IDC shows blueprint for next decade at annual conference

IDC's 40th annual IDC Directions conference is underway in not-so-sunny San Jose, CA, today. The research firm's Chief Research Officer, John Gantz, opened the conference with a high-level look at what to expect during the next decade. He said that the second half of the next ten years is where the growth is, and it will be more dynamic than the next five years.

What we have today, Gantz said, are "bits of the future embedded in the present." He explained that the big story from the last ten years was about the number of users on the Internet, while now the big story is about the explosion of transactions, or what he called "user touch points" or payloads, which are increasingly moving form the edge backward (a part of bursty traffic, in industry lingo), and this is going to be a challenge for enterprises.

Gantz said that challenges facing companies are particularly in the short term, so a ten-year blueprint is helpful in devising a successful strategy. "Five time as much happens in ten years as compared to five," he said.

Some more notes:

China's economy is going to triple in the next 10 years, it will be bigger than Japan, so expect IT consumption and supply to move westward to Asia. Your children should be learning Chinese.

Next transformation: circuits becoming packets. We are moving to IP telephony in a big way. The man on the street knows this, articles about the transition are in the Boston Globe.

Mobility is driving transactions: 5 Billion devices in 10 years, so any device can become a phone and any phone can become a wallet.

Broadband households are going to reach about 600 Million in 10 years, and convergence is reshaping the digital home.