Gartner’s Hype Cycle for 2015

Since the Gartner Hype Cycle for 2016 ought to be coming out any day now, I thought I’d better catch up on the 2015 Emerging Technology Hype Cycle (which is available at http://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/whats-new-in-gartners-hype-cycle-for-emerging-technologies-2015/). As I’ve mentioned on previous occasions, I have some problems with Gartner’s Hype Cycle. It’s not very comprehensible, particularly in showing the speed of movement of different technologies, and their methodology seems more than a little bit on the random side. However, it’s a useful tool for looking at what technologies are coming along and pretty much everyone who is interested in strategic technology depends on it.

As with 2014, Gartner still have the Internet of Things mired on the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’. It’s been there for as long as I can remember, and I’m not sure if it’s going to make it off any time soon. The problem is that IoT is very much an enabling technology, and they tend to mature extremely slowly. It’s noticeable that there are some IoT-dependent technologies such as IoT Platform and Connected Home coming along the upslope on the Hype Cycle, and they can’t really become productive until Gartner move IoT a little bit to the right.

Talking of moving things to the right, what did Garnet think were productive technologies in 2015? Enterprise-scale 3D printing, Gesture Control and Virtual Reality. I think they might have been a little optimistic there, though it’s true that 3D printing is definitely starting to get a grip outside of the hobbyist market. I’m not sure I’ve seen much evidence of Gesture Control and Virtual Reality hitting the big time though. Virtual Reality is still only just about to hit the market this year, and I’m not convinced it’s going to be productive for a few years yet. I’d have put it on the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ personally. I mean, it’s going to be huge some day, no doubt about that, it’s just that the technical problems are proving a lot harder to solve than anyone thought, and that doesn’t even make a start on the social problems thrown up by products like Google Glass.

It’s interesting to see some technologies that, according to Gartner were about to hit the big time in 2014, are completely missing from the 2015 chart. In 2014, Gartner were betting on In-Memory Analytics, Activity Streams, 3D Scanners and Consumer Telematics. It’s also noticeable that in 2014 Gartner were saying that NFC, Cloud Computing, Gamification and a number of other things were in the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’. Which is odd, because I would have said that Cloud Computing was pretty big business even in 2014. It’s noticeable that all of those three had vanished completely from the Hype Cycle by 2015.

All of which goes to show that Gartner is really inconsistent in which technologies it includes in its Hype Cycle from year to year. I suspect the Gartner consultants argue over what to include, and we only get to see the sexy technologies that someone is prepared to die in a ditch over. I’d be much more interested in charting the evolution of some of those things, like NFC in the iPhone, that have hit the big time and have been quietly removed from the Hype Cycle due to embarrassment. I’ll see if I can do an analysis of Gartner’s hits and misses for the last six or seven years.

The New Digital Strategy

As I mentioned last time, I went to an Open Forum conference (http://www.openforumevents.co.uk) in London on ‘The New Digital Strategy: Smarter Public Services’ thanks to Serena Software (http://www.serena.com/), who gave me a free membership and who were extremely friendly. Unfortunately, I was still paying for my own travel, so I set off late and missed the first couple of speeches, including the keynote given by Jessica McEvoy, Head of Policy at GDS . However, I got there in time for a couple of interesting talks and a group discussion on turning unused spaces into public places. I met some interesting people, talked to various vendors about their products and eventually bailed for home just before the end of the conference.

The dominant theme of the conference was the need for user-centric, agile design, not just of applications but also in projects, digital marketing and numerous other areas. It was an interesting mixture of approaches, from the DSDM consortium and their agile methodology to explanations of how to use Drupal in local government. Most of the speakers were competent, though few of them were really electrifying. I did enjoy Deborah El-Sayed’s talk on ‘A Paperless NHS’, though I spent some time being perversely irritated by her opening anecdote. If she really did talk to a ninety year old man about the NHS, then either this was over 10 years ago, or else he wasn’t born in 1914 as she stated. It did make me think about some of my presentations and I’m definitely going to check the numbers on my slides in future.

New technology

I’ve been thinking about tightening my focus from absolutely everything about technology, down to a few significant ones. The trouble is that I like jumping from one thing to another, and the most interesting ideas always turn up when you get unexpected interactions between two or more different technologies. However, let’s think about what’s ripe for innovation at the moment. Here’s my current list:

• Robotics, Automation and networked sensors
• Augmented reality, virtual reality
• Drones and self-driving vehicles
• Financial technology and insurance (mostly blockchain and NFC)
• AI and Personal message bots

There’s quite a lot of overlap between these, and you’ll notice I’ve left off the perennial Internet of Things. I’ve seen quite a lot about the Internet of Things this year, I’ve talked to people, seen demos and I honestly don’t think this is IoT’s year. It’s been high on Gartner’s Hype Cycle for about ten years now, always the bridesmaid and never the bride. I do believe that one day we’ll wake up and find that it’s taken over the world (not literally, I hope). However, the security issues associated with the IoT, the ridiculous premiums for devices that basically cost a few pence and the general inability of anyone to find a killer application makes me think that IoT is going away with the bouquet tucked under its arm, yet again. However, I do think that networked sensors, as opposed to networked autonomous devices, are going to keep on increasing in value and decreasing in price, so I’ve split them off into a category along with automation and robotics. If you want to think of those as being IoT, that’s your right, but I don’t consider something like a Fitbit to be an Internet of Things device. I’d say it’s halfway there, just not far enough.