The metatrend of the next decade: Catch the digital natives

The upcoming industry trends identified by analysts for 2010 have created a clearly-defined agenda for CIOs. But IT decision-makers have the sneaking suspicion that the next decade is not just about virtualization and other IT concepts. It is about a metatrend of far-reaching consequences: the arrival of the digital natives. These young professionals grew up taking computers and the Internet for granted. There has been widespread concern that their influence in the business world would be a negative one. But those fears are unfounded, as a study published by CIO Magazine in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich shows.

Experton remains very down-to-earth: Global Research Director Luis Praxmarer regards the roll-out of Windows 7 to be the top priority for CIOs. In 2010, nearly all Microsoft customers will be entering the planning and testing phases. Virtualization is the second trend identified by Experton. The object is to increase the percentage of virtualized servers, and to commence with storage and client virtualization. Trend No. 3, cloud computing, is, in his opinion, more than just hype; it will bring sweeping change to all areas of IT over the next ten years. According to Forrester, there are three trends of particular significance: first, real-time business intelligence, which requires IT departments to give users easy access to essential facts and figures. Second, Software as a Service, because SaaS enables non-IT experts to modify applications and create new ones. And third, collaboration platforms, which are evolving from document-centric to truly employee-centric solutions – in other words, they are increasingly resembling Facebook and other online community tools. Gartner forecasts that by 2012, 20 percent of enterprises will no longer have their own IT due to outsourcing, virtualization, and cloud computing. 2012 will also see Facebook, with Facebook Connect, become the hub of the social Web.

Computer-savvy digital natives

Between 2010 and 2020, digital natives will enter the scene. This generation, born after 1980, grew up with a PC next to the crib. Employees under the age of 20 prove to be much more satisfied with their company’s IT than the average employee (on a descending scale from one to five, they rate it a 2.3, as compared to a 2.6 average score given by all respondents).In 2009, statistics confirmed that the youngest employees are pickier about IT than other staff members only in a few isolated areas (computers, email, portals). They are not positive about using wikis, blogs and instant messaging in their working environments, but are still less negative than other, older employees.

Read more about technology trends and digital natives in the print edition of Best Practice.