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Gartner plots hype cycle for emergent tech

Collaboration hot. Video conferencing not

Collaboration, next generation architectures and real world web applications have been singled out as key emergent technolgies by analyst house Gartner. But other technologies such as video conferencing and passive RFID tags have been labeled as over hyped in Gartner's 2005 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies.

Collaboration technologies, such as podcasting, described as "an extremely efficient method for delivering audio and spoken-word content to niche audiences" as well as Peer to Peer (P2P) and voice over IP (VoIP) tools are hot, it reckons. Desktop Search will also be important but will not really take off until they become a standard feature on desktops, a development that will be spurred by the inclusion of the technology in Windows Vista.

Gartner predicts that RSS will be most useful for content that is 'nice to know' rather than 'need to know'. Corporate blogging reached its peak of hype in 2004 but will evolve to become useful in projecting corporate marketing messages primarily and secondarily in competitive intelligence, customer support and recruiting.

However Web Services-Enabled Business Models will have to wait for more-mature standards and clearer examples.

The hype cycle highlights the "progression of an emerging technology from conception, to market over-enthusiasm, through a period of disillusionment, to an eventual understanding of the technology's relevance and role in a market, Gartner explains. The analyst house said that in helping to cut through the hype it assisted strategy planners in making better informed decisions about the adoption of emergent technologies. 2005 marks the tenth anniversary of the Gartner hype cycle. (So where does the Hype Cycle fit in the Hype Cycle then? Ed.)

"The IT industry is awash with hype and buzz words and Gartner's Emerging Technologies Hype Cycles cuts through this to offer an independent overview of the relative maturity of technologies in any given domain," said Alexander Linden, research vice president at Gartner. "It provides not only a scorecard to separate hype from reality, but also models that help enterprises to decide when they should adopt a new technology." ®

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