The top trends influencing the current technology infrastructure for the next half-decade can simply be described as a laundry list demonstrating where IT management and users are fighting for control over innovation and modernization. Industry research firm Gartner Inc. forecasts that the ability of the average user to bypass the usual constraints of IT systems by conducting business on their mobile gadgets, creating applications with mash-ups, and using their social networks will increase at an unbelievably rapid rate for the years to come.

Nevertheless, the experts within the IT field are prepared to exact their revenge on these consumer upstarts by developing technologies such as centrally managed and virtualized clients (also known as client virtualization). According to David Cappuccio (Gartner's Chief of Research for its infrastructure teams), this process enables IT to give users what they actually need, as opposed to what they want, which ensures a greater deal of security and control on the software developer side of the equation.

Meanwhile, Ted Meisky (the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System's Assistant Director of IT Infrastructure) alleges that this seesaw of control between program makers and users is as much of a cultural change as it is a technological evolution. This eventuality is also in stark contrast to a separate trend that both Cappuccio and Meisky view as another problem, which is the increase of inactive servers in data centers. This is a growing, wasteful dilemma for virtualized environments wherein servers are quickly produced and then eventually abandoned. Meisky himself admits that they have no lifecycle view of this quandary.

Client virtualization is the first and foremost trend on Gartner's list, followed by a particular emphasis on energy. Users nowadays are more aware of the energy crisis and are raising relevant questions about how to better conserve power and optimize its usage. The forecast also predicts that the amount of enterprise data will probably grow to about six and a half times its present size within five years. Green IT—that is, a scheme that focuses on the better use of resources—has been mentioned as well, along with complex resource tracking.