Gartner counts on the Zero option

The Gartner Group claims its new pet concept, “zero latency”, will be one of the most important IT trends for the next five years.

“Within 10 years we will all have to do it: integrating multiple business processes, often across businesses, to achieve zero latency,” said Roy Schulte, vice president and research director for Gartner’s application integration and middleware strategies.

A zero latency enterprise strategy, according to Gartner, means that all parts of an enterprise can respond to events as soon as they become known to any one part of the enterprise. This high level of integration between application systems within the enterprise and across enterprises will allow businesses to respond faster and deliver better customer service, as well as save on operating costs, promises Gartner.

“But if you don’t change your business processes, you won’t have any benefit from zero latency,” warned Schulte.

Pioneering companies are to be found in industries where supply-chain management is critical.

Enabling technologies include: publish and subscribe based middleware, push software and the ubiquity of the Internet.