MUMBAI: The growing integration of technology into every aspect of life - home, office, home office, family, car and recreation - will profoundly impact business technology over the next decade, Gartner said today. Speaking at the company's annual Symposium/ITxpo in Cannes, analysts predicted that the control of technology will shift from corporations to individuals, 'consumerizing' business IT and creating an entirely new consumer to business (C2B) as well as business to consumer (B2C) marketplace.

"What was once a straightforward two way relationship between business and technology has suddenly become complicated by the arrival of a third party - the consumer," said Gartner vice president and chief of research Steve Prentice. "Now that the dynamics have changed, the enterprise will struggle to dictate how employees and customers use technology. Products will increasingly be designed for consumers and IT professionals will just have to work out how to use them within the organisation!"

Technologies such as WiFi, 'smart' mobile phones, instant messaging, personal electronic devices, the Internet and even the PC itself, as well as consumer software like Google Desktop and Skype, have steadily infiltrated the enterprise, introduced by technophile employees from their experiences as consumers. These technologies have had an impact on every layer of the enterprise infrastructure, in some cases revolutionising the way businesses operate.

"Ignoring the social context of technology is a recipe for business failure. If organisations continue to dictate what technologies their employees can and cannot use then they risk ignoring innovations that represent significant opportunities in the future, such as 3D graphics, rich media and consumer-oriented websites as platforms," said Prentice. Furthermore, consumer technologies will provide the opportunity to streamline overweight IT systems and build towards lower-cost, leaner, more agile IT infrastructures.

"This is less of a revolution and more the coming together of a series of evolutionary changes - societal, technological and in the marketplace - at the right time," said Prentice. "Some parts of society, especially the knowledge workers, are very open to change.

Technology penetration levels and end-user expertise are high. The technology is reliable, inexpensive and effective, and has become good enough to engender significant change in the corporate marketplace."

According to Gartner, several major social trends - including new working practices, expectations of instant response and greater personalisation - are already having a significant impact on the technology markets, as consumers look to technology to improve choice and lifestyle flexibility. Providers of consumer technologies have been quick to capitalise on this desire as the rapid growth in household broadband connections and proliferation of mobile devices illustrates. Gartner has found that for every one mobile device sold worldwide mainly for business use, more than 20 are sold mainly for consumer use.

Prentice also acknowledged the huge role played by the Internet and particularly what many are calling 'Web 2.0' in the progression of the consumerization of IT. One of the major changes that Gartner is predicting is the streamlining of corporate IT systems through the introduction of consumer technologies. Analysts believe that just as company-owned cars ceased to be an integral element of the employee's package, so company-owned computing devices (and especially notebook computers) need no longer form part of the overall benefits package.

As consumer technologies become further embedded in corporate systems, hardware need not be the only area where costs savings can be made.

If all employees are using mobile phones there may no longer be a need to maintain a PBX address system for employees just as the need for corporate e-mail infrastructures may will become obsolete as consumer software is introduced into the enterprise.