT end users that lack sufficient IT skills to do integration themselves.
Cloud providers, including SaaS and PaaS providers, and cloud service brokerages,
should consider using mature solutions for cloud service integration as a
way to simplify
integration of cloud functionality with on
-
premises applications, which will lower barriers
to adoption.
Although solutions for traditional e
-
commerce versus cloud
-
computing
-
based integration
scenarios are often distinct, look for opportun
ities to leverage a common integration
solution (either software or integration as a service) to solve both types of B2B
integration.
Avoid using a particular cloud service integration solution if it does not resonate with
your own internal (A2A) and exter
nal (B2B) integration strategy
—
for example, you may
be able to leverage existing investments for A2A and B2B integration to address cloud
service integration.
Business Impact:
Companies across all industries and geographies that use cloud service will
ev
entually want to integrate that functionality with on
-
premises applications and data to improve
multienterprise process and data integrity. Doing so can save money (e.g., by reducing manual
data entry using a browser) and generate revenue (e.g., by improvi
ng customer satisfaction and
competitive advantage by ensuring rapid business process execution or that master customer
data is automatically synchronized between cloud
-
based and on
-
premises business software).
Cloud service integration will also be a key
enabler for important emerging cloud service such as
PaaS and cloud service brokerage. Therefore, cloud service integration will have a high impact
on the cloud
-
computing scenario.
Benefit Rating:
High
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Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of target audience
Matur
ity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
Apigent; Appirio; Avankia; Bluewolf; Boomi; Cast Iron Systems; Celigo;
eBRIDGE Software; iWay Software; Informatica; InterWeave Smart Solutions; Jitterbit; Loren
Data; LTech; Magic Software Enterprises; OpenSpan; Perva
sive Software; QLogitek; RevX
Systems; Sesame Software; SGC Software; SnapLogic
Recommended Reading:
"Google App Engine Comes Closer to Enterprise Adoption"
"Who's Who in Cloud
-
Computing/SaaS Integration, Volume 1"
"Who's Who in Cloud
-
Computing/SaaS Integr
ation, Volume 2"
"Cool Vendors in Multienterprise B2B, 2010"
"SaaS Integration: How to Choose the Best Approach"
"Seeding the Cloud: B2B Flexibility Drives SaaS Adoption"
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Analysis By:
Yefim Natis
Definition:
A platform as a service (PaaS) is a generally accepted reference to the middle layer
of the cloud technology stack that Gartner refers to as application infrastructure services (see
"NIST and Gartner Cloud Approaches Are More Similar Than Different"). The
term "application
infrastructure" is often used to mean "middleware" and vice versa
—
in traditional contexts and in
the cloud context as well. PaaS is a highly hyped notion that, in fact, has a partly uncertain
meaning. A comprehensive PaaS suite, usuall
y depicted in cloud diagrams, is a broad collection
of application infrastructure services offered by a cloud service provider. Such comprehensive
PaaS suites would include technologies of application servers, database management systems
(DBMSs), portals,
application and data integration, business process management suites
(BPMSs), messaging and many other forms of application infrastructure
—
all formatted to be
offered as a service. In reality, however, no providers yet offer anything approaching such a
c
omprehensive offering, nor even speak of such plans. The hype surrounding the notion of PaaS
is largely focused on a subset of the complete layer
—
the cloud application platform as a service
(APaaS). Users are well
-
advised to carefully evaluate vendor cla
ims about their support of PaaS,
with the understanding that a "PaaS" offering may, in reality, be a reference to a relatively small
subset of the complete set of application infrastructure services.
As mentioned, APaaS alone is only a functional subset of
a comprehensive PaaS suite; however,
with time, the leading implementations of APaaS are likely to add the functionality of most of the
PaaS functional spectrum, blurring the distinction between these offerings. Already, many include
a dedicated DBMS as a
service, and some degree of integration, portal and BPMS as a service
as well. However, not all future comprehensive PaaS offerings will be centered around an
application server functionality. Some will evolve from business process management
technologies
as a service, composition and portal technologies as a service, and from other initial
core use scenarios. As is the case of application platform products deployed on
-
premises, the
future comprehensive cloud PaaS will come from providers of different core
expertise, and will
offer competitive capabilities while retaining the differentiation in their long
-
term technology
outlooks. Much as with precloud middleware, leading vendors will entice customers with unique
features, and will retain them with high swi
tching costs
—
the price of using the differentiated
capabilities of the platform. Today, however, much of the discussion of PaaS is, in fact, dealing
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with subsets, such as APaaS, BPMS as a service and others, and the recognition of the distinct
comprehens
ive PaaS suite is relatively low.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Much of the attention in cloud computing has been
focused on software as a service in prior years, and on infrastructure as
a service (IaaS) more
recently
—
especially on the private cloud rendition of IaaS. However, as leading software
vendors begin to adjust their long
-
term strategies to reflect the emerging importance of cloud
computing to their customer and prospect bases,
they are developing plans for establishing a
leadership position in the middle layer of PaaS. Historically, leadership of the traditional on
-
premises software market required leadership in establishing the prevailing programming models
and architectures f
or software developers, and in building ecosystems of partners around these
platform standards. In cloud computing, analogously, the leadership of the market will require
leadership and influence on the evolution of PaaS standards and practices. Microsoft
introduced
Azure to advance its .NET architecture to the cloud, and VMware acquired SpringSource and
partnered with salesforce.com, Google and others to bring the established enterprise Java
programming to the cloud. Salesforce.com itself leads with a nati
ve cloud
-
based architecture of
Force.com, and Google positioned Web
-
specialized Python as the initial platform for cloud
computing, then extended it to Java to attract enterprise developers as well. Each vendor also
takes a different approach to the PaaS D
BMS services
—
each has implemented its own
proprietary model, from Google BigTable, to the salesforce.com DBMS, to Microsoft SQL Azure,
which, despite appearances, is not a port of Microsoft SQL Server. The process of establishing
the platform architectur
e and standards for PaaS is in its early stages, but some of the largest
software vendors are already actively engaged. We expect the next two years to see a strong
increase in innovation and competition in the PaaS space, with the introduction of new serv
ices
and a move toward comprehensive PaaS suites. All this activity will push the notion of PaaS
toward the Peak of Inflated Expectations and beyond, to the inevitable Trough of Disillusionment.
User Advice:
At present, the component technologies of PaaS a
re at different stages of
development. APaaS and integration as a service have larger communities of vendors and users
than DBMSs, BPMSs or portal services, although all are growing at notable rates. Still, as PaaS
component technologies evolve, users shou
ld select the services for their projects carefully and
based on specific requirements, not expecting just any provider to deliver a comprehensive end
-
to
-
end PaaS offering.
When engaged in long
-
term planning, users should give preference to vendors that ar
e more
likely to accumulate a comprehensive PaaS offering over time. Unlike on
-
premises
—
where
users can take a best
-
of
-
breed approach to selecting component technologies from different
vendors
—
"in the cloud," the winning scenario will be where many pla
tform requirements of an
application are provided out of one data center of one cloud provider.
Users who delay adoption of PaaS to sometime in the future, when the standards, leading
providers and best practices are better established, should invest now i
n building expertise in
service
-
oriented architecture (SOA) and, in particular, the event
-
driven form of SOA. SOA is a
bridge from the traditional computing in the enterprise data center to the hybrid model of
computing, engaging both enterprise data cente
r and cloud resources.
Business Impact:
In the next five years, new, strong competitive PaaS offerings from industry
-
leading providers will alter the business of engineering and delivering software solutions to
enterprises and consumers. A mature, function
al, low
-
cost, high
-
productivity PaaS will be the
foundation for a wave of innovation in business application services. The new levels of agility,
resource sharing and productivity of software engineering will change the way IT organizations
plan and develo
p software solutions, the kind of skills that they will require, and the way they will
be managed, evaluated and budgeted. Enterprise IT will refocus on its core differentiated
business and will become more responsive, but the costs of IT will not decline;
rather, they will be
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rearranged, with more spending going to cloud service providers in the form of subscriptions and
more internal IT spending focused on the management and integration of the enterprise's IT
resources (internal and cloud
-
sourced), as wel
l as custom engineering of specialized "family
jewels" software solutions.
Benefit Rating:
Transformational
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
Google; Microsoft; salesforce.com; Tibco Software; VMware
Recomme
nded Reading:
"Application Infrastructure for Cloud Computing: A Growing Market,
2010"
"Reference Architecture for Multitenancy: Enterprise Computing 'in the Cloud'"
"Creating Cloud Solutions: A Decision Framework"
"Cloud Computing Key Initiative Overview"
"Key Issues for Platform Middleware, 2010"
"Microsoft AppFabric: A Platform for the Cloud Era Is Under Construction"
"NIST and Gartner Cloud Approaches Are More Similar Than Different"
"Economics of the Cloud: Business Value Assessments"
"Cloud Engineerin
g: Somebody Has to Do It"
"Predicts 2010: Application Infrastructure for Cloud Computing"
"Predicts 2010: Application Platforms for Cloud Computing"
"Scalability, Elasticity and Multitenancy on the Road to Cloud Services"
"Who's Who in Application Platform
s for Cloud Computing: The Cloud Specialists"
"Who's Who in Application Platforms for Cloud Computing: The Enterprise Generalists"
"Tibco's Silver Cloud
-
Computing Platform Shows Potential"
"On Apples, Oranges, Amazon and Google"
"Cloud Computing Will Cemen
t the Mainstream Role of SOA"
"Who's Who in Cloud
-
Computing/SaaS Integration, Volume 1"
"Portals in the Cloud Will Take Five Forms"
"Enterprise Portals in the Cloud"
"Data In the Cloud: Adaptations of Data Management Technologies and Providers"
"Managing
Business Processes 'In the Cloud' and Outside the Cloud"
Social
-
Data Portability
Analysis By:
Brian Prentice
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Definition:
Social
-
data portability encompasses the technology, semantic standards and
intellectual property (IP) issues associated with data emana
ting from social
-
networking
applications. It is important in establishing the mechanisms that allow individuals or organizations
to control where their personal information is stored and how it is used, and greatly adds to the
convenience of use, avoiding
social
-
data duplication and managing multiple logins. Social
-
data
portability is tied closely to persona management, also covered in the Hype Cycle on Social
Software.
There is a growing view that the data emanating from and flowing through social
-
networki
ng
applications should not be bound to proprietary social graphs
—
that is, the data models (or
representational maps of the relationships among people in a specific context) implicit in social
platforms and social
-
networking applications such as Facebook,
MySpace and LinkedIn. Social
-
data portability is an emerging set of standards to achieve that objective. Examples include
OpenID (a framework for representing user
-
centric digital identification), Attention Profiling
Markup Language (APML; used to consoli
date and aggregate individual user's ranked interests),
and Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML; used for the exchange of reading lists between
Really Simple Syndication [RSS] and Atom news readers).
Social
-
data portability should not be confused with
social
-
network interoperability, which is
focused on shared functional capabilities and data transfer between social
-
networking sites.
Social
-
data portability involves data formats that should act as key enablers of more
-
effective
interoperability. Critica
lly, these control mechanisms must also evolve to support privacy (which
will have global variances because of differing legal and cultural requirements). Individuals and
organizations should be allowed to revoke access to a piece of data anytime after it
has been
transferred. Thus, social
-
data portability isn't just an issue of whether these standards are
supported, but also whether the service
-
level agreements of social
-
networking sites support the
broader spirit and objective of having these sites in the
first place.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
At the center of social
-
data portability are the
machinations of the social
-
networking vendor community. On the surface, the idea that the data
resulting from an individual's association with, or con
tribution to, a social
-
networking environment
should be controlled by that individual is hardly contentious. But for organizations whose
commercialization model and corporate values are tied to hegemony over the social graph, such
data is a distinct proble
m. The challenge for many social
-
software providers is to be seen as
being open and interoperable, while maintaining a role as the people's central repository for
personal information.
Users did not see this balancing act as a problem until the hi
gh
-
profile misstep of Facebook's
Beacon advertising strategy of 2007, and the related controversy in 2009 over Facebook's terms
of service data ownership rights. Now, the risks associated with proprietary control of an ever
-
increasing social graph are more
accurately understood. The result is more discussion of about
how to scale social networking without creating longer
-
term dependencies on third parties for
access to the underlying data. That discussion is being driven by groups such as the
DataPortabilit
y Project (
www.dataportability.org
), and is being manifested in a range of open
technologies, such as OpenID, OAuth, APML and OPML. How social
-
software sites
accommodate these open standards is still an evolvin
g issue.
The case of OpenID is instructive of the challenges. Participating in the OpenID framework can
be done either as an "issuing party," a "relying party" or, ideally, both. An issuing party just makes
user accounts OpenID
-
compatible, while relying pa
rties allow users to sign on to their sites with
credentials from other issuing parties. Although there has been significant support for OpenID,
many organizations only want to participate as issuers. Doing so allows their users to logon to all
replying pa
rties, while requiring newcomers to still register directly on their own environments.
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Social
-
networking vendors are applying a range of different approaches. Google brought two key
technologies to market
—
OpenSocial (a set of APIs that any site can imple
ment to create a
common set of functional capabilities) and Friend Connect (a way to uniformly present and
provide access to the repositories of social data). Facebook Connect is a set of APIs that allows
authentication, identity management, friend access
and privacy services. Because of Facebook's
dominant position in social networking, many sites, such as Hulu, Digg and CBS.com, support
Facebook Connect. MySpace has a similar strategy, called MySpaceID. Another interesting
development is Diaspora. An alte
rnative approach to sites like Facebook, Diaspora is based on
the idea of independently owned data stores that exchange data using many of these protocols
(OpenID, OAuth, APML and OPML, etc.). While a technically sophisticated strategy, it remains to
be se
en whether Diaspora will gel into a meaningful product or whether enough people will
gravitate to it.
User Advice:
CIOs and IT leaders will need to determine how social networks could potentially
integrate into their broader enterprise information manageme
nt strategies. They will need to
develop plans for social
-
data portability to complement their social
-
media policies. When it comes
to social networking, enterprise IT still remains focused on whether access to external sites
should be allowed, the impact
of the sites on productivity and whether to consider social
-
networking solutions from enterprise technology providers like IBM, Microsoft or Oracle. Social
-
data portability has mostly been of interest to segments of the vendor community directly
engaged in
delivering social
-
networking solutions, along with advocacy groups such as the
DataPortability Project.
This exposes a common shortcoming of enterprise IT organizations
—
a penchant to focus on
specific products and vendors, rather than on the opportuniti
es and risks associated with
disruptive technologies. In the case of social computing, the asset and, hence, the control point,
is not the application or the site, but is the social map behind it. Products, therefore, are far less
important than data. As e
nterprise IT organizations begin seeing social networking more as a set
of collaboration patterns to exploit, rather than as just a set of products to manage, they will need
to focus their attention on ensuring social
-
network integration into broader enter
prise information
management strategies. The ability to freely move social
-
networking data around will be critical to
realizing those efforts.
Business Impact:
Social
-
data portability will enable organizations to explore the potential of new
social
-
oriente
d solutions without having to be overly prescriptive about which sites end users can
access. This is important, because organizations will likely have to embrace their employees' use
of external social
-
networking sites and applications. Additionally, if th
ere is a need to build
intercompany or interorganizational social graphs, then enterprise IT organizations can avoid
problems emanating from the efforts of walling off their social graphs.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of target audien
ce
Maturity:
Emerging
Customer Service Process Integration
Analysis By:
Michael Maoz
Definition:
Service process integration and optimization technologies complement an
organization's core ERP, supply chain management (SCM) and/or customer service process
platforms. They are diverse in approach and are generally based on rule engines, ranging from
tools to optimize interactions in real time to BPM
-
based solutions that provide a deeper
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understanding of previous customer contacts and underlying processes to e
nhance future
interactions.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
The desire for service enhancement, combined
with functional omissions from large customer service suite vendors, is accelerating the adoption
of these best
-
of
-
breed niche technologies.
Many of the established service process optimization
technologies will eventually be absorbed into megasuite vendors' portfolios, but future innovation
will ensure the emergence of new technologies that will help fuel this constantly evolving market.
User
Advice:
Leading
-
edge organizations should explore these technologies to improve their
established customer service investments, especially as they support multiple channels; however,
organizations need to be wary of vendor capabilities and inflated return
-
on
-
investment
predictions.
Business Impact:
Service process integration increases users' understanding and optimizes the
delivery of service processes across interaction channels. Service process optimization
technologies enable organizations to systemati
cally suggest (then institute) continuous process
improvements, which increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the servicing department.
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
Less than 1% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
Ava
ya; ClickFox; eglue; Genesys; IBM; Nice Systems; Oracle; Pegasystems;
SAP; SPSS
RIA Rich Client
Analysis By:
Eric Knipp; Ray Valdes
Definition:
Gartner uses the term "rich client"
to refer to a subset of rich Internet application (RIA)
platforms, which consist of outside
-
the
-
browser, client
-
side technology that delivers benefits
similar to a traditional "fat client," such as Adobe AIR, Microsoft Windows Presentation
Foundation (WPF
) and out
-
of
-
browser Silverlight, and Eclipse Rich Client platform. These
benefits include the exploitation of Web capabilities and information and a level of platform
independence. The term "rich client" has not always been used with a great deal of preci
sion by
vendors, occasionally leading to misunderstandings by Gartner clients when making rich versus
fat
-
client choices.
Rich
-
client platforms differ from inside
-
the
-
browser approaches by providing enhanced support
for provisioning, versioning, security s
and boxing, offline mode and integration with local devices.
Thanks to HTML5, inside
-
the
-
browser approaches are evolving to emulate rich
-
client
functionality; for example, the draft standard provides specifications for browser vendors to
deliver data persi
stence and synchronization, scalable vector graphics, offline support and
geolocation services. Among the many vendors offering RIA tools that run on enhanced browsers
(browsers with plug
-
ins) are Nexaweb Technologies, Laszlo Systems, Software AG, Curl, Ca
noo
and ClearNova.
The new generation of rich
-
client technology is used in interaction
-
intensive scenarios where
outside
-
the
-
browser processing is required, including an offline mode of operations, integration
with local devices and connection to back
-
end
Web services. It may also be used in cases where
a large amount of stateful data should be persisted on the client to offload work from the server,
or in composite applications that consume and aggregate data from a variety of sources for offline
processin
g or storage. Most Web services are included in server
-
side portals; however, portal
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and Web services are shifting focus to include more client
-
side processing. Finally, RIA "in the
cloud" style applications couple pay
-
per
-
use cloud services with rich
-
clie
nt technologies,
providing an incentive for the application developer to minimize the use of metered cloud services
and delegate more business logic to the client.
Adobe AIR and Microsoft out
-
of
-
browser Silverlight have been used for a wide variety of
cons
umer applications that offer a user experience similar to that of a native application.
Examples include social
-
networking access packages for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn;
consumer media interfaces for Fox Networks, "The New York Times," "Time Magazine"
and the
Weather Channel; and rich views into the content from consumer websites, such as eBay.com,
Acrobat.com and NASDAQ.com. Microsoft Silverlight and WPF have also been used for a variety
of similar consumer applications.
Position and Adoption Speed Ju
stification:
During the past few years, there has been steady
progress in rich
-
client initiatives by Adobe, Microsoft and IBM. Unlike earlier iterations of rich
-
client technology, these initiatives represent an extension of browser
-
based RIA platforms, rat
her
than new platforms. For example, Adobe AIR represents a move from inside
-
the
-
browser
technology (Adobe Flash and Flex, along with JavaScript) onto the desktop environment, beyond
the confines of the traditional browser. Although rich
-
client initiatives
are expanding, they have
had more impact in the consumer space than within the enterprise; this may change as enterprise
users begin to demand consumer
-
grade user experiences from internal applications, and as the
need for cross
-
platform mobile applicatio
n development becomes more acute.
User Advice:
Consider deploying a rich
-
client for scenarios that require offline processing,
integration with local devices and applications, and a high degree of user interaction, including
graphically intensive and media
-
intensive requirements. Weigh the power of rich
-
client
capabilities against the cost and complexity of this approach. Although rich
-
client tools are
maturing rapidly, consider their relative lack of maturity, compared with lighter
-
weight alternatives,
and
recognize that all rich
-
client tools are proprietary and guarantee a degree of vendor lock
-
in.
Most importantly, do not embark on a rich
-
client technology initiative without modifying your
design process to include a usability
-
centered design based on hum
an factors and technology
-
independent user interaction patterns.
Business Impact:
Rich
-
client technology and platforms can enable users to interact more
efficiently and productively with enterprise applications that have complex user interface
requirements
, while enjoying a higher degree of satisfaction and "stickiness" (in the case of
consumer
-
facing applications).
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Adolescent
Sample Vendors:
Adobe Systems; IBM; Microsoft;
Oracle; SAP
Recommended Reading:
"Key Issues in Rich Internet Application Platforms and User
Experience, 2010"
"Usability Drives User Experience; User Experience Delivers Business Value"
"A Value
-
Driven, User
-
Centered Design Process for Web Sites and Appli
cations"
Web 3.0
Analysis By:
Gene Phifer
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Definition:
As Web 2.0 becomes mainstream, the term "Web 3.0" is becoming a contender for
labeling the next generation of the Web. The Web is a complex ecosystem, not a product that
follows a well
-
defined road map.
The X.0 label is ambiguous and unsuited for the evolution of the
Web. The X.0 label is only meaningful when preceded by a well
-
defined entity, such as a product
offering. Placed after a phenomenon such as the Web, it provides no descriptive value and must
be further defined. This invariably leads to confusion, because different parties espouse different
definitions in the hopes of achieving their own ends. Many people, including vendors, technology
proponents, analysts, bloggers and authors, are trying to
use the term Web 3.0 to describe their
needs and visions. At least five factions are competing to establish the Web 3.0 term for their own
benefit, including Semantic Web proponents, virtual world advocates, ubiquitous
-
computing fans,
mobility proponents a
nd cloud
-
computing supporters. More are expected, which will lead to
significant hype and confusion, followed by potential missteps for IT leaders.
The term "Web 2.0" term caught on, but it wasn't a planned generational release of the Web, or
even a predic
tion. Web 2.0 was observed and labeled. This is a critical distinction between the
genesis of the Web 2.0 designation and the beginnings of Web 3.0.
With its openness, community/participation model and new business opportunities, Web 2.0 was
a step
-
functio
n change from Web 1.0. The Web won't see a similar step
-
function change in the
next few years. Therefore, Web 3.0 will not occur as many would like us to think it will.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Although Web 2.0 innovation experienced a
re
lative spike, the Web will evolve steadily during the next five to seven years, making radical
shifts more difficult to pinpoint, and minimizing the possibility of another step
-
function change
such as Web 2.0.
The next generation of the Web will focus on t
he expansion of the social Web, the Semantic Web,
the programmable Web, the mobile Web, and the real
-
time Web. It will also encompass "the Web
of things," where there are direct connections between the online world and the physical world.
These changes are
long
-
term, multifaceted and infrastructural, and, therefore, will occur in a
much longer time frame than the rapid explosion of innovation that occurred with Web 2.0.
Additionally, the increasing fragmentation of devices used to interact with the Web will
make Web
3.0 unlikely. With the addition of contextual
-
awareness, it is likely that many people will move
from sharing the same Web to favoring their personalized views on specialized devices.
Jockeying for the Web 3.0 position will only increase confusio
n and hype, decreasing the odds of
any one prediction emerging as the successor to Web 2.0. Despite being inappropriate and
ineffectual, the Web 3.0 term may persist because of the popularity of the Web 2.0 term, because
Web 2.0 technologies and approaches
are seeing broad adoption in enterprises, and because
vendors are always looking to sell "the next big thing."
User Advice:
IT leaders should not adopt, promote or search for meaning in the term Web 3.0.
The term will remain confusing and ineffectual. IT
leaders must recognize the shortcomings of the
term Web 3.0 and concentrate on extracting business value from existing and emerging Web
technologies, practices, products and services. Look for Web 2.0 to develop along an
evolutionary path
—
Web 2.1 and Web
2.2 would be more appropriate to use than Web 3.0.
Business Impact:
Danger surrounding the hype of a catchy term, such as Web 3.0, arises from
its tendency to consume "mind share." Business and IT leaders risk being distracted by "Web 3.0
mania" before re
alizing the potential benefits of current and emerging Web technologies.
Benefit Rating:
Low
Market Penetration:
Less than 1% of target audience
Maturity:
Embryonic
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Recommended Reading:
"Key Issues for Web 2.0 and Beyond, 2010"
"Predicts 2010: Web
Technologies Evolve in Multiple Dimensions: Mobile, Social and Real Time"
"Cool Vendors in Web Technologies, 2010"
"What Is Web 2.0" (
www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/ore
illy/tim/news/2005/09/30/what
-
is
-
Web
-
20.html
)
Social Network Payment System
Analysis By:
Christophe Uzureau; Stessa Cohen; Juergen Weiss
Definition:
Social network payments are solutions that enable members of social networks to
initiate a payment for digi
tal content (to pay applications, e.g., Facebook), as part of social
gaming (e.g., FarmVille) or to make a person
-
to
-
person (P2P) payment to another user of the
network site (via Facebook or Twitter). Gartner includes in this profile all payments originate
d via
social network sites, whatever their value.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
This new addition to the Hype Cycle takes into
account some of the solutions in the Internet micropayment systems category, because
transactions below $5.00 can be
originated from a social network site. In other words, there are
overlaps between social network payment systems and Internet micropayment systems for
transactions below $5.00.
Social network payments depend on progress with payments decomposition and the
related
ability to develop new processing models to respond to the distribution of digital content.
However, strong progress has been made on the social gaming side. For example, PayPal's
second
-
largest client in Europe after eBay is Zynga (see
www.zynga.com/
), an operator of online
social games. FarmVille had more than 7.8 million unique visitors globally in March 2010,
according to comScore.
The profile includes the ability to originate P2P payments via a social networ
king site. As part of a
Gartner survey in the U.S. in 4Q09, Gartner tested consumers' agreement and disagreement with
the following statement: "I would like to be able to initiate payments from a social networking site
to contacts I've listed on that socia
l networking site." Using a scale in which 1 equals strongly
disagree and 5 equals strongly agree, 72% strongly disagreed, 14% disagreed, 9% were neutral,
3% agreed and 2% strongly agreed. Significant barriers exist to consumer reliance on social
networkin
g sites as an origination channel for P2P payments.
Therefore, social network payments are less
-
mature payment solutions than Internet
micropayment systems. And the current position at the Peak of Inflated Expectations reflects the
challenges facing the P2
P component of social network payment systems.
User Advice:
As with Internet micropayment systems, banks should not reinvent the wheel for social
network payments, but should offer a selection of solutions from third
-
party providers
(such as PayPal) to the
ir clients. For banks, it's about strengthening their portfolios of
payment products and services to accommodate new consumption patterns. As with
other emerging payment systems, banks need to better exploit payment information:
Taking into account the you
nger demographics using social networks and the novelty of
related applications, banks need to capture these emerging consumption patterns to be
in a position to create the right context to market their other banking products and
services.
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As with the example of Kwedit, a payment method for online gaming, capturing credit
information as early as possible in the financial life cycle will facilitate marketing of credit
products and the related risk management.
Business Impact:
Growth in the us
e of social networks (and notably social network gaming) and
the resulting transactional activity should not be ignored by banks that are increasingly reliant on
payment
-
related revenue. The business impact is beyond payment operations (to generate
interch
ange revenue), extending to the ability to create awareness of bank payment services to
an audience (notably a younger audience) that is less likely to trust banks for their overall
financial services requirements. However, the P2P transfers component lowe
rs the benefit rating
to moderate, because the current demand for such services remains low.
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
Facebook; Moneybookers; PayPal; Payvment
Recommended Re
ading:
"Innovation Map for Value
-
Added Services in Card Processing"
"PayPal and Google Checkout Show the Way for Banks' Payment Operations"
Cloud Computing
Analysis By:
David Mitchell Smith
Definition:
Gartner defines "cloud computing" as a style of comput
ing where scalable and elastic
IT
-
enabled capabilities are delivered as a service using Internet technologies.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Users are changing their buying behaviors.
Although it is unlikely that they will completely abandon o
n
-
premises models, or that they will
soon buy complex, mission
-
critical processes as services through the cloud, there will be a
movement toward consuming services in a more cost
-
effective way. As expected of something
near the Peak of Inflated Expectation
s, there is deafening hype around cloud computing. Every IT
vendor has a cloud strategy, although many aren't cloud
-
centric. Variations, such as private cloud
computing and hybrid approaches, compound the hype and demonstrate that one dot on a Hype
Cycle c
annot adequately represent all that is cloud computing. Cloud computing has moved just
past the Peak and will likely spend some time in the future in the Trough of Disillusionment.
Subjects that generate as much hype rarely skip through the Trough quickly.
User Advice:
Vendor organizations must begin to focus their cloud strategies around more
-
specific scenarios, and unify them into high
-
level messages that encompass the breadth of their
offerings. User organizations must demand road maps for the cloud from
their vendors today.
Users should look at specific usage scenarios and workloads, and map their view of the cloud to
that of any potential providers, and focus more on specifics, rather than on general cloud ideas.
Business Impact:
The cloud
-
computing mod
el is changing the way the IT industry looks at user
and vendor relationships. As service provisions (a critical aspect of cloud computing) grow,
vendors must become, or partner with, service providers to deliver technologies indirectly to
users. User orga
nizations will watch portfolios of owned technologies decline as service portfolios
grow. The key activity will be to determine which cloud services will be viable, and when.
Benefit Rating:
Transformational
Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of target audience
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Maturity:
Adolescent
Sample Vendors:
Amazon; Google; Microsoft; salesforce.com; VMware
Recommended Reading:
"Key Issues for Cloud Computing, 2010"
"The What, Why and When of Cloud Computing"
Web
-
Oriented Architecture
Analysis By:
Daniel Sholler
Definition:
Web
-
oriented architecture (WOA) is an architectural substyle of service
-
oriented
architecture (SOA) that integrates systems and users via a Web of globally linked hypermedia
based on the architecture of the Web. This architecture emphasizes gen
erality of interfaces (user
interfaces and application programming interfaces) to achieve global network effects through five
fundamental generic interface constraints:
Identification of resources
Manipulation of resources through representations
Self
-
desc
riptive messages
Hypermedia as the engine of application state
Application neutrality
WOA represents an alternative style to the middleware
-
oriented styles most commonly
associated with WS
-
* Web services. WOA
-
style services are sometimes referred to as RES
Tful
services or RESTful APIs. In effect, WOA is the combination of SOA, REST architecture, and the
technology and standards of the Web.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Although WOA has dominated Web user
-
to
-
application (U2A) implementations for
years, frequently is used for Internet B2B and has
experienced some intraenterprise A2A implementation successes, many enterprises are now
engaged in implementing or seriously considering WOA in addition to or as an alternative to WS
-
*. The WOA style has
been used by many of the services delivered by major Web service
providers (Amazon, Google, etc.), and the popularity of these services, the growing interest in
cloud computing and the hype around mashups are propelling enterprise interest in WOA as a
viab
le architectural approach to SOA. Therefore, WOA is moving up the Hype Cycle as architects
and developers explore and employ it for enterprise applications. Most popular development and
integration tools support development of WOA services and applications
that follow the WOA
style, and other environments such as Java have added WOA
-
compatible structures and
conventions to facilitate this development. The current usage is nearly entirely for Web
-
facing
applications, and there is still a great deal of resist
ance to using WOA designs for the core
enterprise application functionality, not least because of a lack of WOA design skills. Advanced
WOA concepts, such as WOA quality of service (QoS) support and hypermedia
-
based application
state management, are still
immature, as is the understanding of the relationship between WOA
and the Web. (not all things Web are WOA).
User Advice:
Application architects should utilize the WOA approach for information
-
centric
applications, U2A integration and A2A integration if th
e system designs can leverage moderated
middleware functions. Organizations using Web Services should still embrace the architectural
principles of WOA as much as possible to gain the shareability and scalability benefits of the
Web, and to enhance Web int
eroperability.
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Business Impact:
Significant increases in shareability and extensibility of SOAs due to WOA's
emphasis on application
-
neutrality and hypermedia
-
oriented interface design should result in
faster application integration, an overall decrease in
the cost and effort to modify applications and
systems, and an increase in the planned and serendipitous reuse of services.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Adolescent
Recommended Reading:
"SOA Overview and Guide to SOA Research"
"Tutorial: Web
-
Oriented Architecture: Putting the Web Back in Web Services"
"Reference Architecture for Web
-
Oriented Architecture"
"Understanding and Applying the Design Differences Between WS
-
* Based Architecture
and
Web
-
Oriented Architecture"
"Key Issues for SOA, EDA and WOA, 2009"
"2008 SOA User Survey: Adoption Trends and Characteristics"
Cloud/Web Platforms
Analysis By:
Gene Phifer; David Mitchell Smith
Definition:
Cloud/Web platforms use Web technologies to pr
ovide programmatic access to
functionality on the Web, including capabilities enabled not only by technology, but also by
community and business aspects. This includes, but is not limited to, storage and computing
power. We use the terms "Web platform" and
"cloud platform" interchangeably, and sometimes
use the term "Web/cloud platforms." They have ecosystems similar to traditional platforms, but
Web platforms are emerging as a result of market and technology changes collectively known as
"Web 2.0." These p
latforms will serve as broad, general
-
purpose platforms, but, more specifically,
they will support business flexibility and speed requirements by exploiting new and enhanced
forms of application development and delivery. Web platforms reuse many of the cap
abilities and
technologies that have been accessible on websites for more than a decade through browsers by
adding programmatic access to the underlying global
-
class capabilities. Reuse is occurring via
Web services, and is being delivered via Web
-
oriented
architecture (WOA) interfaces, such as
representational state transfer (REST), plain old XML (POX) and Really Simple Syndication
(RSS). In addition to the capabilities of Web 2.0, these platforms provide programmatic access to
cloud
-
computing capabilities
. The public API phenomenon has taken WOA beyond consumer
markets (e.g., Twitter) into enterprise B2B integration.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
The use of Web/cloud platforms is happening in
consumer markets. In addition, the concepts are app
arent in enterprises' use of service
-
oriented
business applications. Enterprise use of Web
-
based capabilities, such as Amazon Simple
Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), has begun as
well. However, mainstream adoption
of Web/cloud platforms hasn't begun yet. Additionally, early
adopters have limited experience with Web/cloud platforms, and will inevitably run into challenges
and issues.
User Advice:
Web platforms and related phenomena have affected consumer markets first, but
enterprises should evaluate the growing space as an appropriate extension to internal computing
capabilities. Use of Web platforms will drive WOA, which enterprises should adopt
where
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appropriate, along with simple interfaces, such as REST, POX and RSS (wherever possible), to
exploit the interoperability, reach and real
-
time agility of the Internet.
Business Impact:
Web platforms can be leveraged as part of business solutions, an
d will form
much of the basis for the next generation of interest in the virtual enterprise. Web platforms can
decrease barriers to entry, and can deliver substantial value for small and midsize businesses
that could not afford to build and maintain capabi
lities and infrastructures. Examples include
Amazon Web Services (including S3 and EC2), salesforce.com's Force.com, Google's App
Engine and Microsoft Azure Services Platform. Note that the term "Web/cloud platform" is
broader than and includes multiple la
yers in cloud
-
computing terminology (e.g., integration as a
service [IaaS], platform as a service [PaaS] and software as a service [SaaS]) and the use of the
term "platform" is different from the term "PaaS."
Benefit Rating:
Transformational
Market Penetra
tion:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
Amazon; Google; Microsoft; salesforce.com
Recommended Reading:
"Web Platforms Are Coming to an Enterprise Near You"
"Predicts 2010: Application Platforms for Cloud Computing"
"NIS
T and Gartner Cloud Approaches Are More Similar Than Different"
Enterprise Mashups
Analysis By:
Jim Murphy
Definition:
Gartner defines mashups as new applications created by composing capabilities from
two or more existing systems (or components of those s
ystems), where source content or
functionality retains its original essence. A mashup is a way to build composite applications that
possess three fundamental characteristics:
They are lightweight, and they employ the technologies and principles of the Web.
They source content or functionality from existing systems, and they have no native data
store or content repository.
Their result is an explicit mixture of source content and functionality, where the sourced
content and functionality retain their origina
l essence.
Thus, mashups are composite applications that tend toward the front end, often integrating at or
just behind the presentation layer. Mashups exploit lightweight mechanisms, such as
representational state transfer (REST)
-
based application program
ming interfaces (APIs) and Web
services, as well as Ajax "snippets" and "widgets."
The cultural context and origin of mashups involves the confluence of IT innovations: Web APIs,
lightweight client
-
side scripting, delivery of content via Really Simple Synd
ication (RSS), wikis,
Ajax, social networking, the cloud and the explosion of Web
-
based communities.
This consumer Web origin and growth has led to three additional characteristics for mashups in
the enterprise. First, organizations tend to create mashups
to address focused, situational needs,
rather than strategic, systematically built, industrial
-
strength enterprise applications. Second,
mashups tend to have an end
-
user appeal, lending themselves readily to the support of
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productivity and collaboration, d
ata visualization and decision making, and even mashup design
and deployment by citizen developers, power users and knowledge workers.
The proliferation of mashups among many enterprises calls for governance that balances
situational flexibility and agilit
y with quality and integrity. Some companies
—
especially those
using mashups extensively or representing their products and services on the Web via mashups
—
will require cohesive mashup platforms. All organizations should recognize mashups as a style
of
composite applications that complements other strategic approaches, including application
development, application integration and enterprise portals.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Although 2009's economic turmoil slowed much of
the mashup hyp
e, the proliferation of mashups on the consumer and social Web, developers'
growing use of REST
-
based and other lightweight integration methods, and renewed or
reinvigorated efforts to offer better user experiences via portals and other initiatives are
inc
reasing demand. Large enterprise software vendors, such as IBM, Oracle and, increasingly,
Microsoft, have been trying to capture the enterprise mashup opportunity, often in the context of
portals, which can be a convenient environment for deploying them. B
ecause portals are often
established in organizations as unified, personalized points of access to information, applications
and people, they often seem an ideal foundation for mashup delivery. Although portlets are widely
used to aggregate and display mul
tiple pieces of content onto a single screen, mashups can
potentially combine content into a single visualization, as in a dashboard.
Mashups are independent and fundamentally more pervasive than portals. As a type of
composite application, mashups fall un
der the influence of broader trends in application
development and integration. Many enterprises have come to view mashables and mashups as a
front end to their service
-
oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives, whether delivered in a portal, a
Web applicati
on or a rich Internet application (RIA). Not only are the large software vendors
offering mashup development, deployment, and management capability to customers, they're
using mashups and mashables to integrate and extend their own offerings.
These include
established on
-
premises applications, newer cloud
-
based services and, perhaps
most importantly, composite applications that span the on
-
premises/cloud divide. Because
mashups and their components, in the form of widgets and gadgets, are already employed
a
mong the most prominent cloud presences, such as Google and salesforce.com, we could see a
growth in mashup demand in line with the move toward the cloud.
The most challenging aspect of enterprise mashups, and perhaps the greatest barrier to
adoption, is s
imply making content available to be mashed. Most enterprise content isn't
accessible via convenient APIs. Thus, much of the enterprise mashup market is geared toward
helping organizations create mashable APIs as a prerequisite to participation.
Moreover,
the mashup concept is often met with cynicism among enterprise developers and
architects. Cultural and organizational barriers, predispositions toward other means of
composition, a dearth of enterprise
-
class examples (everyone's using maps), a lack of stan
dards
and the situational nature of mashups themselves are holding back mashups and the platforms
that support them as serious enterprise technology investments.
However, there will continue to be a market for focused mashup component and platform
provider
s. In addition to vendors offering mashup assembly capabilities, specialized vendors
focus on making legacy assets mashable through feeds and APIs. Mashup enablement will be
fundamental to successful enterprise mashup initiatives, because the value of an e
nterprise
mashup environment is directly related to the quantity and quality of mashable sources.
Furthermore, mashup
-
enabling technologies will extend the usefulness of legacy data beyond
mashups. For example, enterprise Web applications may be developed
more productively by
using the same Web
-
oriented architecture (WOA)
-
style mechanisms on which mashups rely.
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Mashup standards that ease integration and interoperability between vendors in the cloud and on
premise don't yet exist. Google and Open Social's Ga
dgets, IBM's iWidgets and JackBe's EMML
are good candidates, although it may be too early to place bets. Nothing yet seems to strike the
perfect balance between simplicity and robustness for enterprise use.
User Advice:
IT organizations must constantly inn
ovate to serve more
-
demanding business
requirements and users. Leaner IT groups are being asked to provide capabilities more quickly
and cost
-
effectively for their businesses and citizens. Business users, becoming quickly
accustomed to innovation in the fo
rm of combined technologies on the consumer Web, are
screaming for innovation from their employers. Impatient enterprise users are continuously
exposed and tempted by a barrage of attractive and nominally free (but perilously risky)
application alternative
s. Users are more likely than ever to circumvent organizational IT when
they don't get the services and applications they want.
To meet the limitless demands of the business, IT organizations must equip their citizen
developers and power users with tools t
o build and deploy their own operational and situational
applications, and they must do so in a safe, governed and productive enterprise environment. At
the same time, IT organizations must continue to meet the requirements of large
-
scale, business
-
critica
l, transformational application development, and deliver applications faster and less
expensively.
IT organizations must provide this innovation and agility, while leveraging firmly established
systems. They must demonstrate the fruits of their efforts to
construct SOAs. Organizations are
looking to composite applications and mashups to meet these challenging demands.
However, mashups also bring risks. Because they combine data and logic from multiple sources,
they're vulnerable to failure in any one of
these sources, which makes planning and designing
fault
-
tolerant mashup architectures challenging. Other risks and concerns loom, including issues
over the use of intellectual property and the longevity of provider relationships. Enterprises must
put thems
elves in a position to exploit mashups, for innovation and agility, while mitigating these
risks:
1.
Implement effective governance strategies for mashups and other composite application
initiatives.
2.
Develop or refine a business case for mashups in the contex
t of related initiatives,
including SOA, composite applications and portals.
3.
Create a repository of mashable components.
4.
Keep an eye on standards among vendors and user communities, recognizing that
standards are still a point of contention among vendors.
Mitigate risk and ease
integration by limiting variability in approach.
5.
Account for the security issues that enterprise mashups can raise.
6.
Consider culture prior to launching an enterprise mashup initiative. Not all developer and
user groups will adopt mas
hups, nor are mashups appropriate for every user type.
Business Impact:
Mashups can deliver significant application agility by bridging the gap between
business change and application evolution. Mashups provide power users and knowledge
workers with the me
ans to quickly build software solutions without direct developer involvement.
Mashups extend the reach of the application group and increase developer productivity through a
potentially highly leveraged repository of mashable assets. Mashups can potentiall
y contain costs
by reducing burdens on application development organizations, because non
-
IT staff can
leverage IT investments in REST
-
based business services. Successful mashup initiatives will
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enable business
-
unit developers or business users to develop
tactical or opportunistic
applications based on mashable component repositories. Finally, mashups will be a key factor in
delivering the fruits of SOA efforts, as well as employing cloud services in an enterprise context.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetr
ation:
5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity:
Adolescent
Sample Vendors:
Connotate; Convertigo; Denodo Technologies; Google; IBM; JackBe; Kapow
Technologies; Magic Software Enterprises; Microsoft; Netvibes; Nexaweb Technologies; Oracle;
Pageflakes; RSSBus;
Serena Software; Sonoa Systems; WorkLight; Yahoo
Recommended Reading:
"Building a Business Case for Enterprise Mashups: A Gartner
Framework"
"Toolkit: Building a Business Case Justification for Enterprise Mashups"
"The Five Core Principles of Enterprise M
ashups"
"Gartner Reference Architecture for Enterprise Mashups, 2009"
"Addressing the Seven Primary Challenges to Enterprise Adoption of Mashups"
"A Process for Successfully Selling Mashups to Enterprise Leaders"
"End
-
User Mashups Demand Governance (but No
t Too Much Governance)"
Web Experience Analytics
Analysis By:
Hung LeHong; Van Baker
Definition:
Web experience analytics are analytics tools that measure elements of the retailer's
commerce sites, including both websites and mobile sites. These analytics
include some more
-
mature analytics tools such as page load times and shopping cart abandonment rates, as well as
some tools that are newer such as multivariate A/B testing, interaction sequence and navigation
tracking, and sentiment indexes. Overall, these
analytics tools are meant to measure consumer
engagement and purchase activities in the e
-
commerce and m
-
commerce channels. These
measures help retailers improve the customer experience on their sites and adjust elements of
their commerce sites such as ri
ch
-
media applications, navigation and flow paths, and shopping
aids to suit changing consumer tastes and preferences for e
-
commerce sites. Multichannel
feedback technology can also provide retailers an assessment of their customers' shopping
experience
—
e
specially for cross
-
channel shopping processes.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
These tools vary in maturity. The relatively direct
measures such as page load times are relatively mature, while other measures such as sentiment
indexes, multivari
ate testing, information clarity measures and customer satisfaction are just
beginning to emerge. To some degree, some of these tools are as much art as they are science,
such as neuromarketing, which measures consumer brain activity when consumers are eng
aged
in shopping activities.
User Advice:
Deploy the straightforward measurement tools such as page load times and
shopping cart abandonment measures, if you haven't already done so, as these factors can have
a significant impact on your overall revenue. F
or the more sophisticated measures, such as
multivariate testing and sentiment indexes, approach the use of these tools judiciously, and be
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prepared to confirm findings over time prior to making changes to your commerce sites based on
these measures.
Busin
ess Impact:
Used appropriately, these tools can lead to improvements in the customer
experience and engagement for both the e
-
commerce and m
-
commerce channels for the retailer.
In addition, these tools can help retailers identify the right combination of m
edia elements and
applications that lead consumers to purchase more and that attain a higher degree of satisfaction
from customers.
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity:
Emerging
Sample Vendors:
Coremetrics; FatWire Software; Google; iPerceptions; Omniture;
ResponseTek; SAS; Speed
-
Trap; Tealeaf; Teradata; Webtrends
Recommended Reading:
"E
-
Commerce Websites: Features That Make Consumers Buy"
"Key Challenges in Web Analytics, 2009"
"Key Issues for
Customer Experience Management, 2010"
"Top 10 Mistakes in Web and User Experience Design Projects"
Consumer Web Mashups
Analysis By:
Jim Murphy
Definition:
Consumer Web mashups are lightweight composite applications built using consumer
Web
-
based mashup in
frastructures, that consume publicly available consumer Web resources.
Consumer Web mashup infrastructure providers claim to target average Web users, but most use
is by amateur developers and hard
-
core hobbyists.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Although the term "mashup" originated in the
music world, mashups in a technology context originated and gained their initial momentum on
the consumer Web. They began as composite Web applications that leveraged Web
-
based
content and functionality from co
nsumer
-
oriented sites to deliver applications for external
audiences using only a thin layer of JavaScript aggregation code on the client. Today, thousands
of consumer Web mashable components (or "mashables," often in the form of widgets and
gadgets) exist
, and users of sites ranging from Google to Yahoo to Amazon leverage them to
create consumer Web mashups. ProgrammableWeb.com and Mashable.com provide an
overview of the range of consumer Web mashups available. Enterprises that are experimenting
with consu
mer Web mashups for enterprise use have largely found that they provide limited
production value without additional work to manage their use in a secure fashion under
appropriate governance. The beginnings of a backlash against consumer Web mashups has
sta
rted among some Web developers.
User Advice:
Enterprises should look to consumer Web mashups to demonstrate the mashup
concept to business leadership (see "A Process for Successfully Selling Mashups to Enterprise
Leaders"). However, enterprises looking to
leverage consumer Web mashups for enterprise
needs should be wary about their limitations and risks. Few consumer Web mashup
infrastructures provide security or governance functionality, and consumer Web mashups don't
provide connectivity to on
-
premises ap
plications and content repositories. However, companies
that overcome these hurdles may find considerable benefit in employing consumer Web
mashups.
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Organizations should consider embedding Web mashups in business
-
to
-
employee portals,
intranet pages and das
hboards to provide easy access to information sources for users. But they
should choose only safe and reliable sources, and they should not expect or attempt deep
integration with enterprise resources. With the same cautions in mind, organizations should
c
onsider using consumer Web mashups to augment and enhance information they provide to
customers on their websites. Companies looking to extend their Web presence beyond their own
website should consider providing mashables (in the form of gadgets or widget
s) or mashups for
consumption on sites like iGoogle and My Yahoo.
Business Impact:
Consumer Web mashups can deliver business value in three areas:
Consumer Web environments serve as excellent demonstration tools to expose
business leaders to the mashup con
cept. Consumer Web mashups provide a ready
catalog to demonstrate several different use cases for mashups.
Some consumer Web mashups can be used in enterprise settings with appropriate
governance and security. Doing so eliminates the need to rely on tradit
ional application
development organizations to develop their own mashups for those use cases, or if a
portal framework is deployed, to create some custom portlets.
Enterprises seeking to extend their services can attract and engage customers by
making widg
ets and gadgets available to consumers using sites like iGoogle and My
Yahoo.
Benefit Rating:
Low
Market Penetration:
20% to 50% of target audience
Maturity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
Google; Microsoft; Netvibes; Pageflakes; Yahoo
Sliding Into the T
rough
Composite Applications
Analysis By:
Jim Murphy; Eric Knipp
Definition:
The term "composite applications" was established by Gartner in 1998 as a core
pattern in application integration, and refers to new applications front
-
ending pre
-
existing
applica
tions and business or information services. The new application logic developed for
composite applications typically is meant to provide a new front end to one or more established
applications, increasingly in the context of service
-
oriented architecture (
SOA)/Web
-
oriented
architecture (WOA) initiatives. Composites are developed through various mechanisms, including
horizontal portals, mashup assembly environments, integrated service environments, business
process management suites (BPMSs) or application
-
se
rver
-
based custom code running on a
workstation or server. They are frequently delivered and presented via portals, Ajax or rich
Internet applications (RIAs) for mobile
-
based user interfaces. Some new back
-
end services may
also be implemented specifically
for an individual project. However, for the most part, the new
application leverages pre
-
existing and independently developed services (in the SOA sense of
the word) or application capabilities, so as to include established presentation or application logi
c,
content and data.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Achieving greater usability via composition is one
of the main goals that IT organizations strive for when implementing SOA and WOA. As the use
and requirements for new applications proliferat
e, the appeal of leveraging and extending existing
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application constructs, rather than implementing new ones, is extremely attractive as a means to
reduce development costs, hasten time to deployment, and more readily unify solutions and
services. Organiza
tions in various industries have been exploiting composite application
-
style
development for many years.
Until recently, available composite application approaches were often too complex and technically
convoluted for anyone but the more technically astute
IT organizations, but things are changing
rapidly. The growing popularity of SOA and WOA (which enable users to access a growing IT
-
supplied library of composable application services, as well as more
-
open packaged
applications), the ample availability of
public Web services, the emergence of cloud
-
based
applications and services, and the increasing maturation of specialized tools (including enterprise
mashup technology) are making the development of composite applications more approachable,
less expensive
and less risky.
Architecturally composite applications come in two forms:
Front
-
end composite applications
(also known as "integration on the glass") aggregate
the presentation layer of multiple applications into single, integrated front ends by using
por
tal products, presentation integration tools, screen
-
scraping/Web
-
scraping
technologies, mashup assembly environments and other techniques.
Back
-
end composite applications
(also known as "integration on the server") implement
an application (or a new SOA se
rvice) that invokes presentation, business and data
access logic of established applications using SOAP, message
-
oriented middleware,
remote procedure calls, Internet Inter
-
ORB Protocol (IIOP), .NET remoting or other
protocols.
Mashups are front
-
end
composite applications that use lightweight integration techniques
employing WOA interfaces that preserve the essence of the source functionality or data from
established systems, and they typically leverage the participation of a broad community (see
"Gar
tner Reference Architecture for Enterprise Mashups, 2009").
Traditionally a highly systematic effort carried out by IT departments to support enterprise
business requirements such as self
-
service portals, call center integration, e
-
commerce and other
large
-
scale projects, composite
-
application
-
style development is increasingly being adopted to
support incremental line
-
of
-
business projects (frequently developed through agile methods) and
opportunistically oriented scenarios, such as Web 2.0/mashup applicatio
ns. Widespread
availability of basic programming skills from Web
-
based or model
-
based tools make it possible to
empower some classes of "citizen developers" to create their own "personal" composite
applications
—
a very compelling proposition for enterpris
es looking for agility and business
impact. The notion of composite applications supports this vision.
The vision of enabling end users to create personal, shareable enterprise composites is about to
explode into reality. However, IT
-
savvy business users a
nd citizen developers are beginning to
avail themselves of more
-
approachable enterprise composite application capabilities. As for
simpler composites or content aggregation, true end
-
user adoption is quickly spreading in the
case of basic gadget assemblies
, mashup
-
based dashboards and user
-
customizable portals,
which are gaining additional momentum based on the growing popularity of iGoogle and My
Yahoo.
Whereas once sluggish SOA/WOA adoption, as a prerequisite to composites, had, in the past,
been a hindra
nce to the progress of composites in their various forms, the trend is turning.
Composable services are becoming more widely available within the enterprise and from third
-
party software and cloud
-
based services. Increasingly rapid SOA/WOA adoption and too
l
maturation, as well as the growing availability of prepackaged composite applications (PCAs)
—
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templates that users can customize and plug on top of their own SOA
-
enabled application
portfolio
—
along with the need to support new business requirements wh
ile reducing IT costs,
are some of the short
-
term factors contributing to the growing widespread adoption of the
composite application style. In addition, the growing number of enterprises engaged in public
WOA application programming interface (API) progr
ams provides a fertile ground from which new
mashups can grow (see "Open WOA APIs: From the Edge of the Web to the Mainstream
Enterprise"). In the longer term, large packaged
-
application vendors' (and their ecosystems')
increasing support for SOA, PCAs, an
d BPMSs; the growing availability of composable services
in the form of software as a service (SaaS) or cloud services; the maturation of mashup
technology; and the availability of productive composition platforms, often in the form of
application
-
infrastr
ucture
-
as
-
a
-
service offerings, will also drive large and midsize organizations in
most vertical markets and geographies to adopt composite applications.
User Advice:
Users should adopt composite applications to best leverage established application
assets,
reduce development costs, accelerate the time to deployment of new applications and
leverage readily available "in the cloud" services.
Leading
-
edge user organizations should look at composite applications and mashup technologies
as effective and low
-
cost
enablers to support innovative initiatives, such as Web 2.0, cloud
-
based
business models and others.
Every organization looking at SOA should investigate composite applications and vice versa.
SOA enables composite applications; composite applications max
imize SOA value.
IT organizations should employ BPM disciplines and capabilities to ensure the optimization of key
business processes and consequent demonstrable value in composition efforts.
However, prior to adopting a composite application style, projec
t leaders should carefully evaluate
how to suitably address design challenges, including middleware selection, semantic
reconciliation, management and security organizations, and should not expect the IT
department's ability to create composite application
s to translate into business user ability to do
the same, except in limited form.
Business Impact:
Composite applications are the means to realizing several benefits of SOA,
especially in leveraging, extending, and sharing legacy code, content, and service
s. These
benefits will translate into higher
-
quality applications and lower costs to develop and maintain
them. The ability to compose easily with partner and cloud
-
based services will represent
substantial new opportunities for building systems with great
er reach, more efficiency and more
relevance to users.
Moreover, composite applications support business requirements by enabling organizations to
improve the effectiveness of their sales, purchase and support operations by reaching customers,
suppliers an
d employees through a variety of integrated channels (such as the Internet, call
centers, digital TV, wireless devices, self
-
service terminals and kiosks). They make it possible to
increase operational and decision
-
making efficiency by supporting a single
integrated view of
critical business entities
—
such as customers, suppliers, products, patients and taxpayers
—
whose data are typically scattered across databases and applications.
Composite applications can help improve efficiency and customer satisfact
ion by streamlining
and integrating business processes, requiring users to access a variety of back
-
end applications
in a coordinated fashion.
While the upside is high, the risks of undisciplined approaches can outweigh them if gone
unchecked. Composite ap
plications can increase overall complexity of the computing
environment and expose businesses to greater uncertainties when foreign information resources
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are mixed with the enterprise's own, and when less
-
development
-
savvy citizens play quasi
development r
oles. To mitigate these challenges, IT departments must invest in governance and
management technologies and skills.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
Compuware; GT Software; IB
M; InterSystems; Kapow Technologies; Magic
Software Enterprises; Metastorm; Microgen; ObjectBuilders; OutSystems; SAP; Skyway
Software; Software AG; SOALogix; Tibco Software
Recommended Reading:
"Composite Applications Help Create Value by Blending SOA,
Web
2.0, Cloud and Legacy Applications"
"Composite Applications Reduce Costs (if Designed Well)"
"Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for SOA Composite Application Projects"
Microblogging
Analysis By:
Jeffrey Mann
Definition:
"Microblogging" is t
he term given to a narrow
-
scope mode of social communication
pioneered by the social network site Twitter.com and followed by similar services from Plurk,
Yammer, Socialcast and Identi.ca. The concept is surprisingly simple: users publish a one
-
line
status
message to their contacts, who have decided to follow their activities on the service. Users
can see the collected statuses of the people they choose to follow. Even those who do not want
to follow many people can search through the microblogging stream f
or topics or tags they are
interested in. Trending topics provide a condensed view of what everyone on the service is
talking about. The content of status messages (called "tweets" on Twitter) ranges from the
mundanely trivial ("I am eating eggs") to a ran
dom insight ("I think blogging is our online
biography in prose, and Twitter is the punctuation") to a reaction to an event ("A passenger plane
just landed on the Hudson River!").
Twitter's dominance has led to the practice being called "twittering" but it
is also referred to as
microblogging to broaden the focus from a single vendor, as well as to point out how this style of
communication has augmented and partially replaced blogging. Even though it superficially
resembles instant messaging (IM), tweets ar
e published to a group of interested people, making it
more similar to blogging than the person
-
to
-
person nature of IM.
The trendsetting Twitter system intentionally constrains messages to 140 characters, which is
what can be sent via a Short Message Servi
ce text message on a mobile phone. This simple
constraint enhances the user experience of those who consume this information. Tweets are
small tidbits of information, easily digested and just as easily ignored, as the moment dictates.
Other intentional con
straints are designed to provide a high
-
impact user experience through
minimalist design: no categories, no attachments, no scheduled postings. These constraints are a
matter of some debate among users, leading Twitter to add more functionality in the last
year
(groups or lists, trending topics and retweets). Competitors offer more full
-
featured alternatives
(Plurk, FriendFeed) or open
-
source approaches (such as Identi.ca based on Status.Net), but
have not been able to challenge the dominance of Twitter in
the consumer market. One key factor
behind Twitter's success over its competitors has been its early offering of an application
programming interface to third
-
party developers. This has led to dozens of packages that enable
users to access the Twitter serv
ice and post content, either through a mobile device or a more
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full
-
featured desktop client. Examples include Seesmic, TweetDeck, Twitterific and TwitterBerry.
These third
-
party packages can provide offline capability, as well as features that fill in the
gaps
of Twitter's online offering. Twitter recently offered its own BlackBerry client as well.
Twitter's open nature makes it largely unsuitable for internal use within enterprises or for
confidential communications with partners, leaving an opportunity fo
r new offerings. Services
including salesforce.com's Chatter, Yammer, Socialcast and Present.ly provide microblogging
services aimed at individual companies, with more control and security than the public services
like Twitter provide. Microblogging is als
o quickly becoming a standard feature in enterprise social
software platforms, such as Socialtext, Microsoft SharePoint 2010, IBM Lotus Connections and
Jive SBS. By 2011, some form of enterprise microblogging will be a standard feature in 80% of
the social
software platforms on the market.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Microblogging in general, and Twitter in particular,
continue to gain in popularity, becoming a widely
-
recognized part of popular culture. A planned
maintenance shutdown for Twit
ter became an international political issue when scheduled during
an election crisis in Iran. The volume of Twitter traffic makes it valuable as a real
-
time news feed.
Major events are almost always signaled first on Twitter before the traditional media ca
n respond.
This high profile has led many organizations to question whether they should be using Twitter or
other microblogging platforms for communication between employees or to communicate with
customers and the public. Many companies have expanded thei
r Web participation guidelines for
employees to include microblogging alongside the more traditional blogging and community
participation. With wide adoption comes the inevitable backlash. Microblogging's superficiality
and potential for time
-
wasting have
led many to dismiss it as a passing fad, which is typical of a
post
-
peak Hype Cycle position.
Twitter has worked to stabilize its technology and reduced many (but by no means all) of the
service interruptions that previously plagued the system. Twitter pro
blems are announced by the
appearance of the "fail whale" graphic on Twitter's home page, a term that has received wide
public adoption. Twitter's dominance has made it difficult for competitors to gain a foothold,
although enterprise suppliers such as Yam
mer and salesforce.com's Chatter have had some
success. Several companies in the young microblogging space have already disappeared,
including Quotably, Swurl and Pownce. Summize was acquired by Twitter, FriendFeed by
Facebook and Ping.fm by Seesmic.
User
Advice:
Adopt social media sooner rather than later, because the greatest risk lies in failure to
engage and being left mute in a debate in which your voice must be heard.
Before using social media to communicate, listen to the channel, learn the language
and
become familiar with the social norms. Only then should you begin speaking. As with
any other language, good results are achieved with regular, consistent practice, rather
than with spotty participation.
Remind employees that the policies already in pl
ace (for example, public blogging
policies, protection of intellectual property and confidentiality) apply to microblogging as
well. It is not always necessary to issue new guidelines.
As Twitter is a public forum, employees should understand the limits of
what is
acceptable and desirable.
Business Impact:
Despite its popularity, microblogging will have moderate impact overall on how
people in organizations communicate and collaborate. It has earned its place alongside other
channels (for example, e
-
mail, b
logging and wikis), enabling new kinds of fast, witty, easy
-
to
-
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assimilate exchanges. But it remains only one of many channels available. Microblogging has
greater potential to provide enterprise value than these other channels by coordinating large
numbers
of people and providing close to real
-
time insights into group activities. These mass
-
coordination and mass
-
awareness possibilities are being explored by some early adopters, but
have not achieved wide adoption.
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration
:
5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity:
Adolescent
Sample Vendors:
Blogtronix; Identi.ca; Jaiku; salesforce.com; Seesmic; Socialcast; Socialtext;
Tweet Scan; Twitter; Yammer
Recommended Reading:
"Four Ways in Which Enterprises are Using Twitter"
"Twitter
for Business: Activity Streams Are the Future of Enterprise Microblogging"
"Case Study: Social Filtering of Real
-
Time Business Events at Stratus With Salesforce.com's
Chatter"
"Should Retailers Use Twitter?"
RIA Platforms
Analysis By:
Eric Knipp; Ray Valde
s
Definition:
Rich Internet application (RIA) platforms enable organizations and software vendors
to build applications that provide a richer, more
-
responsive user experience, compared with older
-
generation, "plain browser" Web platforms. RIA platforms and
technologies span a range of
approaches that, from a runtime perspective, fall into three basic categories: browser
-
only,
enhanced browser and outside the browser (also called "rich client"). The latter are considered
"heavy RIA" options because of their
larger weight on the client.
The browser
-
only (or "pure" browser) approach is known as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
(Ajax), which leverages the capabilities that are already built into every modern browser (for
example, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera
, Chrome and Safari), such as the JavaScript language
engine, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Document Object Model (DOM) support. While a
handful of commercial products are still available from vendors like Backbase, Ext JS and
SmartClient, the Ajax appr
oach is dominated by open
-
source toolkits like jQuery, Prototype,
Yahoo User Interface and Dojo. Other vendors, such as ICEsoft Technologies, JackBe and
Google, deliver more
-
encompassing offerings that include hooks to server
-
side components. In
addition,
there are vendors with more
-
powerful RIA technology that separately offer lightweight
choices, not directly related to their core commercial offerings (for example, Adobe with the Spry
toolkit, and Microsoft with its ASP.NET Ajax toolkit and support for jQ
uery in its Visual Studio
product). While Ajax is widely used, most enterprise applications that use Ajax do so in a limited
manner, by sprinkling a few Ajax features into a Web application instead of building a complete
RIA experience. Growing interest in
HTML5, along with a subset of features from the draft
standard that have made their way into cutting
-
edge browsers like Chrome and Firefox, is already
accelerating and broadening the adoption of browser
-
based Ajax. This trend is a permanent
condition and
will continue into the near future.
Unlike JavaScript
-
and browser
-
centric Ajax, which is mostly browser
-
independent, the
enhanced
-
browser approach begins with a browser and extends it with a plug
-
in or other
browser
-
specific, machine
-
executable component.
Examples of this approach are Adobe Flash
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(further enhanced by Flash Catalyst and Adobe Flex server
-
side technology), Microsoft Silverlight
and the Curl RIA platform. Vendors that leverage the Flash or Java
-
extended browser to provide
a richer interface t
echnology than basic Ajax include Canoo, Infragistics, Laszlo Systems and
Nexaweb Technologies. The enhanced
-
browser approach can result in a full rich
-
client
experience that looks nothing like a "plain browser," or it can be used to develop "rich islands"
within a traditional Web page.
The outside
-
the
-
browser or rich
-
client approach means adding some large
-
footprint system
software to the client operating environment, such as the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) runtime, the
Microsoft .NET language environment o
r the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) software stack. On
top of this stack, additional layers can add capabilities for client
-
side data persistence, automatic
provisioning, and versioning of platforms and applications, and migration of server
-
side
component
models. Examples of this approach include Adobe AIR, IBM Lotus Expeditor,
Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation, Microsoft's out
-
of
-
browser technique for Silverlight
and Sun Microsystems JavaFX. Also in this category is NetWeaver Business Client from
SAP,
which is an outside
-
the
-
browser, rich
-
client technology. Typically, this approach is a complete
replacement for any existing Web page technology, and users working with an outside
-
the
-
browser application need not have any idea they are, in fact, inter
acting with a website on the
back end. Growing interest in cross
-
platform mobile application development is also driving
inquiries into rich
-
client technology.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Major system vendors, such as IBM and Microsoft,
have
been talking about a "rich client" or "smart client" alternative to plain browser
-
based user
interfaces since the early part of this decade. The concept and road map were mainly driven by a
vendor's agenda for maintaining a system software footprint on a
user's device (desktop PCs,
laptops and PDAs) that was more than a basic browser, which was perceived to be commodity
technology. However, in 2005, Ajax (a "basic browser" technology) appeared on the scene and
enjoyed explosive growth, blindsiding vendors'
road maps that were based on heavier
technologies (for example, Microsoft WinForms with ClickOnce technology). Since 2007, there
have been new initiatives
—
such as Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight, IBM Lotus Expeditor and
Sun JavaFX
—
which indicate a re
newed effort on the part of vendors to go beyond the basic
browser. The efforts of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to enhance and expand the role
of the browser in the HTML5 specification can be viewed as a direct response to the growth of
RIA capabili
ties, and HTML5 represents a competing technology in most contexts.
User Advice:
To gain real value from RIA technology, invest in an enhanced development
process based on objectively measured and empirically proven usability design principles and on
conti
nuous improvement before investing in any new user interface technology, RIA or otherwise.
Additionally, recognize that Ajax represents an evolution of browser
-
based technology, and it
remains more popular and more widely supported than enhanced
-
browser or
rich
-
client
-
based
alternatives, which have higher barriers to entry. In either case, selecting a technology without
first understanding usability and user
-
centric design will prove to be a waste of time. True rich
user experiences come first from methodol
ogy, then from technology.
If you seek to deploy the richest possible class of applications in the next 12 to 18 months (for
example, streaming video, graphically intensive applications that support rich drag
-
and
-
drop
features, or robust charting capabilit
ies), you should give primary consideration to "heavy RIA"
platforms. However, if you desire the broadest possible reach, while still retaining significant
richness, consider Ajax techniques a stronger play. The latter is an especially important
considerat
ion for the development of cross
-
mobile applications.
Business Impact:
A user experience that is perceptively better than other offerings in a product
category can provide sustainable competitive advantage. Consider the flagship examples of the
RIA/Ajax ge
nre, such as Google's Gmail, Maps and Calendar applications, which achieved high
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visibility and strong adoption, despite entering late into a mature and stable product category, or
TweetDeck, which, although not the first Twitter client, is among the most
popular. However,
competitive advantage is not a guaranteed result of RIA technology deployment
—
it depends on
innovations in usability (independent of technology) and on server
-
side architectures that
complement client
-
side user interface technology. Man
y organizations do not have the process
maturity to deliver a consumer
-
grade user experience, and will need to acquire talent or
consulting resources to achieve positive business impact.
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of target audi
ence
Maturity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
Adobe; Backbase; Curl; Dojo; Google; IBM; Infragistics; jQuery; JackBe;
Laszlo Systems; Microsoft; Nexaweb Technologies; Oracle; Prototype; SAP; SmartClient; Yahoo
Recommended Reading:
"It's Official: Open
-
Source JavaScript Has Displaced Closed
-
Source
Offerings"
"Navigating the Ajax vs. 'Heavy RIA' Dilemma"
"MarketScope for Ajax Technologies and Rich Internet Application Platforms"
Web Widgets
Analysis By:
Jim Murphy
Definition:
Web widgets are reusable miniature Web applications and snippets of code designed
to execute in Web pages without the need for site
-
specific compiling. Web widgets can be
embedded in a site by the site's owner without a need to give any control over the s
ite to the third
party providing the widget. Multiple widget models exist on the consumer Web, including Google
"gadgets" and Yahoo "widgets." Different widget providers foster third
-
party development of
widgets based on their own approaches, and widget fo
rmats aren't interoperable. Standards,
primarily OpenSocial and iWidgets, are being promoted by vendor and industry groups. Variants
of mobile Web widgets are available on different mobile platforms.
Web
-
oriented architecture (WOA) and representational sta
te transfer (REST)
-
based application
programming interfaces (APIs) serve as the foundation for Web widgets. Web widgets constitute
a relatively simple way to create reusable user interface (UI) components, and can also serve as
the basis for mashups and ot
her front
-
end application composites.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Web widgets have been available on the
consumer Web since the 2002 to 2003 time frame. However, they were primarily a consumer
Web and consumerization of IT phenomenon until 2
006 to 2007. Larger numbers of enterprises
outside the realm of Web megaportal providers and Web startups started to see the value of
providing their own Web widgets to extend marketing and sales efforts. Enterprises started to pay
serious attention on a w
ide scale to leveraging Web widgets internally in 2007, but interest has
accelerated, partly due to increasing interest in enterprise mashups and, increasingly, mobile
applications.
Anyone using a personal start page (such as iGoogle or My Yahoo) leverages
Web widgets. In an
enterprise context, Web widget use is frequently provided through a horizontal portal, but
horizontal portal infrastructures aren't a prerequisite for Web widget use, and widgets are finding
way into other applications and platforms, in
cluding collaboration platforms, business intelligence
dashboards and high
-
performance workplace environments.
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User Advice:
The widget proposition resembles the portlet proposition, as a simple way to make
Web information, applications and services availab
le to more people in more contexts. Unlike
portlets, however, widgets rely mostly on client
-
side processing. Widgets can be easily deployed
on a mobile device or PC desktop, while portlets are bound to the server environment for which
they're developed. Th
e widget's current simplicity and lack of standards means sacrificing some
of the portlet's sophistication, especially in areas such as interportlet communication and
federation. However, raising the sophistication of the widget may only compromise its sim
plicity,
which is part of its appeal, and lead it toward the same frustration as portlets. Standards such as
iWidget, OpenSocial and EMML are just beginning to gain momentum. Broader Web standards,
such as HTML5, are likely to play an important role in the
evolution of Web widgets.
Business Impact:
Enterprises are increasingly expressing interest in leveraging widgets for a
variety of reasons. Using widgets in employee portals and other internally facing websites could
reduce development costs and improve t
he user experience. Providing the ability to embed
widgets in an externally facing Web presence can attract and retain users. Web widgets present
an opportunity as a component of a Web projection strategy. In conjunction with providing open
APIs or Really
Simple Syndication (RSS)/Atom to expose information to other Web consumers,
Web widgets enable enterprises to expose data, functional features and branding to consumers
on the public Web. Enterprises can also use Web widgets to expose elements of their Web
presence and managed communities with public Web community environments, such as
Facebook and Twitter.
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity:
Adolescent
Sample Vendors:
Google; IBM; Microsoft; Netvibes; Pagefla
kes; Yahoo
Federated Portals Across Vendor Families
Analysis By:
Jim Murphy
Definition:
Portal federation allows portal components, applications and content, often in the
form of portlets, to be produced in one portal environment, instance or server, and c
onsumed in
another portal framework or instance. Portal federation is a means of integrating portals, sharing
resources across portal deployments, and providing a unified experience for end users. Portal
federation across vendor families describes this int
eroperability among products from various
portal vendors.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
The demand for portal federation across vendor
families is increasing steadily as a result of two overriding factors. First, organizations often have
porta
ls from many providers, and these portals have undeniable appeal and strength for certain
types of processes and interactions. For example, many organizations use one portal centered on
business applications and processes (such as SAP NetWeaver Portal or O
racle WebCenter), one
portal for general purpose knowledge and content management (such as Microsoft SharePoint or
Oracle WebCenter Interaction), and one portal for customer or citizen engagement (such as
Open Text Vignette Portal or Liferay). Second, orga
nizations seek to provide a unified portal
experience for employees, customers, partners and citizens across these portals.
Although Web Service for Remote Portlets (WSRP) v.2.0 promises to address the challenge of
federating portals based on different ven
dors' technologies, portal federation requires more than
just portlet syndication and remains a daunting challenge. WSRP v.2 production isn't yet a
standard feature across all vendors' products. As portals evolve to support representational state
transfer
(REST)
-
ful integration approaches, the ease of portal federation will increase. However,
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REST doesn't solve other portal federation issues, such as personalization, metadata and
federated identity management. At a content level, the widely adopted Content
Management
Interoperability Services (CMIS) shows promise as a means of integrating and aggregating,
sources of content for portals, including Web content, document repositories and digital asset
management systems.
Organizations need not rely solely on em
erging standards and portlet
-
level integration to
accomplish portal federation across vendor families. In fact, many successful portal
implementations employ more
-
established mechanisms, such as enterprise service buses (ESBs)
and SOAP
-
based Web services.
Integration at these more
-
foundational levels, such as in the
data layer or process layer, can provide a more cohesive and versatile architecture for creating
composite applications across a range of portal providers.
User Advice:
Enterprises seeking to fe
derate portals across vendor families will rely largely on WSRP
and WSRP v.2.0. They also should employ integration approaches, such as those
based on REST/plain old XML (POX), and should consider other emerging standards,
such as OpenID and CMIS.
Enterpri
ses should also strongly consider federation approaches at the foundational
level, rather than solely through portlets and gadgets. Many organizations have
effectively used ESBs, business process management (BPM) and more
-
traditional
integration approaches
to achieve portal federation.
Business Impact:
Federation across portals from different vendor families will:
Enable users to access the resources exposed by those portals, without having to log in
to multiple portal interfaces.
Provide complete interoper
ability across portals, without developing custom integration
code and replicating user profiles across multiple portal directories.
Facilitate the emergence of the portal fabric.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
1% to 5% of target audience
Maturit
y:
Adolescent
Sample Vendors:
IBM; Oracle
Government Data Interoperability
Analysis By:
Jeff Vining
Definition:
Data interoperability is defined as a technology
-
enabled discipline to allow multiple
systems to communicate, exchange and use data in specified data formats and communication
protocols for collaboration of cross
-
agency services requiring applications to
exchange data in a
semantically interoperable manner. Governments are embracing several technologies such as
Extensible Markup Language (XML), mashups and master data management (MDM) to enable
them to exchange information without being bound by applicatio
n
-
specific formats or proprietary
protocols. XML builds much of their interoperability solutions to develop information
-
centric
infrastructures to share information using vertical
-
specific applications, such as the National
Information Exchange Model (NIEM
). Mashups are lightweight, tactical presentation layer
integration of multisourced applications or content in a single, browser
-
compatible offering. These
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Web
-
based composite applications leverage systems (data, business logic and presentation) to
create
capability. MDM (formerly known as customer data integration [CDI]) systems enable
governments to collaborate in a workflow
-
driven or transaction
-
oriented process to ensure
semantic consistency of all master data assets that support identification, linking
and
synchronization of data across heterogeneous data sources. These technologies contribute to
data interoperability to achieve a single view of data across governments.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Adoption rates differ, with XML being mor
e
mature, MDM (adolescent) falling toward the trough and mashups being early mainstream. As a
result, we have undertaken a new approach in averaging the position, adoption and justification of
each. Governments take different implementation approaches, inf
luencing the scope, method and
pace of adoption. They typically have fragmented and inconsistent data spread across numerous
systems within many departments. This makes it difficult to keep data consistent and up
-
to
-
date.
Data interoperability is an import
ant issue for government to be able to communicate. Adherence
to XML
-
defined models differ
—
in terms of their legacy systems and processes and perspectives
—
on exactly what information is strategically critical for effective implementation. There is an
o
ften
-
exhausting exercise of developing schemas used to tag data from disparate organizations
working together. XML implementations will vary in speed of common definitions usable for data
interchanges. For example, EUROJUST (
www.eurojust.europa.eu
) is a consortium of 27 nations
adopting NIEM for their judicial and law enforcement domains. Mashups are driven by the Web
2.0 culture, such as Web application programming interfaces (APIs), lightweight client
-
side
scri
pting, delivery of content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS), wikis Ajax and social
networking. Mashups will play a key role in supporting transparency for the "open government
data" movement (see Data.gov in the U.S.), pursued by several government doma
ins to increase
transparency. Some governments are also capitalizing on mashups to extend their service
-
oriented architecture (SOA) application
-
to
-
application capabilities to the user
-
to
-
application
implementation by positioning SOA services as mashable as
sets. This is a main driver for
homeland security, tax/revenue, social welfare, better law enforcement, better citizen services
and healthcare agencies, as well as other organizations where consolidation of data views is built
with global identifiers and a
ggregated for central reference purposes. MDM creates and manages
a physical, database
-
based system of record enabling the delivery of a single view across lines of
business. Governments in the face of economic turmoil are looking for MDM as a means to hel
p
with cost optimization by automating transactions to reduce the cost of operations as well as
transform data stewardship and governance. The attraction is the ability to store and update
master datasets providing a single data view used to support transa
ctional, operational and
analytical needs
—
typically through service
-
oriented architecture interfaces.
User Advice:
XML is a focus for government because it holds the potential to alleviate many of
the legacy
-
interoperability problems associated with the
sharing of documents and data, if
implemented with consistent data definitions and structures. We expect to see increased
emphasis on integration built on top of technology platforms such as XML and foundations such
as MDM. CIOs need to develop an overarch
ing strategy for information management and
examine differing aspects of data interoperability. They need to: (1) ensure adherence to
governmentwide metadata models; (2) provide mashable information, such as 911 data, city
services, budget data and resourc
e data on their websites; and (3) where appropriate, create a
central MDM hub to integrate with established source systems to become a system of record for
MDM in a federated and heterogeneous environment to avoid clashes when it is time to integrate.
Mash
ups deliver significant application agility by bridging the gap between how quickly the
business situation changes and how slowly enterprise applications evolve. CIOs need to foster
collaboration among users and knowledge workers with the means to quickly
build software
solutions without direct developer involvement to extend the reach of the application group and
increase developer productivity through a potentially highly leveraged repository of mashable
assets. This approach can potentially contain costs
by reducing burdens on application
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development organizations, because non
-
IT staff can leverage IT investments. MDM is relevant
to government, but projects will take a different form, depending on what the focus is of the single
view in that industry or p
art of government (for example, citizen, taxpayer or patient). Government
CIOs should form part of a wider multidomain MDM program that is a key part of a commitment to
enterprise information management (EIM) designed to help break down operational barrier
s,
enabling greater enterprise agility and simplifying integration activities.
Business Impact:
Organizations with fragmented and inconsistent data have difficulty managing
operations. Data interoperability is essential to realize an information
-
centric vi
sion. The inability
of various agencies to exchange data impacts service effectiveness and efficiency. The use of
XML reduces cost and improves the quality of content management, information access, system
interoperability, database integration and data qu
ality. Mashups will become increasingly
important to support openness and transparency and to unlock the so
-
called "power of
information."
MDM offers a singular data view to manage fundamental workflows and set up more
-
effective
practices. However, challen
ges remain about potential associated liabilities.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity:
Adolescent
Sample Vendors:
DataFlux; IBM; Initiate Systems; Kalido; Oracle; SAP; Tibco Software
Recommended Reading:
"Cool Ve
ndors in Master Data Management, 2010"
"Toolkit: Building a Business Case Justification for Enterprise Mashups"
"XML Standards in the Context of Information Infrastructure"
Second
-
Generation Portlet Standards (JSR 286 and WSRP v.2)
Analysis By:
Jim Murphy
Definition:
Portlets remain the primary components for integrating and building applications in
portals. Portlet standards bring value to organizations by reducing cost of development,
facilitating code reuse, offering a simple means of integration for thi
rd
-
party applications, allowing
interoperability among various portal software providers and reducing dependency on specific
vendors.
The initial portlet standards included Java Specification Request (JSR) 168 and Web Services for
Remote Portlets (WSRP). J
SR 168 governs the life cycle and deployment of a portlet within a
Java
-
based container. WSRP is a Web services specification and is agnostic as to platform.
WSRP, thus, proposes to allow interoperability of portlets between Java, .NET and other portal
con
tainers. WSRP also proposes to allow portal federation, whereby a portlet can be produced on
one portal platform, and consumed in another.
The success of JSR 168 and WSRP has been mixed. While most established portal vendors
have supported the standards at
a base level, advanced features in some portal products have
often required a proprietary portlet approach. In addition, some portal providers have used
proprietary approaches to exert control over customers and promote easily integrated adjacent
products
. Meanwhile, user organizations have often found portlet building and deployment overly
complex
—
irrespective of the standards
—
and falling short of expected results. Thus, almost as
soon as the initial standards were deployed, industry groups undertook
efforts toward a second
generation.
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The second
-
generation portlet standards are JSR 286 and WSRP v.2. JSR 286 updates the
standard mechanisms, detailing the invocation of local portlets in a Java portal framework. WSRP
v.2 updates the standard mechanism fo
r invoking remote portlets in a portal.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
JSR 286 and WSRP v.2 are intended to fill the
gaps found in the first generation of portlet standards, including adding support for interportlet
communication. WSRP v.1 and
JSR 168 are not used widely in portal deployments, but they have
demonstrated value in providing code portability and reducing developer efforts in certain
scenarios, such as those where interportlet communication isn't required. Several portal vendors
sup
port JSR 286 and WSRP v.2 specifications, but support isn't universal.
While second
-
generation portlet standards offer some promise, their greatest inhibitor may be the
burgeoning interest in widgets as enhancements or alternatives to portlets. Widgets are
embedable applications comprising simple code snippets that can be easily snapped into users'
portal pages. As client
-
side components, widgets can be less taxing on server resources; and
because widgets are less complex than portlets, they are easier to d
esign for cross
-
platform use.
In some cases, widgets will obviate the need for portlets.
However, widgets and portlets will likely coexist in most organizations. Complex forms of
integration with sophisticated back
-
end systems will likely still require por
tlets. A feature like
interportlet communication is not yet part of any widget specification and may be required in many
situations. JSR 286 is designed to account for, and accommodate, widgets and other
representational state transfer (REST)
-
based approac
hes. While second
-
generation portlet
standards are relatively advanced and fairly stable in ensuring portal interoperability, widget
standards are only beginning to emerge, with consumer and enterprise approaches, such as
OpenSocial and iWidgets, still com
peting for adoption.
User Advice:
Use WSRP v.2 and JSR 286 as the default starting points for portal
-
related custom
development to contain portlet development costs, and as a means of federating different portals.
However, don't plan on these specification
s meeting all portlet development needs, and don't
obsess with standards at the cost of business agility and value.
Leverage the JSR 286 standard if you are using a Java
-
based portal. JSR 286 provides
enterprises with flexibility in portal deployment acros
s different vendors' platforms that support the
specification. If you want to experiment with portal technology before engaging in a procurement
with a commercial vendor, start with a lightweight implementation, using an open
-
source portal
that supports JS
R 286. If you use JSR 286 for custom portlet development, then you can transfer
those portlets to more heavy
-
grade enterprise portal deployments, receiving full funding and
based on another vendor's offering, if that vendor also supports the specification.
JSR 286
supports interportlet communication, a key gap limiting JSR 168 use.
WSRP continues to provide a mechanism for portlet
-
level federation among different portals.
However, WSRP production and consumption capabilities are required to facilitate feder
ation
among the different portals using this standard. When implementing a multiple portal,
"uberportal," or federated portal architecture, be aware that several vendors support WSRP as a
consumer, but not as a producer.
Business Impact:
The JSR 286 standa
rd is likely to encourage the development of standards
-
based portlets, helping reduce the cost of switching among portal frameworks supporting the
standard. The lack of interportlet communication in JSR 168 was a major reason the standard
didn't see widesp
read use. Portlet standards will promote the adoption of open
-
source portal
frameworks conforming to those standards, as well as the development of a third
-
party market for
portlets. WSRP v.2 should accelerate adoption among organizations dissatisfied with
the
limitations of the first version of WSRP.
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Although the second generation of portlet standards reflects important advancements, enterprise
Web development approaches have evolved since JSR 168 and WSRP v.1. Enterprises are
increasingly demonstrating an
interest in using consumer Web widgets from various providers, in
addition to standards
-
based portlets.
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
IBM; JBoss; Liferay; Microsoft; Open Text; Oracle; SAP; Tibco Software
Recommended Reading:
"Second
-
Generation Portlet Standards Should Be Used for Portlet
Development but Aren't the Whole Story"
Social Software Suites
Analysis By:
Nikos Drakos; Anthony B
radley
Definition:
The term "social software" refers to tools that encourage, capture and organize open
and free
-
form interactions between employees, customers and partners. This is a "socializing"
technology
—
sometimes also referred to as "Enterprise
2.0"
—
that enables a grass
-
roots
approach to creating and exploiting collective knowledge. It supplements and strengthens pre
-
existing connections, behaviors and norms (for example, degree of connectedness, social
signals, peer recognition and perceptions
of impact on others). We see social software as
spanning a spectrum. At one end, it includes social extensions to conventional collaboration
support environments that can provide the means for interaction and information sharing. At the
other, it includes
social software environments that also allow social patterns to emerge and
evolve among larger numbers of loosely connected individuals.
It is already evident that functional boundaries between different products are constantly shifting
and that there are
very few "pure" products. Most offer a blend of different capabilities, and we
expect that successful products will continue to assimilate new functionality. More and more
products are claiming a broad set of capabilities, which typically include support
for user profiles,
shared workspaces, document sharing, discussion forums, wikis, blogs, microblogs, activity
feeds, social tags, social bookmarks, social network analysis, social network visualization,
content feeds, people search (expertise location), co
ntent rating, reputation management, social
analytics and alerting. Some are more focused on internal users, with an emphasis on integration
with existing infrastructure, business applications and other enterprise requirements (such as
"auditability" and c
ompliance). Others place more emphasis on extranets, with support for secure
information transfer between organizations. Some target "closed" or "open" external customers or
user communities, with good support for large
-
scale deployments, consumer engageme
nt and
management of untrusted content (such as moderation and spam filtering). Some vendors
provide a technology platform, while others provide a full
-
service approach including strategy,
implementation, administration, moderator and content moderation se
rvices.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Awareness of socializing technology is high
because of the popularity of related consumer social software and the "socialization" of the Web.
Within businesses, there is growing evidence of production depl
oyments. We see pent
-
up
demand from workers who use consumer products for work activities and enthusiasm from
business managers who expect these tools to help them boost the performance of their workers.
However, we also see some apprehension from those re
sponsible for security, compliance,
enterprise architecture and risk management in general. On the supply side, options available for
business use are expanding rapidly as new vendors enter the market and as every established
workplace vendor delivers a so
cial software suite. A more recent supply
-
side phenomenon is the
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availability of social software functionality from business application vendors such as
salesforce.com (with Chatter) and SAP (with Workstream), and with the acquisition of CubeTree
by Succes
sFactors. The movement from "point" tools to integrated suites has brought relief but
also high expectations. We are beginning to see some disillusionment with the realization that,
even with a suite, much work must be done to achieve an effective social s
oftware deployment. In
the longer term, many companies will have social software technology supplied by their strategic
workplace vendor, perhaps augmented by third
-
party products.
User Advice:
IT managers should resist the demand from users to simply inst
all social software
tools without thinking through how they will be used. Early implementations should not only
evaluate the maturity and usability of the technology but, even more importantly, should be set up
to answer questions about business value and
relevance to specific business contexts. Given the
very broad range of use cases and activities that can be supported with social software suites, it
is important to prioritize them when it comes to actual deployment. Many early deployments have
failed, be
en ignored or slowly withered because they lacked a clearly defined and appropriate
purpose. Deployments should incorporate several elements, including ease of use, identifying the
right context, exposing connections, appealing to self
-
interest and gaining
management
recognition. Before investing in social software, IT managers should understand where it fits in
the context of existing workplace applications and practices
—
for example, in creating
documentation, classifying information, improving search re
levancy, exploring ideas and making
decisions.
Business Impact:
Enterprise social software adds persistence and reflects and reveals structure
in otherwise transient informal interactions between workers in an organization. Valuable
business information is
created, shared and refined through self
-
selection, social incentives and
decentralized control, rather than by top
-
down resource allocation and mandates. We expect that
social software will be relevant in connecting individuals to communities of interest
and practice,
or in stimulating multidisciplinary collaboration that involves exploration, innovation, creativity,
discovery, knowledge capture and training. However, evidence of successful social software
deployments is still limited. The risk of organiz
ational culture clashes, privacy concerns and
questions about worker productivity and content quality highlight the need for caution.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
Atlassian
; bluekiwi Software; Crowd Factory; EMC; Google; IBM; Jive
Software; KickApps; Leverage Software; Microsoft; NewsGator; Novell; SelectMinds; Socialtext;
SuccessFactors; Telligent
Recommended Reading:
"Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace"
"C
ase Study: Social Filtering of Real
-
Time Business Events at Stratus With Salesforce.com's
Chatter"
"Case Study: Swiss Re Optimizes the Value of Social Business Collaboration Software"
"Case Study: Social Networking Tool Becomes Essential Workplace Infrastr
ucture at Deloitte"
Service
-
Oriented Business Applications
Analysis By:
Gene Phifer
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Definition:
Service
-
oriented business applications (SOBAs) are delivered as a set of composable
services. The technological foundation is typically based on SOAP Web servic
es and other WS
-
*
services, but there are also lighter
-
weight (i.e., RESTful) and nonstandard approaches. SOBAs
are designed for deployment on a wide range of emerging platforms and architectures, such as
service
-
oriented architectures (SOAs), event
-
driven
architectures, business process platforms
and Web
-
oriented architectures (WOAs).
SOBAs can be modifications of legacy applications through service interfaces, which are
frequently delivered by wrapping legacy application programming interfaces (APIs) with
Web
services, newly developed applications, modular suites or composite applications. SOAP
-
based
or REST
-
based Web services are appropriate for creating services in SOBAs.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Since their inception more than eight ye
ars ago,
SOBAs have significantly impacted enterprise application strategies, largely because of the
stated commitment of such industry giants as Oracle and SAP to the concept. However, SOBAs
still need time to gain additional industry visibility, as their
full benefits and corollary definition,
software as a service (or SaaS), take hold in Type B (mainstream technology adopter) and Type
C (technologically conservative) enterprises.
For example, SAP's on
-
premises solution, the Business Suite, is a collectio
n of SOBAs, but
Oracle's on
-
premises solution, Applications Unlimited (which is made up of technology from
Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Retek and others), is mainly non
-
SOBA. Oracle's foray into
SOBAs will come with its upcoming Fusion Applications init
iative. As a whole, the industry has
plenty of room for SOBA growth.
User Advice:
Enterprises should consider adopting SOBAs now. Adoption will occur by default if
enterprises use SAP or Oracle family applications, because these two vendors have or will ha
ve
SOBA capabilities inherent in most of their applications. However, it may take many years before
enterprises upgrade to the SOBA versions of these packaged applications. In addition,
technology providers not traditionally associated with the direct mark
eting of business
applications (most notably, IBM) will release offerings in the SOBA space for specific horizontal
and vertical domain support though 2011 and beyond.
SOBAs benefit enterprises that have an SOA strategy. Therefore, a complete SOA strategy
and
plan is a necessity.
Also, the decision to upgrade should be based on: (1) the need to access additional functionality;
(2) the desire to stay current on vendor support; and (3) the enterprise's ability to support the
existing back
-
level version of the
application versus the newer version, and not just the desire to
move to a SOBA.
Business Impact:
SOBAs enable the business process integration of previously "silo resident"
applications, such as those in CRM, supply chain management and ERP. SOBAs help
enterprises reach conventional business goals by using service interfaces for internal and
external
integration and interoperation. SOBAs also facilitate assembly of composite applications
(i.e., mashups) and the creation of portals.
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
20% to 50% of target audience
Maturity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
IBM
; Microsoft; Oracle; SAP
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Recommended Reading:
"Key Issues for Composite Applications and Enterprise Mashups,
2010"
"Nine Best Practices for Dealing With SODA"
B2B Web Services
Analysis By:
Benoit Lheureux; Daniel Sholler
Definition:
Business
-
to
-
business (B
2B) Web services refers to the IT usage scenario in which
some form of Web services
—
SOAP, WS
-
* or Web
-
native implementation, such as REST or
POX
—
is deployed in B2B (or "multienterprise") integration projects. Examples include:
The use of B2B Web servic
es as an alternative approach to B2B process and data
integration for traditional e
-
commerce projects, such as retail/consumer
-
packaged goods
and the manufacturing and automotive industries
Use by integration service providers (for example, GXS, IBM [via i
ts recent Cast Iron
and Sterling Commerce acquisitions] and Hubspan) as a protocol into their networks for
process and data integration, as the interface into their customers' systems, and (in
some cases) as a Web services interface for automating the prov
isioning of users on
their networks (see "Magic Quadrant for Integration Service Providers")
The emerging Web
-
services
-
based exchange of information and events in support of
vendor
-
managed inventory for complex high
-
tech manufacturing supply chains
B2B Web
services use by companies, such as Amazon, that enable third
-
party
companies to leverage knowledge about buyers' preferences
Use by software
-
as
-
a
-
service (SaaS) providers
—
for example, salesforce.com uses
B2B Web services to implement its AppExchange Web
services application
programming interfaces (APIs)
Use by cloud
-
computing vendors
—
for example, Google uses B2B Web services to
implement its Google App Engine (see "Google App Engine Comes Closer to Enterprise
Adoption")
Use by emerging providers of clo
ud services brokerage (e.g., StrikeIron) for supplying
the near
-
real
-
time aggregation of business information from various content provides for
consumption via Web services among many consumers
To access business information from internal and external appl
ications (run by external
business partners) in support of portal
-
based applications
Use by B2B gateway software (BGS) providers (for example, IBM and Software AG) as
an increasingly prominent connection protocol supported in their BGS products and
used by
companies implementing B2B integration projects
In these and other scenarios, Web services are being used as a multienterprise extension of
internal service
-
oriented architectures (SOAs) or in lieu of more
-
traditional approaches to
multienterprise integra
tion, such as Applicability Statement 2 (AS2), electronic data interchange
(EDI) and FTP.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Given the wide range of use cases in the definition
section above, the position of B2B Web services is a compromise between
the different rates of
B2B Web services adoption. At one extreme, the rate of B2B Web services adoption for most
well
-
established forms of e
-
commerce (such as order
-
to
-
cash in retail and manufacturing, and
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claims adjudication in insurance) is slow. Howeve
r, given the number of e
-
commerce transactions
that occur every year (estimated at more than 100 billion per year), even a small percentage
represents a significant uptake. At the other extreme, the rate of B2B Web services adoption for
new forms of B2B pr
ojects, such as those involving SaaS and cloud computing, is a substantial,
fast
-
growing user base (see "Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide and Regions, Industry
Sectors, 2009
-
2014").
Overall, expectations for B2B Web services have passed the Troug
h of Disillusionment and have
just begun their climb up the Plateau of Productivity. But while companies increasingly seek to
use Web services in opportunistic B2B projects, important factors still conspire to inhibit more
-
widespread adoption of Web servic
es in systemic multienterprise projects:
As major obstacles to Web services standards adoption are slowly being overcome (such as the
recent release of products supporting reliable messaging [e.g., WS
-
ReliableMessaging] over Web
services), there continues
to be significant growth in B2B Web services. However, some leading
cloud
-
based organizations are shifting their emphasis to Web
-
oriented architecture (WOA) and
representational state transfer (REST) implementations, whereas most enterprises are still
buil
ding SOAP
-
based interfaces. The growth in B2B services will continue, but the
implementation style will shift from predominantly SOAP
-
based to predominantly REST
-
based
over the next three to five years.
The relatively new solutions that govern multienterpr
ise (and internal) Web services
—
for
example, Software AG, Cisco, Oracle, Sonoa Systems and SOA Software (see "Magic Quadrant
for Integrated SOA Governance Technology Sets").
Users' overall immature understanding of the architectural framework, and securi
ty and
governance requirements necessary to support Web services in scale.
The lack of business cases in typical e
-
commerce scenarios for using B2B Web services as
alternatives to such well
-
established approaches as S/FTP and AS2, and industry standards
(s
uch as RosettaNet).
Despite these inhibitors, the increasing use of B2B Web services by leading cloud
-
computing
providers and, opportunistically, by many companies in their own projects, underscores the
increasing importance of Web services throughout the
IT industry. The increased adoption of
reliable Web services messaging, the increased overall adoption of SOA internally, the increased
adoption and maturity of SOA governance technologies, and the continued adoption of B2B Web
services even in traditional
e
-
commerce projects will continue to push B2B Web services up
higher onto the Plateau of Productivity.
User Advice:
Implementations of WS
-
ReliableMessaging and WS
-
Trust are now entering the
marketplace, and the Reliable Secure Profile from WS
-
I awaiting a
pproval has made SOAP
-
based Web services into the kind of standard that can be used to propagate messages across
systems. These types of advanced Web services are increasingly being used for B2B integration.
However, cloud
-
computing concepts based on Web a
rchitecture are becoming more relevant to
users' daily activities, and users should increasingly implement B2B Web services following WOA
principles using REST implementation (see "Tutorial: Web
-
Oriented Architecture: Putting the Web
Back in Web Services")
.
Look for such Web services standards to be implemented by SOA governance technologies
vendors (listed above), integration suite vendors (such as Tibco Software and Software AG), BGS
vendors (such as Axway and Seeburger), packaged
-
application vendors (suc
h as Oracle and
SAP) and integration service providers (E2open and GXS), and by IT end users that are
implementing their own B2B projects in your industry. These are leading indicators that B2B Web
services are mature enough for you to adopt them too.
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Consider using B2B Web services as an alternative to traditional e
-
commerce protocols, such as
AS2 and FTP, in IT projects involving SaaS, cloud
-
computing and other "greenfield" B2B project
scenarios in which Web services are a natural extension of and are
consistent with the
development of Web
-
services
-
enabled internal applications and infrastructures.
When available, leverage the B2B Web services capabilities offered by providers of cloud
computing and SaaS (such as Google and salesforce.com) and integrat
ion as a service (IaaS;
e.g., GXS, IBM, and Hubspan). However, be prepared to implement SOA governance
technologies, since few such vendors have implemented SOA governance technologies to
improve quality of service (QoS).
When available, leverage suitable
security and SOA governance technologies to improve overall
B2B Web services QoS, to make the discovery and implementation of Web services easier, and
to enable you to audit and manage Web services, as well as to identify dependencies among
them.
Business
Impact:
Web services have been widely adopted by cloud
-
computing/SaaS providers
and will eventually be implemented in all forms of e
-
commerce, including supply chains and
demand chains across all industries. Web services are also increasingly leveraged by
companies
implementing B2B projects, using all forms of integration middleware and IaaS.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
20% to 50% of target audience
Maturity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
Amazon; E2open; Google; GXS; Hubspan; IBM; Microsoft;
Oracle;
salesforce.com; Software AG; SOA Software; StrikeIron; Tibco Software
Recommended Reading:
"Magic Quadrant for Integrated SOA Governance Technology Sets"
"Taxonomy and Definitions for the Multienterprise/B2B Infrastructure Market"
Climbing the Slo
pe
Federated Portals Within Vendor Families
Analysis By:
Jim Murphy
Definition:
Portal federation allows portal components, applications and content, often in the
form of portlets, to be produced in one portal environment, instance or server, and consumed
in
another portal framework or instance. Portal federation is a means of integrating portals, sharing
resources across portal deployments, and providing a unified experience for end users. Portal
federation within vendor families describes this interoperab
ility among products from a single
portal vendor or provider.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Many vendors support federated portals within
their product families, but provide a limited set of interoperability features. Web Service for
Remote Po
rtlets (WSRP) enables some federation across distinct instances of a portal product
that's built on the same vendor's technology, but vendors vary in their ability to provide a
seamless experience. Ideally, the user of an instance of a vendor's portal prod
uct should be able
to seamlessly access the resources exposed and managed by different instances of that vendor's
portal product. Even when the vendor provides some level of federation among instances,
federation isn't always provided out of the box, and m
ay require directory entry replication.
Multinational enterprises can be particularly affected by this because the manual work necessary
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to replicate content and access rights across multiple instances of the same vendor's portal
product increases manageme
nt costs.
While portal federation within vendor families is a challenge in itself, organizations face far more
complex challenges when federating across vendor families. This is largely because many portal
vendors have concentrated federation capabilities
on their own portals and related products,
whether their intention was to urge customers to standardize on their portal or to lock out other
portal providers. However, because certain portal providers are vital, compelling and, in some
cases, undeniable, p
ortal federation across vendor families is a far greater need among
enterprises today.
Organizations need not rely solely on emerging standards and portlet
-
level integration to
accomplish portal federation, whether within or across vendor families. Many su
ccessful portal
implementations employ more
-
established mechanisms, such as enterprise service buses and
SOAP
-
based Web services. Integration at these more
-
foundational levels, such as in the data
layer or process layer, can provide a more cohesive and ver
satile architecture for creating
composite applications.
User Advice:
Enterprises that have deployed multiple portals should implement portal
-
relevant
standards, and should examine the federation of some functionality via portlet interoperability
mechanism
s, including WSRP v.2.0. Users can't rely on all portal vendors providing full federation
among different instances of their software.
Business Impact:
Most enterprises have multiple horizontal portal frameworks deployed across
their architectures. Enterpr
ise architectures supporting multiple portals within an enterprise can
provide a more unified, cohesive user experience if they can federate these portals, rather than
force users to move from portal to portal, depending on the business interaction.
Benefi
t Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
IBM; Microsoft; Oracle; SAP
Mobile Application Development
Analysis By:
William Clark; Michael King; Nick Jones
Definition:
Mobile application development is Gartner's broadest definition of the topic. It covers
both consumer and enterprise mobile application development and the whole range of tools, from
specialist to mainstream. Categories include classic software developmen
ts kits (SDKs), cross
-
platform SDKs and tools, template
-
based generators, function
-
specific generators, content
-
oriented generators or adapters, and on
-
device portals. Two Magic Quadrants (for mobile
consumer application platforms [MCAPs] and mobile enterp
rise application platforms [MEAPs])
cover the most
-
significant vendors in mobile application development
—
there are separate
technology profiles for each of these. There are also significant open
-
source options for mobile.
Many large organizations were ab
le to improve the success rates of their mobile application
development projects from 2003 through 2008 by limiting the scope, particularly by focusing on a
narrow set of development targets, usually picking a primary target, such as Microsoft Windows
Mobi
le and its predecessors, Palm, Symbian or BlackBerry. From 2008 through 2010, the
requirement to follow the expansion of mobile e
-
mail support to other platforms (such as Apple's
iPhone and Google's Android), the marked increase in user uptake of mobile We
b, and the
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increasing use of Web application development standards and practices for rich client
experiences have blurred the previous category boundaries.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Mobile application development has been evolving
since th
e late 1990s, and it is taking a very different form from the PC era, in which one target
platform, Windows, dominated. Most large enterprises have some element of mobile
development expertise within their organization, and they are using a wide variety of
tools to
support mobile. So while some options, such as MEAPs, are advanced, they don't address all
facets of all types of mobile application development; hence, the relatively immature rating in
comparison.
User Advice:
Enterprises need to be aware of th
e six styles of mobile application architecture:
thick, thin, rich, streaming, messaging and no client. Based on the type of mobile application
architecture, large enterprises supporting strategic mobile development need to consider MEAPs
and MCAPs as appr
opriate and need to link business strategy to each set of platforms by keying
off the size of audience addressed, range of devices to be supported, total cost of ownership,
security and usability. Given the growth and breadth of mobile development demands,
enterprises need to also plan for the use of specialist tools, including those for testing and user
interface.
Business Impact:
Business impact is high as one of the chief alternatives to mobile application
development, that of extensions to application
suites or prepackaged mobile applications, in most
cases need additional customization. Overall, business impact will increase from 2010 through
2015, particularly in the mobile consumer area. Mobile application development for business
-
to
-
employee applica
tions often yields ROI in excess of 100% per annum.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
20% to 50% of target audience
Maturity:
Adolescent
Sample Vendors:
Antenna Software; Apple; Microsoft; Netbiscuits; Nokia; Pyxis Mobile;
Research In Motion; Sybase
; Syclo
Recommended Reading:
"Magic Quadrant for Mobile Consumer Application Platforms"
"Magic Quadrant for Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms"
"Mobile Architectures, 2009 Through 2012: A Trend Toward Thin"
SOA
Analysis By:
Daniel Sholler
Definition:
Service
-
oriented architecture (SOA) for applications exhibits five definitional
characteristics:
It's modular.
Its modules can be distributed across multiple computers.
Software developers have written or generated interface metadata that specifies explici
t
contracts, so other developers can find and use the services.
Service interfaces are separate from the implementations (code and data) of the service
provider's components.
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Services can be shared
—
that is, they can be invoked successively in disparate
c
onsumer applications serving different business purposes.
These characteristics collectively make the application loosely coupled, which is an essential
characteristic for distributed applications that may have some components that are developed,
owned and
managed by different organizations. For example, cloud services and other software
-
as
-
a
-
service (SaaS) offerings generally rely on the SOA style. As the practice of SOA has
matured, patterns of use, or styles of SOA, have emerged. These styles include tra
ditional
request/reply, remote procedure call (RPC)
-
like SOA, sometimes called the component
-
or
object
-
based SOA style; representational state transfer (REST)
-
based SOA, which is called Web
-
oriented architecture (WOA); and event
-
driven SOA. The technology
and understanding of best
practices for these styles continue to evolve.
Alternate definitions of SOA have been used, but are fundamentally similar. Often, SOA is
described in terms of three principles: service orientation, loose coupling, and separation
of
concerns. These various definitions are functionally equivalent, since applying the three principles
will give you the characteristics described above.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
The long
-
term trend for SOA is very positive due
to requir
ements for business agility and application flexibility, as well as the trend toward
distributed computing, including cloud computing. The growing use of business process
management (BPM) and business activity monitoring (BAM) is also causing companies to
use
more SOA, because BPM and BAM are more
-
effective and easier to develop by using SOA.
However, as with many things, the investments and adoption were dramatically slowed as a
result of the 2009 economic conditions. For this reason, this concept has not
progressed
measurably along the Hype Cycle, and its likely time to maturity has been extended somewhat.
Vendors of middleware, development tools and packaged applications have delivered SOA
capabilities in most of their products, although the implementatio
n is still superficial in some
cases. Most user organizations are attempting to use SOA concepts as part of their system
designs. However, the usual "technology as silver bullet" thinking has largely been discredited.
The near
-
term return on investment in
some SOA projects has been difficult to quantify, mostly
because the results are spread over the lifetime of the solution. Most organizations have been
pleased with the improved flexibility and long
-
term results. Compared with traditional monolithic or
cli
ent/server applications, SOA applications are more likely to be spread across multiple
computers in far
-
flung locations; composed of parts that are developed and managed by
disparate, semiautonomous IT groups (domains), often controlled by disparate busine
ss units
inside and outside the company; running on a mix of heterogeneous application servers,
programming languages and operating systems; and subject to frequent change, because of
volatile business requirements.
SOA is part of the solution to these pro
blems, because it clarifies system design, isolates the
modules from each other and increases the interface documentation. Some organizations have
been disappointed by the low level of service sharing ("reuse") that they have achieved. In many
cases where
value is being measured, however, this value can be derived even with a modest
quantity of shared services. Some SOA projects have encountered problems in governance,
testing, configuration management, version control, metadata management, service
-
level
mo
nitoring, security and interoperability. This is to be expected, because changes in the
fundamental structure of business processes and application architecture of this magnitude do
not happen quickly or easily. User migration to SOA began in the mid
-
1990s
and will continue,
but we expect that the majority of organizations will have some commitment to SOA by 2013.
User Advice:
Use SOA to design large, new business applications, particularly those with life
spans projected to be more than three years, and th
ose that will undergo continuous refinement,
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maintenance or enlargement. SOA is especially well
-
suited to composite applications in which
components are built or managed by separate teams in disparate locations. These components
can also leverage pre
-
SOA a
pplications by wrapping function and data with service interfaces.
When buying packaged applications, rate those that implement SOA more highly than those that
don't. Also, use SOA in application integration scenarios that involve composite applications th
at
tie new logic to purchased packages, legacy applications or services offered by other business
units
—
such as those found in SaaS and other types of cloud computing. However, do not
discard non
-
SOA applications in favor of SOA applications solely on th
e basis of architecture.
Discard non
-
SOA applications only if there are compelling business reasons why they have
become unsatisfactory.
Continue to use non
-
SOA architectures for some new, tactical applications of limited size and
complexity, as well as fo
r minor changes to installed, non
-
SOA applications. There are multiple
patterns within SOA
—
including multichannel applications, composite applications, multistep
process flows, REST and event
-
driven architecture (EDA)
—
and each pattern has its own best
practices for design, deployment and management.
Business Impact:
Like the relational data model and the graphical user interface, SOA
represents a durable change in application architecture. SOA's main benefit is that it reduces the
time and effort requir
ed to change application systems to support changes in the business.
Business functions are represented in the design of SOA software services, which help align
business and technology models. The implementation of the first SOA application in a business
d
omain will generally be as difficult as, or more difficult than, building the same application using
non
-
SOA designs. Subsequent applications and changes to the initial SOA application will be
easier, faster and less expensive, because they'll leverage the
SOA infrastructure and previously
built services.
SOA is an essential ingredient in strategies that look to enhance a company's agility. SOA also
reduces the cost of application integration, especially after enough applications have been
converted or mode
rnized to support an SOA model. The transition to SOA is a long
-
term, gradual
trend, and it will not lead to a strategic realignment in vendor ranks or an immediate reduction in
user companies' IT outlays.
Benefit Rating:
Transformational
Market Penetratio
n:
More than 50% of target audience
Maturity:
Early mainstream
Recommended Reading:
"SOA Overview and Guide to SOA Research"
"Q&A: Key Questions to Address Before Your Initial SOA Projects"
"Toolkit: Building a Business Case Justification for SOA Projects"
"Key Issues for SOA, 2010"
"How to Approach Integration in Advanced SOA Projects"
"The 13 Most Common SOA Mistakes and How to Avoid Them"
"SOA and Application Architecture Key Initiative Overview"
Advanced Web Services
Analysis By:
Daniel Sholler
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Definiti
on:
Advanced Web services are Web services (remotely accessible software interfaces)
that not only use the basic Web services specifications of Web Services Description Language
(WSDL), SOAP or Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI), but t
hat also deploy
additional Web services specifications and protocols to deliver some or all enterprise
-
class quality
of service to the Web
-
services
-
based applications. These advanced Web services standards and
specifications include the standards for secur
ity, transactional integrity, business process
management, event notification and many others. Some of the advanced Web services standards
are well
-
established
—
such as Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and WS
-
Security
—
whereas most others are s
till in development.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Advanced Web services standards develop slowly
and are slow to generate unity among competing vendors. Most of the security standards have
been defined and completed, and the basic ones (those
identified in the WS
-
I Basic Security
Profile
—
see
www.ws
-
i.org/Profiles/BasicSecurityProfile
-
1.0.html
) are broadly implemented in
commercial products. WS
-
I is also developing a pro
file (draft available from October 2009)
describing the interoperable use of the advanced standards as their "Reliable Secure Profile"
(see
www.ws
-
i.org/deliverables/working
group.aspx?wg=reliablesecure
), which should help
promote the use of the more
-
sophisticated security mechanisms. Some of the proposed Web
services specifications have been given widespread use (for example, WS
-
Security), others (such
as the transactional st
andards) are available in some vendor products but are not widely utilized,
and quite a number have just "withered on the vine." Early 2009 saw a number of the proposed
specifications being ratified and implementations brought to market (WS
-
Transaction and
its
relatives, for example). Early 2010 has seen a number of standards that were proposed for use
with system management products (what has been called management using Web services, or
MUWS) moved ahead in the process (to last call for comment status; se
e
www.w3.org/2002/ws/ra/
). These standards are not in use today, and their advancement through
the standardization processes does not guarantee any sort of vendor implementation
commitments.
Most enterprises' use
of Web services for mission
-
critical systems continues to draw other
enterprises to proprietary technologies and short
-
term solutions. Some of the quality
-
of
-
service
issues, such as transactional integrity in highly distributed systems, require a fundamen
tal
rethinking of the requirements. These changes in approach have enabled some organizations to
utilize Web services without many of the advanced standards, and, for many applications, this
rethinking is part of the architecture of the system that enables
it to deliver the benefits of service
-
oriented architecture (SOA). For this reason, the adoption of advanced Web services will
significantly lag that of the basic Web services.
The entire premise of comparable levels of quality of service on the Web and i
nside the
enterprise's firewall is unrealistic, but most users continue to expect gradually increasing
scalability, integrity and availability from their Web services infrastructures. In this context, the
reality has been disappointing. However, critical s
tandards have become available and
interoperable (such as WS
-
ReliableMessaging), so the usage scenarios for standards
-
based
messaging are expanding. This collection of capabilities has emerged from the Trough of
Disillusionment, but into an environment in
which its precise value is unclear, and where many
organizations are looking to adopt a Web
-
oriented style. Ultimately, the use of these standards
will be uneven, and it is likely that the entire collection will never become fully mature and
widespread but
will be reserved for specific niche capabilities. By the time these standards reach
the plateau, their use will be relegated to several specific niche approaches.
User Advice:
Web services technology was designed for simple, low
-
cost and ubiquitous access
to server
-
side application software from requesting points on the Web. This context is much
different from the well
-
controlled software infrastructure inside the enterprise's walls. Users
should not anticipate the same levels of quality of service in both
contexts. Users have the option
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to utilize advanced Web services models when connecting enterprise systems, but they should
avoid their use (and stick with basic Web services, or WOA or REST/POX
-
type solutions) in
business
-
to
-
business (B2B) scenarios. Eve
n for the standards that are in use today, the vendor
products are not entirely interoperable, and not all commercial products support all the standards.
Users are advised to choose their use of standards carefully and limit the use of those that are
not w
idely adopted yet. Those that are included in the ratified WS
-
I profiles are safe to use. Those
in the reliable/secure profile are usable, but there will still be many implementations that do not
support them. Other proposed standards should not be conside
red.
Business Impact:
Advanced Web services were designed to create standardized messaging
capabilities within and between enterprises. In reality, they will be used in a very limited way in
both of those scenarios, and even that use will be inconsistent.
The standardization of interaction
can create many new opportunities for automation, which has significant business value, but only
a few solutions will use Web services to accomplish this goal.
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
5% to 20% of tar
get audience
Maturity:
Adolescent
Recommended Reading:
"SOA Overview and Guide to SOA Research"
Corporate Blogging
Analysis By:
Jeffrey Mann
Definition:
Corporate blogging is the use of online journals by corporate employees, individually
or in a group, to
further company goals.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
While still not a universal practice, corporate
blogging is a well
-
established phenomenon. It has become common for many organizations, led
by Web 2.0 powerhouses such as Google and Faceboo
k, to launch major corporate initiatives,
not with a press conference or flashy launch event, but simply with a late
-
night blog entry. Many
of the most established companies in more traditional industries have also launched blogs.
Outside the Web 2.0 mains
tream, many organizations still struggle with how to manage and
encourage corporate blogs and, most importantly, with deciding who should blog. The "faceless"
company has largely disappeared, as blogs need to have a personal connection to someone real
to b
e credible. Many CEOs have found that, despite their other skills, they are terrible bloggers.
Even when blogging for the company, it is important to retain an individual voice.
Disappointments have occurred, primarily the dashing of expectations, overopti
mistic at the
outset, because of a lack of knowledge of how to work this new communication medium. There
have been few spectacular failures, which some feared there would be (such as a massive
release of confidential information that had a negative effect
on the company that would not have
occurred otherwise). As with personal blogs, the primary failure mode is a slow fade
—
as initial
enthusiasm fades, the blog content becomes stagnant and the assembled readership dissipates.
For a few blogs that enjoy str
ong growth, a positive feedback loop results, as reader interest
spurs the blogger to do more.
User Advice:
Consider corporate blogs as part of the standard repertoire of corporate
communication tools and the emerging portfolio of social media tools. Blogs
do not replace other
media, but they can reinforce or redirect messages in other channels. A single blog post on
corporate policy can reinforce or reduce e
-
mails sent directly with a similar message. Blogs
enable an organization to mount a rapid public re
sponse to fast
-
changing events and, depending
on the circumstances, can provide important "spin" on messages in the mass media.
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The blog medium has immediacy, has a potentially large reach, is low
-
cost and offers the
opportunity for the bidirectional trans
fer of information (that is, a conversation with the market).
The main risk with corporate blogging is failing to engage in this new medium, in the sense of not
knowing what the blogosphere is saying about your organization and not knowing effective ways
t
o communicate a response.
Understand how blogs fit into the repertoire of social media, which includes microblogging
(Twitter), videoblogging (Vimeo, YouTube), social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn) and social
content aggregators (FriendFeed).
Blogging is
an activity that people are either good at and enjoy, or not. Pressuring someone to
blog purely because of their position is often counterproductive, because if they are not naturally
attracted to the activity, they are unlikely to be very good at it. It i
s more valuable to find someone
anywhere in the organization who is naturally good at, and enthusiastic about, blogging and to
encourage them, than it is to convince high
-
profile personnel that they really should be blogging.
Organizations that fail to eng
age in social media can suffer a competitive disadvantage by
becoming mute or muffled in an arena in which competitors and other opposition forces are loud
and clear. Begin your engagement by listening to the blogosphere to understand players,
positions, e
tiquette and styles of interaction. Reduce expectations because, although blogging is
easy to get into in terms of initial effort and technical skill requirements, it is hard to execute
effectively because it requires long
-
term commitment, consistency and
authenticity
—
in addition
to skill, talent and experience in this new communication medium. Ease into blogging by using a
hosted service, rather than purchasing or installing software on your servers. View blogs not just
as external
-
facing channels for a
single senior manager or an anonymous corporate
communications function, but as team blogs clustered around a product or business unit and
internal
-
facing blogs for supporting company initiatives.
Business Impact:
Corporate blogging can be invaluable in
enabling an organization to reach the
broad public and opinion makers, and in enabling management and employees to communicate
regarding internal corporate initiatives. Additional impact will be in competitive intelligence,
customer support and recruiting.
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
20% to 50% of target audience
Maturity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
Google; IBM; Microsoft; Nucleus CMS; Six Apart; Telligent; WordPress
Recommended Reading:
"Case Study: Scotiabank Boosts Productivity,
Communication and
Collaboration With Social Software"
"Four T's Framework Facilitates Employee Social
-
Media Engagement With External
Stakeholders"
Web Analytics
Analysis By:
Bill Gassman
Definition:
Web analytics are specialized analytic applications used
to understand and improve
online channel user experience, visitor acquisition and actions, and optimize digital marketing
campaigns. Commercial products offer reporting, analytical and performance management,
historical storage and integration with other d
ata sources and processes. The tools are used by
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marketing professionals, content developers and the website's operations team, and increasingly
provide input to automated tools that target improved customer experience.
Position and Adoption Speed Justific
ation:
More than 90% of the addressable market is using
some form of Web analytics tools, although while millions use the free Google Analytics product,
less than 50% of the addressable market is using advanced functions, such as customer
-
based
segmentatio
n, data warehousing and to export user activity events into remarketing products and
content management engines. New challenges in analysis are video usage, mobile users, native
mobile applications and social media. The market has consolidated to the point
where eight
vendors represent more than 90% of market revenue. However, there is a trend for content
management vendors to add limited analytics functionality to their products. Although market
growth slowed down in 2009, online channels are recovering fa
ster than the economy overall,
driving increased interest in optimizing Web activity. The free Google Analytics offering, continues
to disrupt the market with ever increasing functionality, although still with significant limitations.
The leaders in market
revenue have responded with a suite of marketing optimization tools to
complement their analytics products, high
-
performance ad hoc query tools for warehoused data,
strong technology partner programs and consulting services. Leading vendors are building a
n
"ecosystem" of Internet
-
based marketing products and partners tied together with its analytics
platform. Partner integration includes data and process, and, in some cases, analytics are tied, in
real time, with Web content management systems. Since the 2
009 Hype Cycle, has seen
Omniture acquired by Adobe, to ease the integration of analytics into Flash applications.
However, the market is still without open standards for instrumentation or well
-
adopted metrics,
and each vendor's approach is unique. Delive
ry of Web analytics solutions continues to be largely
software as a service (SaaS) rather than in
-
house products. More than 80% of total revenue
comes from a SaaS subscription model. The biggest challenges the market faces as it moves into
the Plateau of P
roductivity are user maturity, smart mobile devices, context aware computing,
social networking, support of portals and packaged applications, and the lack of instrumentation
standards. Some of these problems will be addressed in the next two years, but th
ere are big
gaps between those who stretch the products ability and those who struggle to use them.
User Advice:
Most enterprises with a website have a reporting package, but there is a gap
between basic reporting and the potential value that analysis feat
ures in the tools offer. Use the
strategic value of an enterprise's website as a guide to how much investment in analytics skill and
process is warranted. Business users should be the primary users of the tools, with support from
the IT organization in the
areas of instrumentation, data integration, process management and
complex report generation. A business executive champion is important to drive the analytic
culture. Ensure there are sufficient skills, create a training program that teaches employees wi
thin
roles how to use the products in their job, promote success and use consultants (external or from
a vendor) to overcome technology hurdles in using the tools. If still using log files rather than
JavaScript tags for instrumentation, explore the value
of tagging. If not already doing so, start
using the tools for multivariate testing. Analyze users by segments, including those using mobile
devices and social channels. Find opportunities to try integrating cross
-
channel data, such as
online data with the
call center or point of sale. For advanced enterprises, start building a user
-
experience management ecosystem that blends analytics with search, social networking, content
management, and automated outbound marketing.
Business Impact:
Using Web analytics
has significant implications for marketing
-
oriented
enterprises, or where the Web channel is strategic. The core process is to collect, analyze and
monitor customers' behavioral activities on websites. A view into what is working and what is not
helps to o
ptimize the online channel. The impact of search engine advertising, e
-
mail campaigns,
cross
-
sell or upsell targeting and social media activity can be measured and refined through Web
analytics. Customer data can be gathered and incorporated into personali
zed and context rich
content for marketing campaign decisions (such as profitability analysis and segmentation), and
leveraged for every interaction channel in a campaign management strategy. It is not uncommon
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for business metrics of Web channels to doubl
e over baseline benchmarks within six months of
starting a Web analytics program. It takes as long as three years to achieve advanced skills, at
which point a continuous improvement process should be in place.
Benefit Rating:
Moderate
Market Penetration:
M
ore than 50% of target audience
Maturity:
Early mainstream
Sample Vendors:
AT Internet; Coremetrics; Google; Nedstat; Omniture; SAS; Unica; Webtrends;
Yahoo
Recommended Reading:
"Predicts 2010: Customer
-
Centric Web Strategies"
"Incorporating the Web Into C
ross
-
Channel Customer Analysis"
"Customer Experiences With Omniture's Test&Target Website Product"
"Is Google Analytics Right for You"
"Five Best Practices for Web Analytics Initiatives"
"Key Challenges in Web Analytics, 2009"
Web and Application Hosting
A
nalysis By:
Ted Chamberlin
Definition:
Web hosting, which includes custom and packaged application hosting, is the
outsourcing of some or all the infrastructure and management associated with Web
-
based
content and applications. Customers are provided with
Internet data center facilities, bandwidth,
computing capacity, security and storage, as well as associated managed services. This
infrastructure may be shared, dedicated, virtualized or provisioned on a utility basis. Typically, the
Web hoster is responsi
ble for the day
-
to
-
day operation of the infrastructure. In application hosting,
the provider will provide day
-
to
-
day application management tasks, in addition to infrastructure
management. The transfer of technical and staff assets is relatively rare, with
customers tending
to provide their own software licenses and hardware.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Web and application hosters have mastered the
basics of network, infrastructure and operational support in dedicated environments, and now
mu
st look to extend this level of competence to virtualized and cloud
-
centric environments.
Although hosting providers have improved customer support processes, this area still continues
to be problematic for some. This movement toward "hybrid" hosting envir
onments, where
applications are hosted on a combination of dedicated and virtualized platforms, will start to
separate the leading providers from those that offer only partial solutions. The increased interest
in cloud
-
computing and software
-
as
-
a
-
service (
SaaS) models continues to push hosting providers
to develop additional complimentary service stacks where compute, storage and network are
provisioned in an elastic manner, and billing is based on consumption of resources. These usage
-
based services, commo
nly referred to as "utility or infrastructure as a service," focus heavily on
server, storage and file
-
sharing capabilities; commercial enterprise application hosting continues
to thrive on dedicated enterprise server platforms, but is starting to incorpor
ate virtualization and
utility compute for nonproduction architectures. As hybrid hosting offerings become more user
-
friendly, enterprises will start to divide applications and workloads between both dedicated and
multitenant
-
based hosting services. This d
rive toward more
-
hybrid hosting will have financial
implications for the hosters, in terms of capital investments needed to fund virtualized compute
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and storage estates, and in terms of advanced automation for fabric control and for
metering/billing system
s.
User Advice:
Most enterprises should consider external hosting in their tactical and strategic
sourcing decisions, because the services and products have become standardized and mature.
Not every service provider can deliver all levels of support (espec
ially enterprise application
management and utility/cloud services), so we recommend engaging in a competitive bid
situation to ensure that the provider has the requisite processes, facilities, networks and service
levels.
Business Impact:
Web and applicat
ion hosting provides a greater reliability, scalability and
technology expertise than in
-
house hosting for all but a few enterprises that have complex
application integration needs, or whose IT operations are large enough to match the scale of a
Web hoster
. Web hosters typically also have higher
-
quality facilities, diverse carrier networks and
deeper system support personnel than enterprises. However, the customer is restricted to the
technologies supported by the Web hoster, and, as with all outsourcing, t
here may be some loss
of control.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
20% to 50% of target audience
Maturity:
Mature mainstream
Sample Vendors:
AT&T; CSC; HP/EDS; IBM; Interoute; Macquarie Telecom; NaviSite; Orange
Business Services; Quality
Technology Services; Rackspace; Savvis; Secure
-
24; SingTel;
SunGard Availability Services; Terremark Worldwide; The Planet; Verizon Business
Entering the Plateau
Enterprise Portals
Analysis By:
Jim Murphy
Definition:
An enterprise portal is a comprehensive
website providing access to and interaction
with relevant information assets (such as information/content, applications and business
processes), knowledge assets and human assets by select targeted audiences, delivered in a
highly personalized manner. Ent
erprise portals may face various audiences, including employees,
customers, business partners, citizens and community members. Enterprise portals provide users
with a cohesive experience across many systems, processes and interactions, and they provide
IT
organizations with unified platform for access and delivery of Web applications. Enterprise
portals are used widely to improve corporate communication, knowledge management, employee
productivity, customer engagement and service, and process efficiency wit
h partners, among
numerous other purposes.
Enterprise portals may be delivered via on
-
premises deployment of
horizontal portal products, custom solutions requiring significant integration, traditional hosting
models or cloud
-
based service offerings.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Most Fortune 2000 enterprises have adopted one
or several portal platforms, and smaller organizations are actively adopting portal technologies as
packaged portal products become more readily consumable. Most ente
rprise portal
implementations were once geared toward B2E scenarios, often replacing first
-
generation
intranets, but newer portal investments often address a broader range of scenarios, including
business
-
to
-
customer, business
-
to
-
citizen and B2B initiative
s.
Unfortunately, too many enterprise portal initiatives have failed to deliver value. The reasons are
not entirely attributable to technology, and include poor governance, misalignment with business
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objectives, difficulty in integration and adaptability,
and a failure to appeal to users. Nevertheless,
newer
-
generation portal products must incorporate technologies to help companies address
these problems, increasing the portal's value and refining the user experience, and enterprises
must employ user
-
center
ed design and usability testing methodologies as part of a
comprehensive governance strategy. Evolved portal products invoke Web 2.0 capabilities, social
computing and rich Internet application (RIA) technology to offer more
-
engaging and more
-
adaptable exp
eriences for business users. They offer simpler means of integration, including
widgets and mashups, to improve interoperability and customization. New portal products employ
analytics and optimization to help measure value and determine needed refinements
. With its
promise of unifying user access, aggregating information and personalizing the experience for
users, the portal is often used as a foundation for mobile strategies and context
-
aware computing.
While the market for portal products will continue w
ell into the future, portal frameworks will soon
become part of a broader user experience platform (UXP). The UXP will provide integration of the
technologies used to deliver portals, mashups, RIAs, Ajax
-
enabled websites, Web content
management and mobile
applications. Integrated UXPs, whether provided as suites or single
products, will facilitate the development of portals and other rich Web and mobile applications.
User Advice:
Organizations should continue to consider enterprise portals as foundational
e
lements of their architectures, both as a means to extend IT's ability to deliver innovation to
more people, and as a means for the business to improve processes, exploit knowledge and
engage customers, partners and employees.
Many enterprises that have de
ployed portals face multiple, siloed deployments using different
portal frameworks. These enterprises should investigate appropriate portal containment and
rationalization initiatives.
Enterprises should leverage the portal framework as a foundation for a
broader UXP strategy.
Business Impact:
The benefits of enterprise portals include controlling "info flood," providing
single sign
-
on, enhancing customer support and enabling tighter alignment with partners. The
benefits of internally facing portals include
cost avoidance via employee self
-
service, facilitating
collaboration and supporting content publishing. However, the most compelling business impact
can be improved business agility, velocity and throughput. Externally facing portals can provide
increased
revenue and profitability. The enterprise portal's biggest business impact is in reducing
cycle times and improving the quality of process execution.
Enterprise portals have been using Ajax to improve the quality of the user experiences they
deliver. Othe
r RIA approaches can augment enterprise portal delivery. Portal products positioned
to provide enterprise portals are also being used as deployment environments for enterprise
mashups; in some cases, these include mashup assembly features.
Benefit Rating:
Transformational
Market Penetration:
More than 50% of target audience
Maturity:
Mature mainstream
Sample Vendors:
BroadVision; Covisint; DotNetNuke; Drupal; Fujitsu; IBM; Liferay; Microsoft;
Oracle; Red Hat JBoss; SAP; Tibco Software; Vignette/Open Text
Re
commended Reading:
"Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products"
"Get Ready for the 'Portal
-
Less' Portal"
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Portlets
Analysis By:
Jim Murphy
Definition:
Portlets provide the primary integration mechanism among applications, content
sources and the user int
erface layer in enterprise portals. As low
-
level, point
-
to
-
point
components, portlets usually access Web services, application programming interfaces, URLs or
database statements. In the Java
-
based portal market, the term "portlet" is used generically,
reg
ardless of the Java
-
based portal vendor's' technology. Web Parts serves as the portlet
mechanism in Microsoft SharePoint, in addition to performing other SharePoint
-
specific functions.
Similarly, iViews serves as the primary portlet mechanism for SAP NetWe
aver Portal.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification:
Portlets are still the primary integration mechanism
for portals, but that may be changing. The second generation of portlet standards, JSR 286 and
Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) v.2.0, allow
for interportlet communication and portlet
federation among portal providers. Despite the advancement of standards, portlet development
can be overly complex and cumbersome, especially in light of newer styles of Web application
development, chiefly repre
sentational
-
state
-
transfer (REST)
-
based approaches.
Widgets are rapidly gaining momentum as enhancements or alternatives to portlets. Widgets are
simple, embeddable applications comprising simple code snippets that can be easily snapped
into users' portal
pages. As client
-
side components, widgets can be less taxing on server
resources, offering improved performance in many situations. Widgets also often serve as the
basis for many consumer
-
oriented and enterprise mashups. For mobile devices, widgets are
rap
idly becoming the norm for simple application functionality, because they can be designed to
maximize screen real
-
estate, while preserving battery life. Horizontal portal platforms that offer a
flexible toolkit for building widgets, alongside a robust sele
ction of integrated and third
-
party
widgets, will enable enterprises to deliver device
-
optimized user experiences composed from
simple building blocks. Furthermore, because widgets are less complex than portlets, they are
easier to design for cross
-
platfor
m use.
Widgets and portlets are not mutually exclusive, and will act as complements in portal
development and integration. Complex forms of integration with sophisticated back
-
end systems
will likely still require portlets. Advanced features in many portal
server products, like interportlet
communication to support sophisticated composite applications, will continue to require portlets.
Newer portlet standards, like JSR 286, are designed to account for and accommodate widgets
and other REST
-
based approaches
. Finally, while second
-
generation portlet standards are
relatively advanced and fairly stable in ensuring portal interoperability, widget standards are only
beginning to emerge, with consumer and enterprise approaches, such as OpenSocial and
iWidgets, sti
ll competing for adoption.
Most major portal vendors are injecting widgets and other REST
-
based integration approaches
into their portal products to augment their portlet models.
User Advice:
Organizations should make decisions based on business needs, and not solely
because of standards maturity. Organizations choosing to stray from standards
-
based
approaches must be cognizant of the potential incremental costs of doing so when they are
makin
g that decision. If the business benefit is there and good enough, then the immaturity of
standards should not preclude a customer from adopting a nonstandard technology.
With business priorities and risk factors in mind, organizations should clarify their
strategy for
portal application development, integration and interoperability in light of portlet advancements
and the emergence of widgets. For their first deployments, enterprises should continue to rely on
out
-
of
-
the
-
box portlets provided by their port
al vendors, and should rely on portlet standards for
ongoing portlet development. While portlets may continue to be the standard means for
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developers to build sophisticated applications requiring integration with complex back
-
end
systems, widgets may serve
as a simpler means of creating agile, user
-
centric applications that
can easily invoke external Web services.
When selecting portal providers, organizations should take into account the risks of proprietary
approaches to building portal components. Use st
andards when available to ensure portal and
application interoperability and avoid vendor lock
-
in, but don't hinder the ability to meet business
and user needs in the course pursuit of standards.
Business Impact:
Portlets facilitate integration and reuse o
f content and applications, along with
ensuring a method for securing and displaying results in a personalized manner. Providing
personalized access is the primary means by which enterprise portals deliver value.
Benefit Rating:
High
Market Penetration:
Mo
re than 50% of target audience
Maturity:
Mature mainstream
Sample Vendors:
BroadVision; DotNetNuke; Drupal; Fujitsu; IBM; Liferay; Microsoft; Open Text;
Oracle; Red Hat JBoss; SAP; Tibco Software
Recommended Reading:
"Second
-
Generation Portlet Standards Sh
ould Be Used for Portlet
Development but Aren't the Whole Story"
"Key Issues for Enterprise Portals, 2010"
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Appendixes
Figure 3. Hype Cycle for Web and User Interaction Technologies, 2009
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Source: Gartner (July 2009)
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Hype Cycle Phases, Benefit Ratings and Maturity Levels
Table 1. Hype Cycle Phases
Phase
Definition
Technology Trigger
A breakthrough,
public demonstration, product
launch or other event generates significant press
and industry interest.
Peak of Inflated Expectations
During this phase of overenthusiasm and unrealistic
projections, a flurry of well
-
publicized activity by
technology leader
s results in some successes, but
more failures, as the technology is pushed to its
limits. The only enterprises making money are
conference organizers and magazine publishers.
Trough of Disillusionment
Because the technology does not live up to its
overin
flated expectations, it rapidly becomes
unfashionable. Media interest wanes, except for a
few cautionary tales.
Slope of Enlightenment
Focused experimentation and solid hard work by an
increasingly diverse range of organizations lead to a
true
understanding of the technology's applicability,
risks and benefits. Commercial off
-
the
-
shelf
methodologies and tools ease the development
process.
Plateau of Productivity
The real
-
world benefits of the technology are
demonstrated and accepted. Tools and
methodologies are increasingly stable as they enter
their second and third generations. Growing
numbers of organizations feel comfortable with the
reduced level of risk; the rapid growth phase of
adoption begins. Approximately 20% of the
technology's targe
t audience has adopted or is
adopting the technology as it enters this phase.
Years to Mainstream Adoption
The time required for the technology to reach the
Plateau of Productivity.
Source: Gartner (July 2010)
Table 2. Benefit Ratings
Benefit Rating
Defi
nition
Transformational
Enables new ways of doing business across
industries that will result in major shifts in industry
dynamics
High
Enables new ways of performing horizontal or
vertical processes that will result in significantly
increased revenue or
cost savings for an enterprise
Moderate
Provides incremental improvements to established
processes that will result in increased revenue or
cost savings for an enterprise
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Benefit Rating
Defi
nition
Low
Slightly improves processes (for example, improved
user experience) that will
be difficult to translate into
increased revenue or cost savings
Source: Gartner (July 2010)
Table 3. Maturity Levels
Maturity Level
Status
Products/Vendors
Embryonic
In labs
None
Emerging
Commercialization by
vendors
Pilots and deployments by
industry
leaders
First generation
High price
Much customization
Adolescent
Maturing technology
capabilities and process
understanding
Uptake beyond early adopters
Second generation
Less customization
Early mainstream
Proven technology
Vendors, technology and
adoption
rapidly evolving
Third generation
More out of box
Methodologies
Mature mainstream
Robust technology
Not much evolution in vendors or
technology
Several dominant vendors
Legacy
Not appropriate for new
developments
Cost of migration constrains
rep
lacement
Maintenance revenue focus
Obsolete
Rarely used
Used/resale market only
Source: Gartner (July 2010)
RECOMMENDED READING
"Understanding Gartner's Hype Cycles, 2010"
This research is part of a set of related research pieces. See "Gartner's Hype
Cycle Special
Report for 2010" for an overview.
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0
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