Social media will play a key role over the next three years as the IT industry reaches revenues of $3.5 trillion (2.18 trillion).
This was the advice of analyst firm Gartner during its 2010 Symposium. It added that this essential part of business strategy would not be up to scratch for 80 per cent of organisations.
"Understanding the power of communities, the multiple personas of their members expectations, their aspirations and how to interact with them will become essential skills for business in the 21st century," said Ken McGee, vice president and Gartner Fellow.
"However, vast sums of money and enormous amounts of time will be spent during this decade and beyond to discover how IT and business leaders best capitalise on the growing spread, power and influence of social networks."
Social networking was one of seven key projects Gartner claimed chief information officer's (CIOs) needed to engage in through to 2013 to make sure they took advantage of the growth of the IT industry following a tough couple of years.
"We are increasingly living, playing and working in a digital world where people will have no alternatives but to become more digital' with the assets they have available," said Stephen Prentice, vice president and Gartner Fellow.
Cloud computing was another key project to get on board with as Gartner predicted all the global 2000 companies would be using some form of public cloud offering by 2016. It also predicted revenues from cloud services, both public and private, would reach $148.8 billion by 2014.
Other projects included the alignment of IT with operational technologies, context aware computing, following patterns in the industry to adjust business strategy, sustainability and finally balancing cost and innovation with risk and governance.
The analysts concluded there would be two $1 billion trends emerging after 2020 human augmentation and wireless power devices.
