There's plenty of technological innovation headed to the enterprise in the coming years, but don't expect any new game changers on the order of internet or ERP, according to a new report.
Instead, existing technologies like service-oriented architectures (SOAs) and mobile will combine with component business applications and social networking to form what Forrester Research analyst Bobby Cameron referred to as "IT everywhere".
Information technology is at the beginning of a "new 16-year cycle of innovation and growth that follows the previous cycle of networked computing for enterprise applications and the internet", Cameron wrote in the report, which was released on Wednesday.
Cameron identified several technologies that are already in place but will gather steam in the coming years, such as 'X internet' — the explosion in RFID and other devices — SOA, business-process management, and mobile.
There will be some new acronyms joining the technology mix: dynamic business applications and architectures (DBA) that build on SOA and are far more flexible and easier to adapt than older technologies; master data management (MDM), which seeks to improve the quality of data that businesses use; and information workplace (IW), the notion of delivering information through available technologies.
Forrester predicted that, while specialty players will have a role in delivering these technologies, some familiar names will be at the "hubs" of the evolving IT ecosystem: IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.
