Why Gartner avoided specifics
Several ZDNet bloggers have picked up on a recent Gartner list of "actions" for IT personnel to demonstrate their value. What is of note (say both of them) is that the term SOA is absent, while the term Web 2.0 seems to be gaining in prominence. I'd like to point out something entirely different: that Gartner's lack of specificity is indicative of a larger movement.
The thing that jumped out at me when reading the Gartner press release was just how general it was. In the past, Gartner would have identified more specific initiatives for completion ("identity management" for example). But this release seems to float around at 37,000 feet, referring to "strategic security architecture" and "interactive flexible processes." I'm convinced that the "general-ness" of Gartner's approach, or more pointedly, their unwillingness to say anything they could be wrong about in the future, is indicative of the point of transition that technology is currently living in.
The relentless drive of networking is forcing a "virtualization" of applications and architecture. As the Net's gravitational pull drags everything to it, it simultaneously requires that architectures based on physical paradigms move to architectures based on virtual paradigms. Couple that with the fact that customers (i.e., enterprises) now seem to be making their voices heard with regards to the solutions they actually want, and I think we begin to get close to the "transition point" that technology is moving through. That "user demand" is resonating through traditional enterprise software via waves of open source, software as a service, web 2.0, etc.
Stepping back even further, we can view this moment of technology transition in a larger economic picture. Many forecasts would now point to a slowdown (or slowing in the growth of) in the U.S. economy in the first half of 2007, to be followed by a significant uptick in technology growth and spending as we move through 2008 and 2009. In other words, the economy is setting up to make things just slightly tougher on technology companies for a short period of time (say 6 months) -- just long enough for the companies to assimilate the demands of the customer and the virtualization that the Net requires.
If these forecasts hold true, 2008-2009 will be the point of significant adoption of much of what is still "shaking out" today (identity, web 2.0, SaaS, etc.). And it is that "shaking out" that has led to Gartner's avoidance of specificity in their "must-do" actions. Its important to note that underlying nearly all of the large technology waves happening today is identity. Which is to say that the growth of digital identity as an organizing principle is the lynchpin as we move through this transition point.
Perhaps that's what Gartner meant by "strategic security architecture."