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Report: Cognizant Computing Will Have 'Immense' Impact on Mobile Computing

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 07/16/14

Gartner has unveiled a new report forecasting that cognizant computing, which the company says is the next phase of the personal cloud movement, "will become one of the strongest forces in consumer-focused IT" in the next few years to "have an immense impact across a range of industries, including mobile devices, mobile apps, wearables, networking, services and cloud providers."

"Cognizant computing is transforming personal clouds into highly intelligent collections of mobile apps and services," said Jessica Ekholm, research director at Gartner, in a prepared statement.

With data analytics as its backbone, cognizant computing uses simple rules and data associated with an individual to create services and activities delivered across multiple devices. Examples include alarms, payments, health and fitness monitoring and management and context-specific advertisements.

"Cognizant computing is already beginning to take shape via many mobile apps, smartphones and wearable devices that collect and sync information about users, their whereabouts and their social graph," added Ekholm. "Over the next two to five years, the Internet of Things and big data will converge with analytics. Hence, more data will make systems smarter."

As a result, smartphones will manage many tasks, such as booking a hotel in the event of a cancelled flight, scheduling maintenance appointments for vehicles or sending doctors information for repeat prescription renewals, for users by 2017.

Cognizant computing will also allow organizations "to better connect with customers and to create more valuable products, services and offers," according to information released by Gartner.

"By amalgamating and analyzing data in the cloud from many sources (including apps, smartphones and wearable devices, websites, store purchases, and social interaction), cognizant computing will provide contextual insights," according to a company news release. This will help organizations "to innovate and create new business opportunities by creating hypercontextual services that will appeal to a dedicated individual — rather than catering to the mass market. However, critical issues will have to be addressed including consumer privacy, quality of execution and becoming a trusted vendor."