What will IT look like in 2020?
Attempting to predict the future is generally seen as a fool's errand. There are too many variables to expect to achieve anything but a small degree of accuracy, particularly when you start looking more than a few months to a year out. What's happening now and what's known to be on the horizon can provide some space for educated guesses, but even with that knowledge, the risk of being dead wrong is incredibly high.
When you're in the business of serving one of the largest industry sectors in the world, information technology, making educated guesses in an attempt to understand what customers will need in the future is required. Without making those educated guesses, there's an even bigger risk of failing to remain relevant in the next business cycle.
With that in mind, HP took on the daunting task of asking Chief Information Officers what enterprise computing and the IT landscape will look like in the year 2020 as part of the HP Enterprise 20/20 initiative. You can read the research findings on the Enterprise 20/20 site.
I had a chance to speak with Mike Shaw from HP Software about the project. He distilled some of the key findings in the interview below: