Back in January, Gartner announced its annual predictions for 2010 and beyond. One of the key predictions was that "by 2012 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets". Here's the excerpt from the press release, which has been widely quoted around the web:
By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets. Several interrelated trends are driving the movement toward decreased IT hardware assets, such as virtualization, cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and notebook systems on corporate networks. The need for computing hardware, either in a data center or on an employee's desk, will not go away. However, if the ownership of hardware shifts to third parties, then there will be major shifts throughout every facet of the IT hardware industry. For example, enterprise IT budgets will either be shrunk or reallocated to more-strategic projects; enterprise IT staff will either be reduced or reskilled to meet new requirements, and/or hardware distribution will have to change radically to meet the requirements of the new IT hardware buying points.The more I thought about this one it strikes me as a very odd statement. Don't get me wrong -- I understand where they are coming from and agree with the explanation and the trend, but some things just don't make sense in their wording.
"20 percent" - compared to what percentage today?
"Businesses" - What businesses? The bodega on the corner of Broadway & 89th? The guy who works on my lawn?
"IT assets" - They probably mean IT assets in the data center because aren't personal desktops and notebooks also IT assets?
Although this prediction was widely quoted, no one seems to have questioned it in any way or asked for a clarification.
Weird.
