Emerging Trends in Software Infrastructure

When, 10 years hence, we look back on 2003 and 2004, what will have emerged that will have changed how we view our critical software infrastructure? What will have changed the competitive landscape and the "business as usual" mentalities that so many CIOs have been forced to adopt? For this research, we looked at predictions from a subset of software infrastructure, including:

We also looked at a closely related challenge - real-time infrastructure.

The following are Gartner's predictions representing the most- interesting challenges and opportunities for IT:

Prediction -- SecuritySecurity protection will get closer and closer to individual applications. In 2013, on-demand firewall security mechanisms will be wrapped around all access requests for remote user applications. Alles zu Security auf CIO.de

Security and intrusion defense keep "moving down the food chain." Five years ago, firewalls were only needed at the boundary between a LAN and the Internet. Today, firewalls are needed on every workstation. Next year, they will be needed on personal digital assistants and smartphones. Users are exposed to attacks that cannot be avoided with traditional signature-based antivirus tools. In a world where employees might use any device, there is no way to ensure that devices are properly managed and secured. Security checks for adherence to appropriate security policies must be made before remote access is granted. However, what if the remote system is not in compliance? It will be unreasonable to expect to perform instant and major upgrades to the remote device; thus, security mechanisms such as personal firewalls must be supplied when remote access is granted. On-demand "firewalling" solutions will be installed on user platforms at the first attempt to access a secure portal.