'Low-cost mobile devices will bridge digital divide'

Gartner, Inc. has evaluated and highlighted technologies that will have an impact on Indian enterprises as they look at increased technology adoption to support growth and competitive differentiation. The Gartner Hype Cycle for ICT in India 2009 is the company’s most comprehensive to date, featuring 31 technologies and topics such as massive array of idle disks (MAID), fibre channel over ethernet (FCoE), video telepresence in India, x86 server virtualisation, and software as a service (SaaS) in India.

The Gartner Hype Cycle for ICT in India 2009 provides a cross-industry perspective on the technologies and trends that IT leaders should consider as they develop emerging-technology portfolios. The Hype Cycle features technologies that are experiencing particularly high levels of hype, or those that may not be broadly acknowledged but which Gartner believes have the potential for significant impact.

Technologies at the peak of inflated expectations during 2009 include Contact Center Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Linux on PCs, WiMAX 802.16e-2005 in India, mini-notebooks, video telepresence, thin provisioning, and Open Source Development Tools. Technologies like SaaS, Service Orientated Architecture (SOA), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Business Intelligence (BI) tools have tipped over the peak and will soon experience disillusionment among enterprise users.

“The mobile telephony revolution that has transformed connectivity in India will continue to evolve with further penetration in the next two years of ultra low-cost mobile devices. With these devices and a continued proliferation of connectivity into semi-urban and rural parts of India, this could be a powerful force to reduce the “digital divide”, which is one of the biggest social issues within India,” said Diptarup Chakraborti, principal research analyst at Gartner.

“It will also be a significant enabler for the increasing number of enterprises looking to commercially benefit from the large “bottom of the pyramid” opportunity in India. Beyond this, the (re)emerging Enterprise Resource Planning investment wave in India, this time expanding out to the small or midsize business (SMB) segment as well, holds out the hope of an increase in productivity among Indian enterprises, making them more competitive with their local, and increasingly global, competition”.

Gartner introduced the idea of the Hype Cycle in 1995 as a commentary on the common pattern of human response to technology.

Since then, the use of Hype Cycles has expanded within Gartner and by its clients, as a graphical way to track multiple technologies within an IT domain or technology portfolio. Gartner’s Hype Cycle characterises the typical progression of an emerging technology, from over enthusiasm through a period of disillusionment to an eventual understanding of the technology’s relevance and role in a market or domain. Each phase is characterized by distinct indicators of market, investment and adoption activities