10 trends for 2011

Californian software manufacturers Quest Software have boiled down responses to a survey run at its annual The Experts Conference into 10 key predictions for 2012:

1. SaaS growth will help drive wider adoption of cloud services.

2. Cloud service providers will have to work to overcome key concerns about compliance, security and access management.

3. Microsoft’s Hyper-V will make inroads on VMware’s market dominance (Quest isn’t predicting anything huge here – just that Microsoft will be positioned as ‘a player in the virtualisation market’).

4. Opportunities will open up for solutions designed with virtualisation in mind as cracks show in how legacy tools handle tasks like performance monitoring.

5. Although more organisations will take up ‘hybrid’ cloud environments, concerns about security., control and technological maturity will prevent managers from utilising on-demand external cloud services for internal tasks.

6. Google and Microsoft will challenge Apple’s lead in the mobile IT sector (Quest also notes that Huawei is ‘standing in the wings’).

7. New technologies will force IT managers to re-think corporate Identity & Access Management (IAM) strategies.

8. Microsoft’s Active Directory will continue to dominate the identity management platform sector.

9. Office 365 will find traction in the SMB community, where the usual cloud concerns are outweighed b y the operational overhead advantages.

10. Employees will face increased monitoring of their social networking activities, not just for productivity concerns but corporate image, information security and regulatory concerns as well.

Note: These predictions are based on 214 survey responses, and have been paraphrased – get in touch with Quest Software ANZ for the full release.