Gartner's Hype Cycle 2005: Next Generation Architecture

Next Generation Architecture will constitute the third big era in the IT industry's history, suggests Gartner's 2005 "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies".

David Cearly, research vice president at Gartner believes that Next Generation Architecture will complement two earlier eras in IT: the first having been the hardware era and second belonging to software. He sees these emerging technologies as forming key pillars of the new architecture:

* Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA uses interactive business components designed to be meaningful, usable and useful across application or enterprise boundaries. Despite the current disillusionment with SOA, Gartner expects support for SOA to grow and for it to mature as a technology within ten years although many changes in user and vendor organisations and technologies are required before SOA reaches its full potential. However, in the longer term, Gartner believes that SOA has the potential to be transformational to a business.

* Web Services-Enabled Business Models. These productivity-boosting models represent a new approach to doing business among enterprises and consumers that would not have been possible without the benefits of web-services. However enterprises are still wrestling with what web services will do and Gartner believes that the potentially transformational impact of Web Services-Enabled Business Models will have to wait for more-mature standards and clearer examples.

* Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). This is an Extensible-Markup-Language-defined standard for analysing, exchanging and reporting financial information. XBRL helps organizations meet multiple financial reporting needs through a single instance of financial data. It also improves the timeliness and accuracy of financial and regulatory reporting, validation and distribution. XBRL enables integration, aggregation, validation and comparison of financial data. It also automates sourcing and the review of financial data for activities such as loan acceptances, investment portfolio management and risk reviews. Financial accounting software vendors are already incorporating XBRL and regulatory and transparency pressures increase the significance and likelihood of XBRL adoption. However, there have been setbacks in XBRL adoption in the past year; the most significant have been delays in the FDIC and FSA projects that will mandate XBRL reporting.

* Business Process Platforms (BPP). BBP provide business process flexibility and adaptability. They use SOA design principles and are metadata and model driven. Gartner believes that Business Process Platforms will enable business process fusion and move innovation from business application vendors to BPP ecosystems. Ultimately they will replace customised business applications and custom development by extending core applications platforms with composite applications.

The Hype Cycle 2005 assesses the maturity, impact and adoption speed of 44 technologies and trends over the coming decade. It is intended to highlight the progression of an emerging technology from conception, to market over-enthusiasm, through a period of disillusionment, to an eventual understanding of the technology's relevance and role in a market or domain.

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