Gartner's 2015 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies the Computing Innovations That Organizations Should Monitor

2015 Hype Cycle Special Report Illustrates the Market Excitement, Maturity and Benefit of More Than 2,000 Technologies

The journey to digital business continues as the key theme of Gartner, Inc.'s "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2015." New to the Hype Cycle this year is the emergence of technologies that support what Gartner defines as digital humanism — the notion that people are the central focus in the manifestation of digital businesses and digital workplaces.

The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report is the longest-running annual Hype Cycle, providing a cross-industry perspective on the technologies and trends that business strategists, chief innovation officers, R&D leaders, entrepreneurs, global market developers and emerging-technology teams should consider in developing emerging-technology portfolios.

"The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies is the broadest aggregate Gartner Hype Cycle, featuring technologies that are the focus of attention because of particularly high levels of interest, and those that Gartner believes have the potential for significant impact," said Betsy Burton, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "This year, we encourage CIOs and other IT leaders to dedicate time and energy focused on innovation, rather than just incremental business advancement, while also gaining inspiration by scanning beyond the bounds of their industry."

Major changes in the 2015 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies (see Figure 1) include the placement of autonomous vehicles, which have shifted from pre-peak to peak of the Hype Cycle. While autonomous vehicles are still embryonic, this movement still represents a significant advancement, with all major automotive companies putting autonomous vehicles on their near-term roadmaps. Similarly, the growing momentum (from post-trigger to pre-peak) in connected-home solutions has introduced entirely new solutions and platforms enabled by new technology providers and existing manufacturers.

Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2015

Source: Gartner (August 2015)

"As enterprises continue the journey to becoming digital businesses, identifying and employing the right technologies at the right time will be critical," said Ms. Burton. "As we have set out on the Gartner roadmap to digital business, there are six progressive business era models that enterprises can identify with today and to which they can aspire in the future. However, since the Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies is purposely focused on more emerging technologies, it mostly supports the last three of these stages: Digital Marketing, Digital Business and Autonomous."

Digital Marketing (Stage 4): The digital marketing stage sees the emergence of the Nexus of Forces (mobile, social, cloud and information). Enterprises in this stage focus on new and more sophisticated ways to reach consumers, who are more willing to participate in marketing efforts to gain greater social connection, or product and service value. Enterprises that are seeking to reach this stage should consider the following technologies on the Hype Cycle: Gesture Control, Hybrid Cloud Computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning, People-Literate Technology, Speech-to-Speech Translation.

Digital Business (Stage 5): Digital business is the first post-nexus stage on the roadmap and focuses on the convergence of people, business and things. The IoT and the concept of blurring the physical and virtual worlds are strong concepts in this stage. Physical assets become digitalized and become equal actors in the business value chain alongside already-digital entities, such as systems and apps. Enterprises seeking to go past the Nexus of Forces technologies to become a digital business should look to these additional technologies: 3D Bioprinting for Life Science R&D, 3D Bioprinting Systems for Organ Transplant, Human Augmentation, Affective Computing, Augmented Reality, Bioacoustics Sensing, Biochips, Brain-Computer Interface, Citizen Data Science, Connected Home, Cryptocurrencies, Cryptocurrency Exchange, Digital Dexterity, Digital Security, Enterprise 3D Printing, Smart Robots, Smart Advisors, Gesture Control, IoT, IoT Platform, Machine Learning, Micro Data Centers, Natural-Language Question Answering, Neurobusiness, People-Literate Technology, Quantum Computing, Software-Defined Security, Speech-to-Speech Translation, Virtual Reality, Volumetric and Holographic Displays, and Wearables.

Autonomous (Stage 6): Autonomous represents the final post-nexus stage. This stage is defined by an enterprise's ability to leverage technologies that provide humanlike or human-replacing capabilities. Using autonomous vehicles to move people or products and using cognitive systems to recommend a potential structure for an answer to an email, write texts or answer customer questions are all examples that mark the autonomous stage. Enterprises seeking to reach this stage to gain competitiveness should consider these technologies on the Hype Cycle: Autonomous Vehicles, Bioacoustic Sensing, Biochips, Brain-Computer Interface, Digital Dexterity, Human Augmentation, Machine Learning, Neurobusiness, People-Literate Technology, Quantum Computing, Smart Advisors, Smart Dust, Smart Robots, Virtual Personal Assistants, Virtual Reality, and Volumetric and Holographic Displays.

"Although we have categorized each of the technologies on the Hype Cycle into one of the digital business stages, enterprises should not limit themselves to these technology groupings," said Ms. Burton. "Many early adopters have embraced quite advanced technologies, for example, autonomous vehicles or smart advisors, while they continue to improve nexus-related areas, such as mobile apps."

Additional information is available in Gartner's "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2015." This report is part of Gartner's Hype Cycle Special Report for 2015. This Special Report provides strategists and planners with an assessment of the market hype, maturity, business benefit and future direction of more than 2,000 technologies, grouped into 112 areas.

Emerging technologies and trends will be discussed at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2015, October 4-8 in Orlando, Florida. Members of the media can register for the event by contacting Christy Pettey at christy.pettey@gartner.com.

About Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the world's most important gathering of CIOs and other senior IT executives. This event delivers independent and objective content with the authority of the world's leading IT research and advisory organization, and provides access to the latest solutions from key technology providers. Gartner's annual Symposium/ITxpo events are key components of attendees' annual planning efforts. IT executives rely on these events to gain insight into how their organizations can use IT to overcome business challenges and improve operational efficiency.

Additional information from the event will be shared on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Gartner_inc and using #GartnerSYM.

Upcoming dates and locations for Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2015 include:

September 28-30, Cape Town, South Africa

October 4-8, Orlando, Florida

October 19-22, Sao Paulo, Brazil

October 26 - 29, Gold Coast, Australia

October 28-30, Tokyo, Japan

November 2 -5, Goa, India

November 8 - 12, Barcelona, Spain