IT Advances To Drive Lots of Job Cuts, Gartner Predicts

By Roland Piquepaille

I always like to read the forecasts done by IDG, Gartner, Forrester or the other market research firms. Especially when they say a particular market will increase from $10 million today to $50 billion two years from now. And I really enjoy reading these forecasts two or more years after their first publication.

Anyway, with this particular report, Gartner gives almost no numbers. It's more qualitative than quantitative. So I suppose their experts cannot really go wrong with this forecast.

Here is how Thomas Hoffman starts his review about the latest Gartner's analysis of the IT market.

The good news, according to Gartner Inc. prognosticators, is that technology is going to continue to help companies become more efficient.
The bad news is that it could cost you your job.
Gartner said it expects successful companies buoyed by a stronger economy and continued advances in technology to lay off millions of employees starting within the next two years.

Here are the ten predictions done by Gartner.

  1. Adding bandwidth will become more cost-effective than buying new computers
  2. Most major new systems will be interenterprise or cross-enterprise systems
  3. Despite the complexities, interenterprise systems will provide a macroeconomic boost to companies
  4. Companies will lay off millions of employees
  5. The consolidation of vendors will continue in many segments of the IT market
  6. Moore's Law will hold true through this decade
  7. Banks will become the primary providers of "presence services" by 2007
  8. Business activity monitoring will hit the mainstream within five years
  9. Business units, not IT, will make most application decisions
  10. The pendulum swings back to decentralized IT operations by 2004

Source: Thomas Hoffman, Computerworld, October 7, 2002


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