Hype Cycle For Education 201 369459

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Hype Cycle for Education, 2019

Published: 29 July 2019 ID: G00369459
Analyst(s): Robert Yanckello, Kelly Calhoun Williams
A new era of innovation is emerging for education CIOs, focused on

enhancing enterprise business capabilities throughout the institution or
school. This Hype Cycle identifies the impact of these new opportunities on
educational outcomes, the student experience and business model
transformation.
Table of Contents
Analysis.................................................................................................................................................. 3
What You Need to Know.................................................................................................................. 3
The Hype Cycle................................................................................................................................ 3
The Priority Matrix.............................................................................................................................5
Off the Hype Cycle........................................................................................................................... 7
On the Rise...................................................................................................................................... 7
AV Over IP in Education..............................................................................................................7
Self-Integrating Applications....................................................................................................... 8
Emotion AI................................................................................................................................10
Smart Campus......................................................................................................................... 12
Social Analytics in Education.................................................................................................... 13
At the Peak.....................................................................................................................................16
5G Services.............................................................................................................................. 16
Digital Integrator Technologies.................................................................................................. 17
Artificial Intelligence Education Applications.............................................................................. 19
Conversational User Interfaces................................................................................................. 21
Blockchain in Education............................................................................................................23
Immersive Technology Applications in Education...................................................................... 24
SaaS-Delivered IAM..................................................................................................................26
Sliding Into the Trough.................................................................................................................... 27
Design Thinking........................................................................................................................ 27

Digital Assessment................................................................................................................... 29
Classroom 3D Printing.............................................................................................................. 31
Competency-Based Education Platforms................................................................................. 33
Education Analytics.................................................................................................................. 34
Exostructure Strategy............................................................................................................... 36
SaaS SIS.................................................................................................................................. 38
Digital Credentials..................................................................................................................... 40
Master Data Management........................................................................................................ 42
Citizen Developers.................................................................................................................... 44
Climbing the Slope......................................................................................................................... 46
Adaptive Learning Platforms..................................................................................................... 46
iPaaS for Data Integration......................................................................................................... 48
Alumni CRM............................................................................................................................. 49
Bluetooth Beacons................................................................................................................... 51
Entering the Plateau....................................................................................................................... 52
Student Retention CRM............................................................................................................52
Enterprise Video Content Management.................................................................................... 54
Appendixes.................................................................................................................................... 57
Hype Cycle Phases, Benefit Ratings and Maturity Levels.......................................................... 58
Gartner Recommended Reading.......................................................................................................... 59
List of Tables
Table 1. Hype Cycle Phases................................................................................................................. 58

Table 2. Benefit Ratings........................................................................................................................ 58
Table 3. Maturity Levels........................................................................................................................ 59
List of Figures
Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Education, 2019...............................................................................................5

Figure 2. Priority Matrix for Education, 2019........................................................................................... 6
Figure 3. Hype Cycle for Education, 2018.............................................................................................57
Page 2 of 60 Gartner, Inc. | G00369459

Analysis
What You Need to Know
Education faces mounting pressure to respond to ongoing questions about accountability, shifting
demographics, competition for students, changing workforce expectations and a need for
alternative business models. In response to these and other business capability questions, CIOs
need to move their institutions and organizations further along on their digital transformation
journey. This year’s education Hype Cycle displays the great promises and potential of innovations
such as conversational interfaces and digital assessment, as well as some unique challenges of
introducing innovations like competency-based education platforms or SaaS student information
systems (SISs).
The profiles flowing through the Peak of Inflated Expectations and into the Trough of Disillusionment
highlight the potential to support and advance enterprise business capabilities. They introduce
innovations that enable improved learning and business outcomes, enrollment management, new
partnerships, student engagement, and optimized business practices, as well as prioritize security,
cost savings and data-informed decision making.
The digitalization of education is evolving rapidly and raising expectations of CIOs to demonstrate
ways they can contribute to their institutions’ broader missions of education or research, while
creating opportunities for a competitive or performance advantage.
The Hype Cycle

Education organizations have great digital potential, but that potential is slow to manifest itself (see
“2019 CIO Agenda: A K-12 Education Perspective” and “2019 CIO Agenda: A Higher Education
Perspective”). This Hype Cycle provides ideas that can pave the way for education CIOs to support
digital enablement, optimization and transformation, moving their institutions toward the
ContinuousNext framework and positioning their organizations for dynamic digitalization. This
education Hype Cycle paints a picture of how technology innovations can work together to provide
efficacy from digitalization.
As you read through the profiles, you’ll begin to recognize these general recurring themes for
impacting business capabilities:
■ Require effective ways to scale learning (personalized, people-augmented learning)

■ Optimize business processes through automation and intelligence (AI-driven operations)
■ Constantly seek more-effective engagement (customer-facing, consumable self-service options)
■ Leverage data-informed decision making (data-centric culture)
These are some foundational aspects required to support changing and improving enterprise
business capabilities. In some cases, they can reduce cost and improve engagement, while
delivering more secure and personalized interactions.
Gartner, Inc. | G00369459 Page 3 of 60

The education Hype Cycle shows several technologies entering a promising phase even as more
institutions are waiting for various technologies to blossom. The profiles at the Innovation Trigger
phase — like Smart Campus, Self-Integrating Applications and Social Analytics in Education — will
require developing an enterprise digital strategy that knows the organization’s strategic priorities.
These types of innovations are most effective and transformational when deployed to deliver on
broader, collaborative digital enablement.
The Hype Cycle shows 15 innovation profiles at the peak and the trough this year. The technologies
moving through the peak and the trough offer vast opportunities to impact the business, while
acknowledging the obstacles sometimes encountered once the hype settles down.
Many institutions have begun transforming their business models (see “2019 CIO Agenda: A K-12
Education Perspective” and “2019 CIO Agenda: A Higher Education Perspective”). They show
hyped anticipation of introducing technology to enhance enterprise business capabilities, with some
of those innovations found at this year’s peak. Using artificial intelligence in education applications
and conversational interfaces, or experimenting with blockchain in education, will offer more-
effective ways to scale student learning, simplify assessment and improve engagement. Moreover,
there are growing use cases demonstrating their effectiveness.
Many of this year’s innovations have the potential to improve business capabilities, regardless of
whether the activity is academic or administrative. However, the rate of change and the pace at
which they progress through the Hype Cycle require the CIO to understand the organization’s
broader priorities, culture and capacity for change. As a result, they can effectively respond with
innovations that boost automation, streamline data collection or simplify business processes. Many
of the profiles moving into the trough this year — like Education Analytics, Exostructure Strategy,
SaaS SIS or Digital Credentials — noticeably reflect the challenges of a technology to achieve
mainstream adoption. A majority of profiles listed are categorized in that five- to 10-year time frame
to mainstream adoption.
The profiles climbing the Slope of Enlightenment round out the story needed to summarize and
expand the institution’s digital journey. Improved business capabilities based on institutional
priorities are top of mind for CIOs, as innovations like Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) for
Data Integration, Alumni CRM and Adaptive Learning Platforms migrate up the Slope of
Enlightenment.

Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Education, 2019
The Priority Matrix

This year, a cluster of innovation profiles projects high or transformational benefits, highlighting the
impact these technologies will have on improving enterprise business capabilities. Three of these —
Alumni CRM, Citizen Developers and Student Retention CRM — are on pace to reach mainstream
adoption in less than two years. Following close behind to reach mainstream adoption in the next
two to five years are some transformational technologies like Adaptive Learning Platforms and
Digital Credentials. These technologies will clearly enhance the academic aspects of teaching and
credentialing in ways that empower students in their learning paths and with the documentation of
their accomplishments.
The majority of this year’s profiles have a high benefit rating, with seven of them listed as
transformational. CIOs attentive to transforming or optimizing their institutions’ business capabilities
should focus their planning initiatives over the next five years in these areas as they provide the
greatest potential for significant impact academically, administratively and operationally. CIOs can
prepare for changes in user experience and business capabilities by engaging and researching

innovations like Education Analytics, Digital Assessment, Digital Integrator Technologies and Smart
Campus technologies and how they fit into their institutions’ strategy. Over the next two to 10 years,
these types of innovations will play a role in changing the student experience in education, and
CIOs should be preparing now for their use and deployment.
We continue to incorporate non-industry-specific innovation profiles (such as 5G Services) to

illustrate their overall standing in maturity and relevance to the education community. The specific
institutional context and the general hype or maturity aspect are important in the evaluation of when
these technologies are pervasive enough to build new services or curricula on top of them.
Figure 2. Priority Matrix for Education, 2019

Off the Hype Cycle

The following innovation profiles are no longer part of the education Hype Cycle:
■ Integration Brokerage has moved beyond the Plateau of Productivity and into general market
maturity.
■ Li-Fi has failed to gain market presence during the past year, while competitive standards such
as Bluetooth mesh and 802.11ax have been deployed. It has been unable to achieve the
economies of scale needed to make it price-competitive, and so the technology has been
removed from this year’s Hype Cycle.
■ Semantic Knowledge Graphing was retired this year. Although it may still be of interest to some
education CIOs, it was deemed too narrowly focused to be retained in this year’s education
Hype Cycle.
■ IDaaS was renamed to SaaS-Delivered IAM to capture the broader facets of identity cloud
services available in today’s market.
■ Social CRM: Education has been replaced by Social Analytics in Education to better represent
the evolving aspects of social media on relationship management across the institution.
■ VR/AR in Education was renamed to Immersive Technology Applications in Education.
On the Rise
AV Over IP in Education
Analysis By: Adam Preset; Glenda Morgan
Definition: AV over IP (or audio visual over internet protocol) refers to the ability to send video and
audio over conventional networks and the replacement of analog (and often proprietary) AV
infrastructure with IP-based infrastructure.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: For a long time, there has been some use of video
and audio streaming over networks, but AV over IP represents a substantial shift in the design and
implementation of AV systems in classrooms, auditoriums, conference rooms and sporting venues.
AV over IP offers a number of advantages over conventional AV-matrix-switching-based systems. It
is far more scalable, allowing new sources and displays to be added with ease. AV over IP also
allows for the transmission of the signal over much longer distances than did use of traditional AV
systems and cabling. This method allows for a far more intuitive, easy to use and consumerized
experience for users than traditional AV infrastructure. AV over IP also allows for greater control and
monitoring of traffic and endpoints in classrooms and conference rooms. Not only this but it holds
the promise of being cheaper to install and maintain than conventional AV infrastructure. That being
said, there is still very little standardization of approaches to AV over IP and considerable debate
over high compression versus low compression systems. There are advantages and limitations to
both as well as some major implications for what kind of network infrastructure is required. It is very
likely that colleges and universities are likely to be experimenting with both and deploying hybrid

environments. Hype is continuing to build around AV over IP both generally and within higher
education especially around the use of the Dante protocol. But although the number of deployments
in higher education is increasing, they are still limited to special projects and newer builds. The
emerging nature of many of the products and solutions and the lack of agreement on standards
means that AV over IP is still in the post-trigger phase with a good ten years before reaching the
Plateau of Productivity.
User Advice: CIOs should definitely familiarize themselves with AV over IP. Even if they do not have
classroom technology or AV units reporting up through IT this method for supporting classroom and
collaborative displays will be something they need to support on their networks in the medium to
long term. For those CIOs who do not have AV in their organizations, this represents an ideal
opportunity to build trusting relationships with their AV organizations as this is going to require
working closely together. Most network teams in IT organizations are used to building and
supporting services used by faculty and students and the close collaboration between IT and AV
will be critical to the success of AV over IP projects. Begin by doing some pilots of AV over IP
installations in some conference rooms or classrooms and work with an integrator that can give you
a choice of solutions so that you can become familiar with a range of options. Try to avoid going
only with names that you are familiar with because they are very familiar to you from traditional AV
or from networking. Security is going to be a challenge for AV over IP installations and so think
about this from the beginning. Ensure you set up a process to develop appropriate policies to
manage AV over IP securely as you roll this service out to campus.
Business Impact: The potential business impact of AV over IP is high as it will bring in far more
flexibility and ease of use to classrooms and collaboration spaces at a lower cost.
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: Less than 1% of target audience
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: Cisco; Crestron Electronics; DVIGear; MuxLab; Panduit (Atlona); ZeeVee
Self-Integrating Applications
Analysis By: Keith Guttridge
Definition: Self-integrating applications use a combination of automated service discovery,

metadata extraction and mapping, and machine learning to enable applications to integrate
themselves into an existing application portfolio.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The technology to enable applications to self-
integrate exists across vendor-specific application suites and research and development
organizations, but none has yet combined all the elements successfully. Automated service
discovery and metadata extraction can enable a reasonable understanding of an individual API.
Digital integrator technology, such as SnapLogic’s Iris Artificial Intelligence, Informatica’s CLAIRE
and Oracle Autonomous Integration Cloud, are beginning to automate the process of connecting
applications together, but applications integrating themselves is still some way off. It is possible that

some application vendors may start to restrict access to their metadata, thus impacting adoption.
Although in the longer term, this will be self-defeating for all but the largest of vendors
User Advice: So far, application vendors have provided APIs as a way to integrate their applications
into an organization’s application portfolio, but this integration is not straightforward. In some cases,
understanding the operations and behaviors of the API, as well as the meaning of any data
elements within it, requires a considerable amount of work. Even then, API actions and data models
must be aligned between applications to ensure a reliable and consistent exchange. Initially, we will
see applications from a single vendor being able to automatically connect with each other. At the
same time, we are seeing integration vendors delivering improvements for connecting the major
applications together. Eventually, applications will be able to communicate with each other about
how the information exchange will occur by dynamic data recognition identifying common data
elements and complementary API calls. This will reduce and eventually remove the need for people
to be involved in the development cycle. It will also dramatically change the role of the published
API, from the integration point today to an initiation point for the negotiation of how applications will
connect with each other.
Application leaders responsible for integration should pay close attention to:
■ Application interoperability within portfolios from a single vendor.

■ The evolution of integration platform as a service (iPaaS) offerings with digital integrator
technologies
Application leaders should start to question application vendors about the self-integrating
capabilities within their suites and, in the longer term, with other vendors’ applications.
This self-integrating capability will greatly improve the rate of change within an application portfolio,
but will demand even more focus on data management in order to ensure that data is well-
understood, and its data lineage clearly known. Without this focus, it will be all too easy to lose
control of your business processes and data.
Business Impact: Integration is perceived as one of the largest obstacles in organizations that have
hybrid application portfolios. With an applications’ ability to discover and connect to relevant APIs
within the application portfolio — with reduced or no intervention — this challenge will effectively be
removed. This faster deployment of new application functionality will improve business agility,
creating a more dynamic environment with improved collaboration across the partner ecosystem.
While this may be appropriate for many back-office integrations, organizations will still need to get
involved in specifying how they want their portfolio to communicate, if they want to differentiate
their processes from the masses.
Benefit Rating: Transformational
Maturity: Embryonic

Sample Vendors: Dell Boomi; IBM; Informatica; Jitterbit; Oracle; Salesforce; SAP; SnapLogic
Recommended Reading: “Integration Personas and Their Impact on Integration Platform Strategy”
“Innovation Insight for Digital Integrator Technologies”
“Reimagine How to Simplify Integration Using Artificial Intelligence”
Emotion AI
Analysis By: Annette Zimmermann
Definition: Emotion artificial intelligence (AI) technologies (also called affective computing) use AI to
analyze the emotional state of a user (via computer vision, audio/voice input, sensors and/or
software logic). It can initiate responses by performing specific, personalized actions to fit the mood
of the customer.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: One of the benefits of detecting emotions/states is for
a system to act more sympathetically. It creates anthropomorphic qualities for personal assistant
robots (PARs), making them appear more “human.” This “emotional capability” is an important
element in enhancing the communication and interaction between users and a PAR. People’s daily
behavior, communication and decisions are based on emotions — our nonverbal responses in a
one-on-one communication are an inseparable element from our dialogues and need to be
considered in the human-machine interface (HMI) concept.
The first step in detecting human emotions is to define the different types of emotions, from angry,
sad, happy and insecure. AI is a critical part of some, although not all, emotion AI solutions.
Computer vision (CV)-based emotion AI requires a collection of imaging/video data and preparing it
to be fed into an artificial neural network (ANN). Vendors using CV technology to detect emotions
primarily apply convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a deep-learning technique.
Several new commercial deployments occurred in 2018/2019 for emotion AI and new vendors
entered the market, which led us to move the technology profile two positions up.
There are several vendors, including Beyond Verbal, audEERING and Intelligent Voice, which have
developed emotion AI systems based on audio analysis. Phonetic attributes and the understanding
of words do not play a primary role here, and the most sophisticated systems are completely
language-agnostic, including tonal languages. Vendors have developed algorithms that attribute the
different pieces of sound waves to emotional states. The main type of neural networks (NNs) used
for audio-based emotion AI are recurrent neural networks (RNNs).
Data quality (lab-based versus real-life data) and machine learning (ML) techniques determine the
reliability of the technology to detect emotions. The better the data and the more data there is, the
higher the probability of detecting different nuances of human emotions. Combinations of CV-
based, audio-based and sensor-supported technologies make sense in certain use cases, but is not
always required to gain a better result.

User Advice: As the market is currently very immature, most vendors are focused on two or three
use cases in two or three industries. Hence, when selecting a vendor, it is important to review their
capabilities and reference cases. As discussed above, the context and environment of the use case
will determine the type of emotion AI to be used. Organizations should make lists of use cases that
apply to them.
■ Be use-case-driven. The use case will determine the emotion AI technology to be used and
vendor selection.
■ Appoint responsibility for data privacy in your organization, a chief data privacy officer or
equivalent.
■ Work with your vendor on change management in order to avoid user backlash due to sensitive
data being collected.
At the same time, identifying and processing human emotion is currently a gray area, especially in
the EU. The EU Commission has started an initiative to review the ethical aspects of AI
technologies, and emotion AI will certainly be part of this debate.
Business Impact: Emotion AI technologies have already been adopted by various business
functions in different industries, including call centers, PARs and high-end cars. CV-based emotion
AI has already been used for more than a decade in market research — testing how consumers
react to products and commercials. For about two years, many vendors have moved into
completely new industries and use cases such as automotive, robotics, medical diagnostics,
education and the public sector.
■ Insurance companies are using audio-based emotion AI for fraud detection.

■ In call centers, voice-based emotion AI can be used for intelligent routing for a better customer
experience.
■ Software exists that helps physicians with diagnosing depression and dementia.
■ Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority (RTA) announced the use of CV-based emotion
recognition in four of its “customer happiness centers.” When the “happiness level” among
visitors drops below a certain threshold (maybe due to long queues) employees are notified and
can act upon it.
■ Inside the car, audio and CV-based emotion AI helps to understand what is going on and
detects whether passengers are emotionally distracted.
■ In retail, stores are adopting camera-based facial and emotional recognition to understand
demographics and moods of visitors, enhancing the retail experience. Similar trends are
emerging in the hospitality industry (in hotel lobbies) where cameras are used to recognize
frequent guests and recognize their emotions.
■ In education, we have seen prototypes of learning software that adapts to the user’s emotional
state. Another opportunity is in training and workshops, where emotions of the training
participants are captured to see how they are experiencing the training.

Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: audEERING; Affectiva; Beyond Verbal; Eyeris; Google; Intelligent Voice;
Microsoft; Voicesense
Recommended Reading: “Competitive Landscape: Emotion AI Technologies, Worldwide, 2018”
Smart Campus
Analysis By: Terri-Lynn Thayer; Glenda Morgan
Definition: A smart campus is a physical or digital environment in which humans and technology-
enabled systems interact in increasingly open, connected, coordinated and intelligent ecosystems.
Multiple elements, including people, processes, services and things, come together to create a
more immersive, interactive and automated experience for students, staff, faculty and stakeholders
of a university or college.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Higher education has been interested in smart
campuses for some time now and in some parts of the world such as APAC early adoption has
begun. Smart campus technology is being applied to all three of the pillars:
■ Administrative — Deploying sensors and systems to optimize physical plant maintenance and
manage/reduce energy use. Using AI and robotic process automation to optimize business
processes. Use of IoT technologies such as wayfinding, facial recognition, Bluetooth beacons,
and chatbots to improve and personalize campus life.
■ Teaching & Learning — Use of mixed reality, AI, voice-enabling and IoT technology to connect
those inside and outside the classroom, simulate dangerous or difficult learning experiences,
and increase classroom efficiency
■ Research — Use of IoT, AI, sensors, mapping, and cyberinfrastructure improvements to
enhance the scope and speed of discovery.
Some of the technologies used in smart campuses have been around for some considerable time.
And while many campuses may have implemented one or more of these technologies, it is still quite
rare for Gartner to observe a campus that has a comprehensive and strategic plan to transform their
physical campus into one that meets our definition of a smart campus. Higher education often lags
government where smart city plans are often more evolved. Gartner has however noted a significant
uptick in client inquiries and domain literature on the topic and for this reason has place smart
campus On the Rise from trigger up to the Peak.
User Advice:
Work with campus stakeholders to develop an overarching vision for what your smart campus will
look like and use that as the basis for an integrated smart campus strategy:

■ Smart campus initiatives will generate a plethora of data. CIOs must prepare now by building a
strong data infrastructure with robust data storage, data mining and analytics capabilities.
Privacy concerns may arise.
■ The network will become even more essential than it is today, and must be architected to
manage the scale and resilience required to meet these demands. Prepare your institution for
the smart campus that is in your future by planning for ubiquitous and highly scalable network
availability, especially in community and teaching spaces, as well as outdoor spaces, on your
campus.
■ Ensure all new buildings being planned on campus have the infrastructure they need to support
smart campus applications by engaging with your facilities departments in the earliest possible
stages of building design. Educate yourself, your staff and facilities leaders about the
infrastructure needs of smart campuses by engaging with organizations such as the Society for
College and University Planning. Suggest and promote smart campus technology whenever
new buildings are being proposed or built.
■ Participate and integrate your campus plans with those of your local government and hospitals
to improve the likelihood of seamless process, reduce need for redundant technologies and
maximize the value citizens will receive.
Business Impact: The business impacts are expected to be broad with a high emphasis on
efficiency with respect to energy and water consumption, reducing annoyances such as traffic and
parking, and better utilizing space. There are anticipated substantive improvements to learning and
student retention as a more “sticky” and content-rich immersive environment emerges. Impact on
research will be a combination of what is provided to support the production of research. An
important impact to research will likely come from the introduction of this same strategy in cities
and hospitals where it could be transformational in ability to gather research data.
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: Cisco; Honeywell Building Solutions; NetApp; Ruckus Networks
Recommended Reading: “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends Impacting Higher Education in

2019”
“Turning Smart Cities Into Intelligent Urban Ecosystems”
“Hype Cycle for Smart City Technologies and Solutions, 2018”
Social Analytics in Education

Analysis By: Terri-Lynn Thayer; Melissa Davis

Definition: Social analytics applications assist institutions in the process of collecting, measuring,
analyzing and interpreting the results of interactions and associations among campus constituents,
topics, ideas and other content types on social media.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The goal of social analytics is to use data in social
channels to improve student and campus stakeholder satisfaction, and institutional reputation.
There are tangible benefits in improving institutional performance in key areas such as recruitment,
engagement, retention, learning, student life, fundraising, research collaboration, general campus
wellness, ranking and brand equity. The following business, technology and societal trends increase
the business impact of these insights and advance the technology:
■ Adoption of social analytics: Social analytics is in very early stages of use in higher education
and is still climbing toward the Peak of Inflated Expectations. When in use in higher education, it
is often very siloed and focused in nature and there is little sharing of the analytics’ insights
across the institution.
■ Increased adoption of advanced analytics including ML/AI: Many vendors have experience
with industries where the practice and use of social analytics is far more mature. As such, they
have advanced their offerings from basic rule-based keyword searches to apply natural
language processing (NLP), clustering and machine learning technologies to enhance sentiment
analysis, analyze patterns across the buying and owning journey, and predict outcomes.
■ Growing diversity of data sources analyzed beyond text, including image and video,
although video is very nascent: Social media analytics started with and continues to be based
on text analytics. The broader and more diverse the data analyzed, the more potential value is in
the insights.
■ Concerns about violent, politically charged, extremely misleading or other kinds of
content: Such content attracts the scrutiny of citizens, law enforcement and governments. Due
to the recent focus on user data misuse, Facebook (which also owns Instagram) is further
limiting how much data vendors can collect from its API. 2018 was the worst year ever for
Facebook data breaches and 2019 has brought more damning publicity, with controversies
about allowing violent events to be viewed in real time and subsequently spread via the
platform. There are also recent reports of a data breach involving a half a billion Facebook files,
and in response, various nations and transnational entities have drafted legislation attempting to
make the corporation legally responsible for user content on their platform. Although these early
attempts are being described as “vague” and “unenforceable,” they will undoubtedly continue
and become more precise and effective. In a way, this is an opportunity for social analytics
vendors, who may be able to help identify unacceptable content that Facebook will need to
block or remove. It will take time to see how this impacts social analytics tools.
Regardless, we expect to see continuous improvement in making social analytics a critical part of
decision making and productivity but expect the Plateau of Productivity within higher education to
take longer than in other industries — taking a large part of the next two to five years.
User Advice: Take advantage of social analytics to monitor, discover and predict behavior. You
must also know what questions to ask and plan what to do with the information you uncover to
derive value from social analytics.

Create the business case around qualified leads (for recruiting), revenue-generated, cost savings or
especially risk reduction, for example, how can social media analytics anticipate or curtail brand or
reputational risk?
Organize cross-functional teams across the institution including stakeholders of customer

relationship management (CRM), HR, student information system (SIS) and advancement to
promote social analytics as critical to impacting business change across the organization and not
just siloed, one off reports from a social media team.
Work with your main analytics vendors to understand if and how their offerings can be integrated
with social data. What acquisitions will they make, if any? Will you be able to integrate your voice of
the customer (VoC) or CRM applications to make the data even more valuable to your institution?
Business Impact: Social analytics is useful for organizations that want to make real-time decisions
and predict future trends based on social media’s collective intelligence. For example, a university
could examine medical research databases for the most influential researchers by first filtering for
the search terms and then generating a social network of researchers publishing in that field.
Similarly, social analytics could be used by recruiters wanting to measure the impact of advertising
enrollment. Lastly, alumni and public relations staff can use social analytics to monitor institutional
reputation, which may be especially important during specific high-risk or high-profile events such
as violence on campus. They could look for behaviors among campus constituents that could help
to spot:
■ Trends, such as deterioration in student or alumni satisfaction.

■ Behaviors that demonstrate interest in specific topics or ideas the university should pursue.
■ Early warning signals of activity such as flash mobs, campus protests, illness or campus
wellness during weather emergencies.
Market Penetration: 1% to 5% of target audience
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: Brandwatch; Digimind; Oracle; Salesforce; Talkwalker; Unmetric
Recommended Reading: “Market Guide for Social Analytics Applications”
“RFP Toolkit: Social Analytics Applications for CRM”
“How to Apply Advanced Analytics Capabilities to Social Data”
“Top Use Cases and Benefits of Social for CRM in 2018”

At the Peak
5G Services
Analysis By: Bill Menezes
Definition: 5G service comprises local or wide-area cellular data connectivity based on the next
generation of mobile and fixed wireless communications networking to follow 4G LTE. Providers will
base services, such as new or enhanced end-user or IoT applications, on key 5G performance
requirements of multigigabit mobile data throughput, low-latency data transmission and support for
massive deployment of machine-to-machine communications.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: As of 2Q19, several service providers had launched
limited commercial 5G service, using either the 5G New Radio (NR) intermediate standard or
proprietary technology. This will keep 5G services moving rapidly through the Emerging state.
However, coverage will grow slowly and service providers have identified few 5G-specific use cases
beyond fixed wireless broadband access, enhanced mobile video and support for massive IoT
density. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and other standards bodies are expected
to ratify full 5G technical standards by 2020. Gartner expects that by 2025, less than 45% of
communication service providers (CSPs) globally will have launched 5G.
Early 5G launches, such U.S. service by AT&T and Verizon, focus on fixed-wireless uses, such as
broadband internet access; SK Telecom’s initial launch supported a 5G smartphone for mobile
service. Other CSPs, such as NTT DOCOMO, Singtel, Korea Telecom and Telstra, have tested
similar services.
User Advice: Incorporate realistic networking assumptions for business plans by working with
business leaders and network service providers to identify the availability of 5G at specific locations.
We do not expect 5G using millimeter wave spectrum to become readily available outside of dense
urban areas. Further, identify locations where available millimeter wave signals may encounter signal
propagation challenges from obstacles such as building walls, window glass and heavy foliage.
Identify applications where currently available service provider technologies (such as LTE-A) will
support usage scenarios requiring up to 1 Gbps data speeds and latency up to 30 milliseconds.
Service providers indicate their “5G service” actually will be based on an ecosystem of licensed,
unlicensed and shared spectrum bands. Technologies will include not only proprietary prestandard
specifications (such as Verizon’s V5GTF), but also standards-based 5G New Radio, legacy 2G, 3G,
4G LTE, LTE Advanced (LTE-A), and Wi-Fi, providing mobile and fixed access services to a common
core WAN service.
To identify the likelihood of potentially costly enterprise hardware upgrades, require service
providers to detail their migration path from early commercial 5G services to supporting standards-
based 5G services. Specify whether a hardware, firmware or software upgrade will be needed for
standards compliance. In addition, the proprietary technology used for some prestandard advanced
network services marketed as 5G also may limit the user’s intercarrier interoperability. Thus, clients
with prestandards-based deployment plans must do very careful planning and vetting of suppliers.

Business Impact: Gartner expects 5G services to be a key enabler of fixed and mobile enterprise
IoT strategies (such as autonomous vehicles) that will require very low latency connections for large
numbers of endpoints. 5G services will move beyond mobile broadband to address various new
technical requirements and market drivers/expectations that take advantage of capabilities the 5G
standards will define. For example, the 5G standards eventually will include Narrowband IoT and
LTE Cat-M capabilities for ultra-low-powered devices. New service providers also may emerge to
utilize 5G features such as network slicing or “network as a service” for edge computing. However,
specific performance and cost impacts will remain unclear until CSPs refine their plan structures
and prices beyond the initial commercial launches.
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: AT&T; BT; NTT DOCOMO; Singtel; SK Telecom; Verizon
Recommended Reading: “Innovation Insight for 5G Networking: Cutting Through The Hype”
“Exploit LPWA Networks Now — 5G Won’t Change Them”
“Four Key Ways Enterprises Should Plan for 5G”
Digital Integrator Technologies

Analysis By: Eric Thoo; Keith Guttridge
Definition: Digital integrator technologies apply artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, such as
machine learning (ML) or natural language processing (NLP), to facilitate the resolution of integration
problems. Areas these technologies focus on include engagement via chatbots or voice, automation
of flow creation via next-best action and intelligent data mapping, and insight for processing
optimization and intelligent platform operations.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: AI and ML techniques applied to integration

technology are emerging as digital integrator capabilities. The trend for AI-enabled integration
platforms continues to emerge, at the present most aim at providing guidance for integrating
applications and data — thereby enabling developers, as well as less-technical integrator roles, to
perform integration tasks. Typical digital integrator technologies are offered as embedded
capabilities of integration platforms, such as iPaaS. Surfacing largely as a recommendation engine,
digital integrator support aims to provide innovative ways of simplifying development efforts. These
include the use of chatbots and natural language processing (NLP) to determine data of interest and
relevant mapping using accumulated metadata and lineage patterns to repurpose data and build
the models required for business innovation. By anticipating user needs and making “next best
step” recommendations while a developer is designing an integration flow, inference algorithms
identify suitable prepackaged integration content as well as assist in rectifying errors in flows and
improve performance. Advanced digital integrator technologies are expected to evolve in the market

during the next two or three years within integration processes and platform operations — with
capabilities to optimize how integration relates to and participates in hyperconnected infrastructures
while auto-adjusting runtime, auditing and self-healing. This involves dynamically processing flows
of integration and data anywhere, and self-optimizing workstreams by assisting diverse human
personas to harness a massive span of multistructured data, blended platforms (such as cloud and
ecosystem infrastructure) and digital/Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.
User Advice: As organizations harness the connected systems and highly distributed data of digital
landscapes, application leaders responsible for integration must analyze what concerns will arise —
from the perspective of all stakeholder types — and what the intended usage of data and
applications are. As innovations are at an early stage, investigate the benefits of AI in integration
platforms though incremental experiments. Facilitating ad hoc and citizen integrators and reducing
the time to integration for those not overly complex scenarios where “past experience” can be used
to train ML systems in integration, will offer your organization near-term advantages. You should
take advantage of AI in integration technology for self-guided integration designs in ways that will
make implementation of integration flows easier, faster and cheaper, and will support self-service
integration tasks by business roles. Initiatives to modernize integration platforms should evaluate
how digital integrator technology capabilities will pursue a codeless or no-code paradigm to
empower all integrator personas. As AI for integration platforms advances, leverage services that
apply algorithms to learn and analyze integration processes to autogenerate end-to-end integration
flows, understand the performance characteristics of the services involved, and provide
suggestions to optimize the integration process going forward.
Business Impact: The growing presence of AI in business solutions and data structures can
accelerate business transformation toward digitization, but simultaneously creates integration
complexity for organizations. As integration evolves into a pervasive rather than a specialist task,
digital integrator technologies can be empowering for the range of specialist, ad hoc, and citizen
integrators — thus advancing the notion for democratizing integration. Digital integrator
technologies in the form of a conversational user experience will expedite efficiencies through
assistance in creating integration process or in querying the operational state of the integration
platform. This enables line-of-business leaders to connect software and to make independently
designed applications and data structures work as integrated solutions.
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: Dell Boomi; IBM; Informatica; Jitterbit; Microsoft; Oracle; SAP; SnapLogic;
Workato
Recommended Reading: “Integration Personas and Their impact on Integration Platform Strategy”
“Explore the Potential of Artificial Intelligence in Integration Platforms”

Artificial Intelligence Education Applications

Analysis By: Jan-Martin Lowendahl; Kelly Calhoun Williams
Definition: Gartner defines “artificial intelligence education applications” as systems that analyze
large amounts of data beyond simple algorithms. They are taught to identify and classify input
patterns, probabilistically predict, and operate unsupervised (and are able to come up with
unanticipated results). In this profile, we look at the use and impact of AI applications for grades
K-12 and higher education institutions.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Education institutions are information-rich

organizations at many levels, and AI applications have great promise in education, research and its
administration. The hype around AI in general is high, but we are starting to discern a better
understanding of the AI family of technologies with heightened interest in specific terms such as
“machine learning” and “deep learning.” However, it is not just hype because several AI application
projects have demonstrated good use cases and measurable results. AI adoption in general has
increased 270% since 2015, according to the 2019 CIO Agenda, and AI is the top-mentioned game-
changer in higher education with 24% of respondents mentioning it. Adoption, however, lags other
industries, and higher-education-specific responses show 6% deployed (and even less in K-12).
Key use cases in higher education at the moment are centered on chatbots, conversational
interfaces and more advanced virtual personal assistants (VPAs). These include basic examples,
such as chatbots for recruiting and onboarding, as well as more advanced second generation VPAs
such as Deakin University’s “Genie” that is both reactive and proactive. Another key area that is
evolving fast is using machine learning for advanced analytics to identify factors that impact
retention. A classic example is Ivy Tech Community College’s use of a random forest algorithm on
several combined data sources to empower faculty to intervene with “at-risk students.” The
identification of patterns in large datasets, either by more traditional analytics or by more advanced
AI (e.g., deep learning), combined with conversational interfaces and well-established
communication channels such as text messaging constitutes a very interesting opportunity for the
application of AI known as “nudge tech.” Another classic example of this is Georgia State
University’s project to reduce “summer melt” by targeted text messaging dealing with when tuition
is due or when and how to apply for student loans.
In K-12 education, AI-based enhancements to existing applications are beginning to appear on the
instructional side, though in some cases surprisingly quietly. Traditional publishing firms like
Pearson and McGraw-Hill are leveraging these options with their products, as are dedicated
application developers like ScootPad and DreamBox Learning. Adaptive learning and assessment
applications are starting to leverage data collected across the broader body of students using the
product to increase insight into the student’s understanding of the topic. The limited branching (“If
he gives Answer A, present Content B”) approach of the past can be replaced with significantly
more nuanced insight into what the knowledge gap actually represents. Worries about data privacy
and security continue to loom large in K-12, though, adding pressure to carefully navigate and make
processes and algorithms in use transparent and comprehensible.
For both K-12 and higher education, much of the current frontier in AI application is in intelligent
automation, freeing up time for faculty and staff for more quality interaction. Examples are:

■ Gradescope, which helps identify similar answers in a test and collect it under a rubric; it also
and allows the professor to do faster grading.
■ Packback, a discussion platform that provides real-time feedback to students on how to
construct effective questions, responses and arguments, promoting higher-quality interactions.
■ Stellic, an advising platform that helps students and advisers to improve planning, still requires
a human signoff.
The next wave of AI in education most likely will come through major application suite providers. We
already see, for example, Unit4 providing a chatbot for their ERP suite and other vendors such as
Oracle and Salesforce suggesting that, as their solutions are increasingly cloud-based, they will
have ample data to apply their AI on.
There are many potential AI applications in education, and they will likely develop at different
speeds. AI applications in student service and basic education support have already started to yield
results. But as a general lifelong tutor, it is still embryonic, even if more structured fields such as
mathematics have remedial training AI-aided assistants in the field (for example Carnegie Learning’s
MATHiaU).
For now, we place artificial intelligence applications in education as one profile in the Peak of
Inflated Expectations phase, with five to 10 years to plateau. However, we anticipate we will need to
split it into several profiles with different maturities and speeds to plateau, depending on the area of
application, as we expect AI to be pervasive.
User Advice: The key to success for an AI application is the availability and “digestibility” of data.
“How do you feed the machine?” should be the first question a CIO asks when contemplating an AI
application. At present, this implies a need to narrow applications to well-defined fields with a good
corpus of data to teach the AI. In addition, to be really useful, the AI needs to get meaningful
individual data to be able to provide personalized results. To get this data, the institution needs to
be transparent of its use and develop policies for ethical use of data.
CIOs should investigate which highly repeatable tasks exist within the institution and identify
machine readable data sources, such as discussion forums within learning management systems,
to identify use cases for AI. In AI, content is code. Data cleansing, adhering to standards and
managing APIs will take on increasing importance in this new age.
Especially in the area of chatbots and VPAs, there are many similarities with the evolution of mobile
apps. Several vendors are emerging that provide more or less advanced development platforms and
support that are worth engaging in conversation.
Business Impact: AI will eventually touch the core mission of education. It has the potential to
transform not only the professions we educate for, but also education itself. Ultimately, it can be a
key contributor to solving the fundamental challenges of delivering scalable and affordable quality
education to empower all the world’s citizens to reach their full potential. However, it is already now
starting to have an impact on speed and personalization of student interactions and experience,
freeing up time for faculty and staff for higher-quality interactions.

Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: AdmitHub; DreamBox Learning; IBM; Ivy; Jane.AI; ScootPad
Recommended Reading: “5 Best Practices for Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education”
“2019 CIO Agenda: A Higher Education Perspective”
“Architecture of Conversational Platforms”
“A Framework for Applying AI in the Enterprise”
“Top 10 Strategic Technologies Impacting Higher Education in 2019”
“Ten Ways AI Will Appear in Your Enterprise — No One Source Can Meet All Your Business Needs”
“Use AI to Take Student Success to the Next Level of Personalization in Higher Education”
Conversational User Interfaces

Analysis By: Magnus Revang; Van Baker
Definition: Conversational user interface (CUI) is a high-level design model in which the user and
machine interactions primarily occur in the user’s spoken or written natural language. Sophistication
of the CUI can vary from understanding just simple verbal utterances to handling complex multiturn
interactions.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: CUIs can exist as a front end to application or
business process, but also as a description of the interface employed by chatbots and virtual
assistants. It’s being popularized through products like the Amazon Echo that uses the Amazon
Alexa Virtual Personal Assistant (VPA) and Google Home that uses Google Assistant VPA.
Enterprises are coming on board, with chatbots being the No. 1 use case for AI technology in
enterprises.
The promise of CUIs is a shift in responsibility between the user and the interface. In traditional user
interfaces (UIs), the user is an operator of the technology and is largely responsible for the effects of
using the technology. In a CUI, this responsibility shifts as the CUI is responsible for taking the user
input and determining the intention of the user. Conceptually, the CUI has taken over some of the
responsibility that was once reserved for the user. This makes CUIs the first widespread adoption of
agent user interfaces.
CUIs will evolve their conversational capabilities through advances in natural language
understanding (NLU) and in more advance dialogue management. Additionally, we will see the
introduction of multimodal interactions, where speech, text, video and point-and-click interactions
are all part of the input used to determine the intention of the user.

User Advice: The conceptual shift away from the user as the operator toward the user as
conversing with an agent that will execute on a determined intention — has greater impact on the
enterprise than most realize. Training, onboarding, escalations, productivity, empowerment and
responsibility all change with this new model and need to be embraced as part of CUI projects.
Treat CUIs as transformative and plan on it, and by evolution AUIs becoming the dominant
interaction model in the future.
Underlying technology supporting CUIs, either front ends delivered as part of software or custom
developed CUIs like chatbots and virtual agents built on top of conversational platforms, will greatly
improve over the coming 12 to 24 months. Plan on any adoption to be tactical, with vendor
selection changing at that point.
Prepare for CUIs to communicate with each other. Larger architectures connecting different use
cases for CUIs, like virtual agents for customer service, human resources, IT help desk to front ends
for enterprise software, business intelligence tools and similar, will be a central challenge for
organizations in the next three to five years. This will lead to a variety of architectural models like
CUI-to-CUI communication and specialist tooling entering the market.
Prepare for new roles in the enterprise. Dialogue designer, AI trainer, digital coach, humanizer and AI
interaction designer are all titles Gartner is seeing in the market to support the creation of
conversational experiences.
Business Impact: CUIs are the interaction pattern of many chatbots and virtual assistants — both
will be significant contributors to the impact of CUIs, especially in high-touch communicative fields
of customer service and Q&A-type interactions with significant volume.
Outside of this, CUIs will appear primarily in new applications. Enterprise IT leaders should be on
the lookout for (and biased toward) CUIs to improve employee (and customer) effectiveness, as well
as to cut operating expenses and time spent learning arcane computer semantics.
There will also be some retrofitting. Over the next three to five years, we do not expect large
enterprises to invest heavily in retrofitting existing systems of record where the employee base is
experienced and stable, and the feature set is well-known to the user base. However, where there is
high employee turnover or significant rapid changes in feature sets, or where enterprises face a
continuing burden of providing computer literacy training, IT leaders need to consider creating
people-literate front ends to make it easier for employees to adapt and excel.
Maturity: Adolescent
Sample Vendors: Amazon; Baidu; Facebook; Google; IBM; IPsoft; Microsoft; Oracle; Salesforce;
SAP
Recommended Reading: “Architecture of Conversational Platforms”

“Market Insight: How to Collaborate and Compete in the Emerging VPA, VCA, VEA and Chatbot
Ecosystems”
Blockchain in Education
Analysis By: Terri-Lynn Thayer; Jan-Martin Lowendahl
Definition: A blockchain is an expanding list of cryptographically signed, irrevocable transactional

records shared by all participants in a network. Each record contains a time stamp and reference
links to previous transactions. With this information, anyone with access rights can trace back a
transactional event, at any point in its history, belonging to any participant. A blockchain is one
architectural design of the broader concept of distributed ledgers.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Blockchain is experiencing hype in higher education
as a solution to a multitude of challenges, including student payments, IP management, digital
identity, diploma verification, lifetime transcript digital credentials, and even as a possible foundation
for a new education platform (such as Woolf University). The greatest interest and pilots center
around the exploration of blockchain as an underpinning of a new digital diploma and
microcredential infrastructure. Institutions in a number of countries have or soon plan to issue
blockchain-verifiable credentials, most using an open standard called Blockcerts. The issuance of
blockchain-based credentials could signal a move from the current institution-centric model to a
world where the credential earner has control of whom they share their credentials with and how.
This can better support the increasing mobility of workers and their desire to acquire credentials
throughout their lifetime. Blockchain-distributed ledger technology can enable the secure and
resilient management of this data and fundamentally transform how credentials are conferred and
attested.
While the promise of blockchain is exciting and bold, the work to date has been largely exploratory,
proof of concept, or pilot in nature. The 2019 Gartner CIO Survey revealed that 2% of institutions
had invested or deployed blockchain, with another 18% in some state of experimenting or planning.
However, the percentage of respondents indicating “no interest” grew by 10% over 2018, indicating
that blockchain is peaking. As a result, we have placed blockchain in education on the Peak of
Inflated Expectations this year, and expect it to hurtle down toward the trough in the coming years,
taking five to 10 years to reach the Plateau of Productivity.
User Advice: Determine if there is a legitimate business need for blockchain. If so, then educate
senior university leadership about the benefits. Evaluate vendor offerings and open standards for
pros and cons, as well as vendor lock-in. Select low-risk pilots and proofs of concept. Evaluate the
results, and keep or discard. But, be prepared to migrate off the chosen technology within as little
as 18 to 24 months due to anticipated vendor consolidation and a rapidly shifting market. Get
involved in industry standards and governance developments around the most important areas,
such as digital credentialing with blockchain. Otherwise, those who are involved will determine the
standards and governance that impact your organization.
Business Impact: Blockchain applications fall into four types: blockchain disruptor, digital asset
market, efficiency play and record keeper. To date, higher education use cases have clustered

around the last two, while the disruptive power lies in the first two. The most compelling record-
keeping use case for education is for blockchain to become the foundation of a new digital
credentialing infrastructure. However, additional applications are being envisioned that could prove
transformational, such as an education platform that brings educators and learners together without
an institution as the middleman administrator.
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: 3Dream Studios; Attores; BEN; Educhain; IOHK; Learning Machine; ODEM;
OpenCerts; Parity; Paymium
Recommended Reading: “4 Promising and Ambitious Blockchain Initiatives in Higher Education”
“Promising, Practical Blockchain Use Cases for Governments”
“Toolkit: Government Use Cases for Blockchain”
“How to Determine If You Need a Blockchain Project, and If So, What Kind?”
Immersive Technology Applications in Education

Analysis By: Kelly Calhoun Williams; Marty Resnick
Definition: Virtual reality and augmented reality are two different, yet related technologies. Virtual
reality (VR) technologies create computer-generated environments to immerse users in a virtual
environment. Augmented reality (AR) technologies overlay digital information on the physical world
to enhance it and guide action.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Interest in the potential of VR and AR in education
continues to grow. The quickening pace of development of VR and AR capabilities has been driven,
in large part, by the video game marketplace. This has increased opportunities for education as
well, as prices of various platforms and hardware have continued to fall. Most, however, still remain
out of reach for large-scale deployment on a campus or at a school.
The bigger challenge has been the relatively small amount of high-quality, education-specific
content to meet the broad range of curricular needs. Once you get beyond the novelty of VR and
AR, education institutions need to ensure the technology is actually being leveraged effectively to
achieve results that matter.
Good examples of quality content being adopted can be found in fields such as medicine and
health, where simulations are particularly effective for student understanding. The slow-but-steady
progress of this content development continues the profile’s march through the Peak of Inflated
Expectations. However, the technical challenges and the policy and pedagogical obstacles to be

overcome mean that it will be five to 10 years before these technologies reach the Plateau of
Productivity.
User Advice: Both K-12 and higher education have been anticipating the large-scale adoption and
practical use of VR and AR tools for some time.
Use of VR and AR lives on in some environments, such as medical schools, which use these
technologies to provide access to learning and practice environments such as surgery and patient
simulation and VR cadavers for dissection. In K-12, exploration and science and math manipulatives
have drawn the greatest interest. With time, this new wave of VR and AR applications promises to
serve a much broader variety of purposes.
Given price concerns, users should gain experience implementing and supporting smaller
applications of VR before moving on to large, immersive classroom-scale applications. Network and
mobile phone coverage will need to be strengthened to support large-scale use of these tools. CIOs
will need to find ways to manage the consumer nature of many of the tools in an enterprise
environment. But CIOs should also not neglect the pedagogical and policy implications of VR and
AR and should seek solutions for both of these.
Business Impact: The new generation of VR and AR applications and tools promises to support a
wide variety of learning activities, including:
1. Field trips — enabling users to virtually experience trips to remote and unlikely places, including
historical settings. For example, the Google Expeditions using Google Cardboard.
2. Vocational or practical training — providing simulated experiences or guiding activity with a
digital overlay.
3. Collaboration and engaged teaching environments — bringing social and teaching presence
into lecture environments.
4. More engaged interaction with content. For example, products such as zSpace, Alchemy VR or
IndyLab VR.
VR and AR are also beginning to play a role in areas such as athletics — for example, for football
training. We are likely to see increased adoption of these technologies to support administrative
functions and other aspects of the student experience — for example, in campus tours. Research is
an obvious area ripe for application of VR and AR, but as yet, few applications have emerged to
support the research mission of the university.
Sample Vendors: Alchemy VR; AUGTHAT!; Google; IndyLab VR; InstaVR; Microsoft; Nearpod;
Oculus; VR Education; zSpace

Recommended Reading: “Best Practices for Virtual Reality in K-12 Education”
“Best Practices for Virtual Reality in Higher Education”
“Market Trends: Head-Mounted Displays for Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality”
“Market Guide for Augmented Reality”
SaaS-Delivered IAM
Analysis By: Michael Kelley; Abhyuday Data
Definition: SaaS-delivered IAM is often labeled “identity as a service” (IDaaS), a term that means
different things to different audiences. Although most IDaaS offerings were strongest in access
management (AM) functionality, many elements of IAM, like identity governance and administration
(IGA) and privileged access management (PAM), are now being offered through SaaS delivery
models. Gartner has determined that a less ambiguous term for these services is SaaS-delivered
IAM, which encompasses AM, IGA and PAM.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: SaaS adoption for IAM services continued to grow
strongly this past year. Of all SaaS-delivered IAM domains, AM adoption continues to be the most
mature. IGA and PAM delivery from the cloud is improving but with smaller penetration than AM.
Because of the clarification that SaaS-delivered IAM includes all three domains, and reflecting that
IGA and PAM SaaS-delivered offerings are less mature compared to SaaS-delivered AM, the
position has rolled back on the Hype Cycle compared to last year.
SaaS-delivered authentication capabilities are also very mature, with many organizations
comfortable consuming multifactor authentication (MFA) and other authentication services as a
SaaS offering.
SaaS-delivered IGA is just beginning to see traction. There are several SaaS vendors and several
vendors that have worked to retool their offerings as SaaS-delivered capabilities, finally reaching
feature parity with their software delivered equivalents. But SaaS-delivered IGA is still an emerging
delivery model, with less than half of IGA vendors currently providing SaaS offerings.
PAM capabilities are still primarily being delivered via software, and in some instances are still
bound to purpose-built appliances. Although many PAM vendors are starting to offer SaaS-
delivered options, the software- and hardware-delivered alternatives continue to represent the
majority of PAM installations.
User Advice: Identify the key business drivers for your IAM vision and build a strategy by
accounting for SaaS-delivered IAM benefits: faster time to value, flexibility with IAM for new
applications and mitigation of staffing concerns for software IAM deployments.
Evaluate the ability to use a SaaS-based IAM solution to resolve conflicts over duplicate IAM
implementations. A SaaS-based platform can augment these solutions by providing standardization
and consolidation for apps and users.

For organizations that manage frequent acquisition and divestiture activities, evaluate the higher
agility of SaaS-based IAM solutions and quicker time to completion compared to software-delivered
solutions.
Use a responsibility and cost comparison framework to ensure appropriate comparisons between
software and SaaS-delivered IAM implementations.
Audit and document people and IT asset costs for owning and managing IT infrastructure.
Document project related costs for software upgrades to enable new features and functionalities.
Audit and document ongoing support costs and planned obsolescence, which drives investment in
new IT infrastructure. These costs can be used when evaluating transition and subscription fees for
SaaS-delivered IAM platforms.
Business Impact: Organizations are using SaaS to fill gaps in enterprise IAM portfolios and IAM
staffing functions and to achieve faster time to value. Staff supporting IAM can potentially be
redirected to other areas. SaaS can provide standard, consistent IAM functions to support cloud-
based applications and users for multiple lines of business with disparate IAM infrastructures inside
an enterprise.
SaaS is proving itself in B2B and consumer-facing IAM use cases, in addition to growing PAM and
IGA offerings. Popular SaaS offerings from a single vendor may not be able to replace functionally
deep and broadly implemented IAM solutions in all organizations, but SaaS may be used to
supplement those implementations.
SaaS functionality in the various IAM technologies is evolving and improving. Some vendors offering
full-featured SaaS IAM solutions, including deep IGA functionality, have proven that they can deliver
the functionality from the cloud that traditionally has been provided by full-featured IAM stacks
managed within the enterprise.
Sample Vendors: Auth0; Duo; IDaptive; Microsoft; Okta; OneLogin; Oracle; Ping; SailPoint; Saviynt
Recommended Reading: “How to Choose Between Software and SaaS Delivery Models for
Identity and Access Management”
“Predicts 2019: Identity and Access Management”
Sliding Into the Trough
Design Thinking
Analysis By: Gene Phifer

Definition: Design thinking is a multidisciplinary process used to improve the design of everything
from business software to consumer products and services. It is a creative process starting with
empathy for users and the gathering of insight into their needs and motivations. Based on this
insight, it is possible to identify solutions that users would value. These are then developed using an
iterative, experimental approach. Deep customer insight combined with a creative process is ideal
for digital innovation and digital product development.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Design thinking dates back to the Industrial
Revolution (see “Design Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Customer Experience Strategies”). It has
been used by product teams and other areas outside IT for decades, but adopted by the world of
enterprise IT only in the past six or seven years.
As digital innovation has become important to almost all organizations, design thinking has become
a leading approach for delivering new products and services grounded in customer experiences and
using new technologies. Organizations have sought to use design thinking to create new customer
experiences, as CEOs have recognized the centrality of the customer experience to success. In
response, many consulting organizations have built design thinking into their offerings. Independent
software vendors were also early adopters of design thinking — first to help renovate their software
portfolios, and later as service offerings.
Design thinking has seen a significant uptake by enterprise IT of late. Now, many IT teams have
elevated design to being a critical success factor in their solution provisioning. There is still
considerable hype about the possibilities of being customer-centric and creating new experiences,
and while many enterprises have adopted design thinking, many organizations have yet to fully
understand and adopt it. However, a bright spot is the many digital transformation-driven product
teams in the business that have embraced design thinking as key to their digital product delivery.
User Advice: Design thinking is important for digital business innovation, but also for business
optimization and normal business growth. To make progress with design thinking, you must:
■ Recognize that business ecosystems are central to design. Much business now focuses on
services and experiences, often mediated by technologies and channels. Customers reside
within service ecosystems that must interact smoothly. And the services that they experience —
the “front stage” — must be supported by people, processes and core technologies.
■ Know when to pursue design thinking and when to use other methodologies. Typically, design
thinking works best when you are designing for a “customer” (internal or external) and aim to
create something innovative. It can also work for operational innovations, where you aim to
improve existing processes. But the dominant use of design thinking is for new products and
services.
■ Build highly collaborative, cross-functional teams, drawing from business units and the IT
department. Train them in the process of design thinking and give them time to practice it. In
most cases, start simply and on a small scale. Take on more complex projects progressively, as
experience grows.
■ Look for opportunities to marry design thinking to lean startup, service design and design sprint
methodologies. These can provide a significant boost to design thinking efforts.

Business Impact: Design thinking has the potential to create innovative products and services,
including digital ones. Adopting a new, creative approach can spur organizations to come up with
fresh ideas where traditional requirements-based methodologies often would not.
Design thinking also highlights the importance of having a digital design culture based on
collaboration and innovation.
Sample Vendors: Accenture; frog; IBM; IDEO; Oracle; Salesforce; SAP
Recommended Reading: “Design Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Customer Experience

Strategies”
“Use Five Principles to Guide Successful Digital Design”
“Use Design Thinking to Architect Customer Experience Into Your Digital Platforms”
“An Overview of Digital Design for CIOs”
Digital Assessment
Analysis By: Kelly Calhoun Williams; Jan-Martin Lowendahl
Definition: Digital assessment refers to the application of digital technologies to create, grade,
administer, report and manage tests and a variety of other assessment types, ultimately to evaluate
what the learner has learned. Digital assessment systems today range from those simply making
traditional assessments digital, to those using observational, immersive or intelligence-enhanced
capabilities that collect this insight.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Reliably understanding and evaluating what someone
has learned has been the dream of educators for centuries. The trend toward highly standardized
accountability in K-12 has created a multibillion-dollar industry around summative, high-stakes
assessments. However, both K-12 and higher education institutions are under increasing pressure
to assess students in a scalable, “any place, any time” manner, as well as to show evidence of
student learning in increasingly authentic and creative ways.
The “digitization” of the same old assessments is not what finds this topic over the Peak of Inflated
Expectations and moving its way down into the trough. The traditional assessments of the past may
lend themselves nicely to quickly quantifiable means of judging educational performance, but
significant questions are arising around whether they actually measure student learning and
competencies effectively, given trends in education such as a growing interest in competency-
based education, and growing interest in simulations and matching skills with workforce needs, as
in performance-based testing.

Assessment is also a key part of several other learning trends such as analytics and adaptive
learning (now being facilitated by the use of artificial intelligence capabilities) and competency-
based education. Formative assessment (often mobile-enabled) using technology is surging in
popularity in support of this data capture, allowing educators and students to receive immediate
and continuous feedback throughout the learning process. Cognitive systems, joining natural-
language processing and machine learning, are creating a whole new world of what we can learn
about students and how we can adapt learning environments to meet their needs and learning
preferences in new ways.
With the growth of online learning and ongoing concerns about integrity, especially in assessments
taken by students at a distance, the validity of the results is key. There has been a growth of
technologies that offer ways to verify the identities of students taking the assessments, as well as to
ensure that cheating does not occur (or that if it does, it is discovered). Live remote and automated
proctoring solutions are in increasing demand.
The future of digital assessment offers many potential benefits, but the immediate gains are much
more mundane and relate to saving time in grading for instructors. Replacing analog processes with
digital versions have shown to save as much as 50% of the time to grade. Adding AI to the mix
promises to save even more for large classes.
Though digital assessment is at the lower end of full market penetration for higher education (17%
in 2019 CIO Survey, with 28% short-term planning or experimenting), it is further along in K-12,
likely due to the broad migration of government assessments to digital (45% already deployed; 26%
short-term planning or experimenting). Even if the adoption of new assessment technologies
continues apace, we still anticipate it will take as much as five to 10 years for the full array of digital
assessment technologies (especially online) to reach the Plateau of Productivity. Education is fairly
renowned for its risk aversion and slowness to change, and those are reflected in this category. The
preoccupation with avoiding cheating opportunities is creating a narrower band of technologies
being tried, and a reluctance to risk new approaches to assessment technologies is slowing the
pace of change.
User Advice: Many education organizations are adding digital assessment to their list of topics
requiring more attention and strategic planning. Complex questions are arising around what kinds of
platforms lend themselves to the design, development, banking, delivery and analysis of items for
performance. Interoperability has moved into a critical position, as have options for analytics and
reporting, as having assessment data without insight into its meaning, value and actionability makes
this a hollow pursuit.
The broader questions around how to develop a strategy both for new means of formative
assessment and for how to manage high-stakes summative assessment data will be evolving over
the next couple of years. Challenges also remain in a significant number of organizations
(particularly in K-12), where access to devices needed to quickly and universally perform digital
assessments as and where needed is not necessarily a given. CIOs may wish to clearly establish
use cases for their assessment needs so they can identify the solution or mix of products needed.
CIOs should also pay close attention to security, privacy, and how to store and manage the data
from these tools, as well as the policies needed for these products to be used effectively.

Business Impact: Digital assessment holds the promise of making significant improvements in how
we understand, manage and improve learning. New platforms for the development and
management of assessments are also a key component for online learning reaching full maturity
and for the scalability of education.
Sample Vendors: CoreSpring; ETS; Examity; ExamSoft; Gradescope; McGraw-Hill Education;

ProctorU; PSI Services; Respondus; Turnitin
Recommended Reading: “Digital Assessment in Education: ‘Putting Electricity to Paper’ and

Beyond”
“Top Five Strategic Technologies Impacting K-12 Education in 2019”
“Prepare to Harness the Potential of K-12 Digital Assessment”
“Analytics, Assessment and Adaptive Learning Will Prepare You for the Algorithmic Education
Evolution”
Classroom 3D Printing
Analysis By: Kelly Calhoun Williams; Pete Basiliere
Definition: Classroom 3D printing is the practice of using a device to fabricate physical objects
from digital models for the purpose of creating teaching aids, demonstrating a concept or enabling
students to create models.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The increasing availability of low-cost and easy-to-
use consumer 3D printers, coupled with bulk buying programs and free or low-cost curriculum
materials, puts this pedagogical tool within the reach of many educators. Indeed, Gartner’s “2019
CIO Agenda: A K-12 Education Perspective” showed fully 68% of K-12 CIOs and 72% in higher
education have already deployed 3D printing. This contrasts with only 16% of respondents who had
already deployed across industries. This strong uptake in education can be explained by several
factors, and also explains its movement into the Trough of Disillusionment.
3D printing has practical and pedagogical benefits that make it a good tool to use in education and
research. In academic research, 3D printing is used to advance additive manufacturing technologies
and materials, as well as for modeling complex chemical structures, such as enzymes, for
visualization purposes. Now that use is trickling down into undergraduate and graduate education,
as new use cases are discovered.
In K-12 education, 3D printing is commonly found at schools, although not typically in every
classroom due to cost and need. This is particularly so in locations with a strong interest in the

makerspace movement (which is seeing some increased interest in higher education as well). 3D
printing found its early appeal in STEM programs with its inherent constructivist nature (active
learning where students learn by interacting directly with the learning object).
Classroom 3D printing is for enthusiastic instructors who have a drive to try it out. However, the
technology may or may not assist with students meeting particular learning objectives, depending
on how well designed the curriculum is. As with several educational technologies today, novelty
wears off quickly. Success begins with great quality curriculum and instruction, and technologies
that amplify learning experiences.
Given the widespread experimentation and expanding use, classroom 3D printing is now moving
through the Trough of Disillusionment, as instructors discover new ways to leverage its unique
potential, as well as ways that aren’t particularly effective. Given its falling costs and specific
applications, we anticipate it will take five to 10 years to reach the Plateau of Productivity, with
widespread use across education, taking into account a global view of the market and technology
adoption rates. We have also slightly moved up its market penetration, acknowledging its growth
across the K-20 education market.
User Advice: The pedagogical uses of 3D printing make it a technology well worth evaluating.
Education CIOs and educators must collaborate to pursue good use cases, and invest in 3D printer
technologies to meet specific curriculum design requirements and needs. Falling costs of
consumer-grade and entry-level industrial 3D printers can put them within reach for classroom or
campuswide purposes, or the CIO may elect to act as a broker for 3D printing on-demand services
to gain cost efficiencies. A key role for education CIOs is to evaluate the 3D printer ecosystem —
that is, hardware, file creation, and job management software and materials — and to gauge when
or if it is needed for mainstream use. Another key role is to develop the robust infrastructure
necessary to support campuswide collaboration among faculty, researchers and students while
ensuring security and intellectual property and copyright protections.
Business Impact: Classroom 3D printing technology has transitioned from one that is prohibitively
expensive for all but research organizations, to one that has pricing that makes classroom use
possible. The hype in the general press has heightened consumer — and student — awareness of
the technology and has resulted in early adopters’ use in their classrooms.
Classroom 3D printing complements and extends many curricula. However, it is in competition with
so many other pressing needs, so it is not yet poised for a major uptake globally.
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Maturity: Early mainstream
Sample Vendors: 3D Systems; Aleph Objects; MakerBot; Stratasys; Thinker Thing; XYZprinting
Recommended Reading: “Market Guide for 3D Printer Manufacturers”
“Cool Vendors in 3D Printing, 2017”

Competency-Based Education Platforms

Analysis By: Glenda Morgan
Definition: Competency-based education (CBE) is a way of organizing instructions based on the

learner’s acquisition or possession of specified competencies rather than on seat time. CBE
platforms support these instructions, with systems that allow students to advance through courses
at their own pace, and with enhanced assessment functions to build and test the competencies.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Competency-based education is a concept that has
been around for some time, for example, in medical education. More recently, it has attracted
attention due to its successful use in online learning programs, particularly those targeting adult
learners, for example, at Western Governors University. Although at one point many higher
education institutions expressed an intention of implementing CBE in at least some programs at
their institutions, this has not yet happened. CBE does seem to be gaining far more traction in K-12
as in the U.S. several states have encouraged or mandated that institutions implement or
experiment with CBE. It is also seen as a promising approach to use in helping students better
prepare for success in the workplace, although the relatively slow adoption of CBE in skills-based
areas such as automotive mechanics and cosmetology is surprising. The number of institutions
implementing CBE at scale remains very small. Outside of the large online institutions using CBE
approaches and small pockets of adoption in K-12, it is still in the early stages of adoption and the
technology designed to support it reflects this.
Despite the relatively small scale of adoption, there are several CBE platforms in the market.
However, this number is getting smaller. Sagence, one of the CBE platform vendors serving higher
education, has pivoted to offer different kinds of services, focusing more on enrollment and
analytics alongside a learning management system (LMS) and essentially taking on an Online
Program Management type role. Many education LMS vendors include competency-based
capabilities to a greater or lesser extent as part of their overall toolset. The focus in both CBE
platforms and LMSs that enable CBE is on the assessment and creation of competencies. However,
in many platforms the emphasis is on developing competencies at the course level. The ability to
set, manage and track competencies at the program level (which is critical for scalable CBE) is
considerably weaker.
Similarly, the recording of these competencies in the Student Information System (SIS) and in
transcripts is much less well-developed and, in many cases, will involve customization or manual
transfer. Additionally, a significant difficulty that has been revealed is how to distribute financial aid
with a CBE program. Although many are making improvements in this space, traditional financial aid
systems cannot handle this new mode of teaching with such a high degree of flexibility of time
periods. Institutions doing CBE thus need to use highly customized and even manual approaches,
which is a real impediment to the adoption and scalability of CBE.
The slow uptake of CBE and the ongoing frustration with the capabilities of CBE platforms mean
that they move further down the slope toward the Trough of Disillusionment. However, continued
activity around and enthusiasm for CBE at the K-12 level slow that progression down a little. Unless
some of the technical and cultural challenges around CBE are addressed, the stay in the trough will

be a long one. We believe that there will be another five to 10 years to the Plateau of Productivity
and mainstream adoption.
User Advice: CIOs should exercise caution in implementing CBE initiatives at their institutions. If
CBE looks to be a direction that the institution or the district wants to pursue, think carefully about
the scale of the initiative and what kinds of manual work and customization will be required. At this
point, it may make more sense to use or supplement your current set of tools rather than buy
technologies specifically for the CBE program. But carefully explore exactly what tools and
platforms can do especially with regard to setting competencies at the program level, recording
achievements within the SIS and how support systems such as financial aid can be configured to
work with CBE programs.
Business Impact: The potential business impact of CBE is large. It has the potential to increase the
scalability of learning while enhancing the personalization. Additionally, there is the promise of
increasing student learning — thanks to the focus on mastery.
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: BNED LoudCloud; Cengage Learning-Learning Objects; D2L (Brightspace);

Motivis Learning
Recommended Reading: “Market Guide for Higher Education Learning Management Systems”
Education Analytics
Analysis By: Glenda Morgan; Terri-Lynn Thayer
Definition: Education analytics is the collection and analysis of data in education in order to gain
actionable insight with the goal of improving learning and learning outcomes, enrollment, services or
business practices, as well as finding new efficiencies, cost savings, or revenue streams.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Educational analytics is a term covering the use of
data to improve outcomes in both the teaching and learning, and on the administrative and
business side of institution. Typically, the use of data in these two areas has been divided into
academic or institutional analytics on the one hand and learning analytics on the other. However,
increasingly this distinction does not make sense in practice. Some issues such as student retention
and graduation rates straddle both areas. Frequently the same staff are involved on the ground in
collecting and analyzing the data for both areas. Finally, many of the issues that fell in the two areas
are related and influence each other. Hence, we evaluate both learning analytics and institutional
analytics under the general umbrella term of educational analytics.
Varieties of educational analytics include the following:

■ Analysis of data to improve enrollment by means of optimizing marketing and recruiting

strategies as well as maximizing yield.
■ Analysis of data to improve student retention and graduation rates by identifying students at
risk, providing increased visibility of students and their progress for advisors, faculty and
students, and in some cases nudging students to encourage them to take the appropriate steps
at the right time.
■ Use of data to improve efficiency at the institution in areas such as classroom and laboratory
use, procurement, and finance.
■ Use of data to improve and understand course design and outcomes (sometimes called learner
analytics).
■ The analysis of data to improve donor giving and university advancement.
■ The analysis of data to understand and improve postgraduation pathways and outcomes.
■ The analysis of data to better understand the cost of instruction.
■ The analysis of data to understand faculty research productivity and model the impact of
possible personnel changes.
The extent to which each of these different areas is being implemented in higher education varies
considerably with far more adoption of efficiency-related data analytics than those areas touching
faculty and learning. Approaches to implement analytics vary between the use of standard data and
analytics tools to more specialized education-specific technologies.
There was considerable hype around analytics, but many CIOs are finding that implementation and
getting measurable results are much more difficult. There are also signs that many vendors struggle
to provide solutions that work for higher education institutions. Many institutions change their
analytics products out of frustration with vended solutions. As this continues, analytics in the
educational context continues to move down the slope into the Trough of Disillusionment. We
expected educational analytics to make relatively rapid progress toward the Slope of Enlightenment
but its progress through the Hype Cycle has been slower than anticipated. However, given how
many options are available on the market and as more institutions feel pressured to use data to
improve decision making, we remain confident that progress toward the Slope of Enlightenment and
the Plateau of Productivity will be between two and five years.
User Advice: The use of analytics to improve outcomes in education will become a standard and
expected feature. Given this, CIOs should continue to develop their analytics capabilities and
experiment with using data and analytics to support institutional success and goals. Be clear from
the beginning about what problem you are trying to solve or what question you are trying to answer.
Start small by identifying discrete projects that you can execute in a relatively short time frame and
get some easy wins. At the same time, start to build the organizational structures and culture at your
institution that will enable progress in the future including building a data governance process, and
identifying and bringing together stakeholders for data analytics in each functional area. Also work
on identifying, standardizing and cleaning data available at your institution. Pay attention to culture
and to ethics, and work with your data governance and stakeholder processes to work on

developing sets of policies and guidelines around the ethical use of data including opt out and
informed consent provisions. Start to build a data culture by emphasizing institutional ownership of
data and by building data skills and literacy broadly in your organization. As your initiative matures,
you should develop bidirectional integration of analytics with your systems of record and CRM tools
to facilitate automating actions based on analytic insights.
Business Impact: The potential business impact of educational analytics is large. They can be used
to improve student outcomes, satisfaction and efficiency in many areas. However, these benefits will
only be realized if the institution is ready, willing and able to make decisions and take actions based
on the insights revealed by the analytics tools. It will require significant work in building a data
culture at the university, developing standardized datasets and definitions and a commitment to
take actions based on the insights provided by the data.
Sample Vendors: AdmitHub; Blackbaud; Civitas Learning; EAB; Ellucian; HelioCampus;

Persistence Plus; Phytorion; Rapid Insight; Workday
Recommended Reading: “Practical Business Analytics Strategy for Higher Education”
“How to Overcome Three Higher Education CRM Myths”
Exostructure Strategy
Analysis By: Jan-Martin Lowendahl
Definition: Exostructure strategy refers to acquiring the critical capability of interoperability to

leverage the increasing number of partnerships, tools and services in the education ecosystem.
Exostructure is strongly associated with ecosystem thinking.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The exostructure concept is about building an
“exoskeleton” of services that supports the education institution from the outside rather than the
inside (endostructure). The key building blocks are machine-readable standards such as Learning
Tools Interoperability (LTI), eduPerson, the Caliper Analytics standard and more recently Blockcerts,
which allow a freer flow of information among education ecosystem players. When done right, the
exostructure approach enables institutions to leverage industry (and other) best-practice services
from the cloud, rather than having to bring them inside the campus walls. The exostructure
approach also enables a much more flexible and agile business as well as IT services approach. In a
competitive world, the winner in the long run is not the strongest, but rather the most adaptable.
Exostructure strategy is starting to reach the senior institution leadership and government officials
as indicated by several top higher education business trends. For example, reinventing credentials
drives the need for digital credential standards and services, revenue diversification drives the
interest in online program management providers (see “Top 10 Business Trends Impacting Higher

Education in 2019”). The exostructure strategy idea is particularly strengthened by the hype around
blockchain and its potential to support a machine-readable ecosystem of digital credentials. The
promise being that blockchain-based credentials together with AI-based recruiting will make the
broader talent ecosystem more efficient and thus benefit the broader business and societal
ecosystem. This exostructure strategy profile is Gartner’s attempt to track institutions’ ability to
interoperate in and leverage the education ecosystem. It is not about following a specific technology
standard or vendor offering — although the two are prerequisites for the successful execution of an
exostructure strategy.
Exostructure strategy is gaining traction as the digital dimension is gaining importance in the
education ecosystem as well as in the minds of presidents and is increasingly manifested in
concrete activities affecting both education and administration. As activities include digital
credentials, business process optimization and online program management. Altogether,
exostructure strategy is fast entering the Trough of Disillusionment phase, where real-world learning
is happening. We expect a relatively fast journey through the trough but still with a five- to 10-year
trajectory to the Plateau of Productivity.
User Advice: Exostructure strategy is about achieving a substantially higher level of interoperability,
which is necessary to leverage the full potential of the education ecosystem. It is also about creating
an institutional “interoperability first” mindset through a new language that enables the education
CIO to tell a compelling story that drives change.
Parts of the compelling story:
■ Overarching is the imperative for collaboration in many parts of higher education, and how
exostructure enables such collaboration.
■ A strategy to find, attract and keep talent achieving a critical mass of skill just-in-time by using
exostructure standards or by using exostructure services.
■ Cost optimization by using just the right service at the right time.
Parts of potential issues:
■ The need to handle thorny data privacy and storage issues in many parts of the world.
■ Getting over a culture of “not invented here” in many parts of higher education in order to focus
on quickly delivering value to end users, rather than building the perfect homegrown solution.
At a practical level, the education CIO should execute the exostructure strategy through identifier,
format and protocol (IFaP) portfolios of standards, but beware of vendors with a strategy of
proprietary or “walled garden” standards.
Education CIOs and institution leadership should use an exostructure strategy to focus on
leveraging “each other’s strengths” in the education ecosystem and begin by using trusted brokers.
Internally, education CIOs can prepare by focusing on the capability to change through defining
services, and they should use service portfolios and service catalog tools for exostructure agility.

Business Impact: “Interoperability” fundamentally means an ability to leverage other education

ecosystem players’ strengths, while the institution focuses on its competitive differentiators. It
creates a dynamic where both parties leverage an exchange of value that the other couldn’t
provide/achieve on their own. The key institutional capability is change, and the concrete strategy is
to build in an exostructure that enables flexibility and adaptability, rather than on an often bulky hard
to change infrastructure. The future belongs to exostructure, not infrastructure.
Recommended Reading: “Creating Competitive Advantage by Mastering Higher Education

Ecosystem Models”
“Ecosystem Modeling Will Be an Indispensable Tool in Designing Digital Businesses”
“Gaining Competitive Advantage in the Education Ecosystem Requires Going Beyond Mere
Infrastructure to Exostructure”
“The Gartner Higher Education Business Model Scenarios: Digitalization Drives Disruptive
Innovation and Changes the Balance”
SaaS SIS
Analysis By: Robert Yanckello; Kelly Calhoun Williams; Terri-Lynn Thayer
Definition: Software as a service (SaaS) for student information systems (SISs) in education is
software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers. It is based on a
single set of common code and consumed in a one-to-many model by all contracted customers at
any time, on a pay-for-use basis or as a subscription.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: SISs provide administrator-, faculty- and student-
facing functionality to manage key institutional information assets such as demographic data,
course offerings, grades and transcripts.
SaaS is no longer a new delivery model for the education market, but few institutions have a SaaS
SIS. Over the past few years, early higher education adopters implemented SaaS applications for
HR, finance and other administrative applications. As the number of institutions with successful
deployments for these domains has grown, so has the interest in an equivalent option for SaaS
SISs. Vendor-based SaaS SIS products for higher education and K-12 continue to evolve. Some are
native-SaaS solutions, and others are ported and modified on-premises solutions now offered in the
cloud.
Many academic institutions with on-premises SIS modules are finding themselves increasingly
weighed down and constricted by the demands of maintaining on-premises solutions. Facing major
upgrades, contract renewals or support expirations, they are assessing whether a SaaS model can

offer a more predictable total cost of ownership (TCO), while affording more agility and innovation to
meet changing student expectations and new business models. The SaaS model typically requires
adoption of standard business practices (i.e., implementation by configuration, not customization, of
the software) but, in return, provides new capabilities more frequently via a continuous upgrade
mode delivering updates several times per year. Finally, SaaS solutions may offer an improved user
experience based on a more modern technology architecture, and native mobile, analytics and CRM
functionalities.
SaaS SISs have been successfully adopted in K-12 and a limited number of higher education
institutions — often small or for-profit institutions. However, SaaS point solutions in higher
education, such as financial aid, CRM, student success/advising and learning management systems
(LMSs), have been successful in a broader set of institutions. Vendors providing e-SaaS options for
K-12, and large, complex and global higher education institutions have generated significant hype.
However, implementations are proving difficult and going slower than anticipated. We expect the
benefit for implementing this technology to remain high, given the potential for supporting new
business models, reducing infrastructure demands and dramatically improving the user experience
— often putting the student in the center of the experience.
SaaS SIS moves into the trough this year as users grow more disillusioned by the slow evolution.
Many of the early adopter institutions remain in the early stages of deployment, and there is curious
skepticism but few tangible experiences to push it further along the cycle. We do expect to see
growing dissatisfaction with functionality gaps that are common with early version offerings.
However, the successful implementation of these systems will set the stage for a new pace of
change over the next few years. We expect the speed of adoption to pick up and gain momentum
over the next five to 10 years.
User Advice: While new cloud models have improved architectures to support configuration, the
commitment to a customization-free implementation will require strong leadership, governance
structures and a thorough understanding of your change readiness to achieve success. Ensure
academic leaders are willing and able to sponsor the initiative and to lead the charge for the
inevitable change of academic and administrative processes.
A change of this nature will be complex and include a wide array of one-time and recurring costs.
Institutions with aged on-premises SIS implementations should begin planning now to determine
when and how SaaS SIS modules will fit into their future. Determine whether any substantial
investments will soon be required in your on-premises SIS, so that you are clear of the costs and
benefits of each approach — to renovate or replace.
Three key areas to evaluate deeply in planning for a SaaS SIS implementation are data conversion,
change readiness and integration capabilities. These aspects will have a major impact on your
institution’s ability to successfully transform and optimize administrative/business process.
Business Impact: SaaS SISs have the potential for high business impact. Their modern design can
bolster operational efficiencies and effectiveness, while improved updated user interfaces will have
the potential to improve student and faculty engagement. However, the most important impact is

likely to be the support of new business models essential for the modern institution, such as
nontraditional students, a competency-based curriculum and “nonterm” financial aid.
Maturity: Emerging
Sample Vendors: Campus Management; Capita; Ellucian; Jenzabar; Oracle; PowerSchool; Sersoft;
Skyward; Unit4; Workday
Recommended Reading: “Market Guide for Higher Education Student Information Systems”
“2018 Strategic Roadmap for Higher Education Student Information Systems”
“Should You Replace or Renovate the SIS?”
“Toolkit: RFP for Student Information Systems”
“Market Guide for K-12 Student Information Systems”
Digital Credentials
Analysis By: Robert Yanckello; Jan-Martin Lowendahl
Definition: Digital credentials include different but related strands, such as digitalization of
traditional diplomas and granular digital microcredentials. Traditional credentials are based on the
issuance of paper with special features like watermarks to reduce fraud. They often require
contacting the issuer or a third party for verification. Digital credentials deal with trust differently,
using cryptography to eliminate fraud. This enables providers and learners to control and share the
credential more freely in the education and workforce ecosystems.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Credentials issued by education institutions or

employers are, at a certain level, the only tangible evidence of higher education or skills
achievement. They can be considered the currency of the education ecosystem.
Digital credentials will enable digitization of this education currency, foster the decoupling of some
higher education business models and transform a portion of higher education outcomes. New
forms of credentials are enabling and increasing the speed and granularity in credential exchange.
No longer will hard copy documents be required to indicate that a graduate, employee or learner
has the skills necessary for the job. Consumers of education (employers or students) will expect to
be able to do trusted exchanges of digital credentials in order to speed up verification for
recruitment, career advancement or the hiring process. Additionally, the potential for digital
credentials to impact business and the workplace is strong, given the trend toward continuing skills
acquisition and the desire to move to a talent marketplace model for organizing work (see “Hype
Cycle for the Digital Workplace, 2019”).

Although digital credentials have been in development for many years, the formation of standards
and governing organizations for a trusted digital credential ecosystem has been slow to emerge.
The development and maturity of technologies like blockchain, data encryption standards and
cryptosystems combined with the evolution of professional networking sites like LinkedIn,
Glassdoor and Burning Glass are driving a change in the delivery and sharing of credentials.
Additionally, organizations like Credential Engine have partnered with more than 160 groups like the
Indiana Commission for Higher Education and the Military Credentials Working Group, and more
than 50 certification bodies, like NOCTI. Their goal is to develop and support the Credential Registry
as well as the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL) to spur a more common
understanding and acceptance of digital credentials. Digital credentials are a global concern as well,
with groups such as The Groningen Declaration Network and vendors such as Learning Machine
working internationally.
Changing business models focused on performance outcomes, like the number of graduates
entering the workforce and the time from graduation to employment, are making students and
employers think and act differently regarding traditional paper-based approaches. Additionally, new
demands on recruiters to speed up the hiring process and identify very specific skills are pushing
the market to make hiring more efficient and accurate. Digital credentials like digital badges,
certificates, microcredentials and nanodegrees enable employers to view student information faster
and more easily, giving students and learners a leg up in the labor market. Although digital
credentials are becoming more accepted, progress is still hampered by a relative lack of
understanding what they are. There is also a risk-averseness from higher education institutions and
other education providers and employers in what is a rather high-stakes area that does not yet have
all components (e.g., identifiers, formats and protocols) in place to be a successful digital
ecosystem.
Interest in and enthusiasm for digital credentials are growing, but the process lacks suitable
application in day-to-day use. Thus, digital credentials continue their descent into the Trough of
Disillusionment. However, there seems to be an increased commitment to developing new delivery
methods and standards. Therefore, anticipate swift movement through the trough (two to five years)
as new institutional partnerships and corporate interest in workforce development spur the
expansion of infrastructure (exostructure) that makes digital credentials a routine and trusted
exchange process for traditional degrees, recognition of skills achievement and demonstration of
learning.
User Advice: Digital credentials have the potential to transform the way institutions and businesses
provide value to students and the changing workforce. CIOs should familiarize themselves with
current digital credentialing technology and standards organizations like Credential Engine, The
Groningen Declaration Network and IMS Global Learning Consortium. Form a community of
interest. Involve faculty, corporate partners and administrative teams like the registrar and student
affairs to build a foundation for digital credentials. Search for an appropriate use case of current
digital credentialing technology at your institution. Initiate a pilot for its use to help the institution
consider the policy implication, the growing ecosystem and corporate readiness for this new digital
currency.

Business Impact: Digital credentials and, in particular, digital diplomas have the potential to have a
large-scale impact on student outcomes for employment, lifelong learning and career advancement.
They will enable a simple, secure and expedient exchange and validation of education and skills.
Additionally, they will empower the student/learner and change the relationship of both entities,
eventually making the graduate keeper/owner of the credential able to share on demand. Digital
credentials have an increasing impact in K-12, corporate workforce development and higher
education. They also have the potential to impact internal business models for learning, talent
identification and fluidity.
Sample Vendors: Accredible; BadgeCert; Coursera; Credly; Digitary; Learning Machine; Parchment
Recommended Reading: “Top 10 Strategic Technologies Impacting Higher Education in 2019”
“The Future of Work Will Demand Changes to Higher Education”
“Education Digital Strategy Execution Primer for 2019”
Master Data Management

Analysis By: Simon Walker; Sally Parker; Bill O’Kane
Definition: Master data management (MDM) is a technology-enabled business discipline in which

business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, governance,
semantic consistency and accountability of the enterprise’s official shared master data assets.
Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describes
the core entities of an enterprise, such as existing customers, prospective customers, citizens,
suppliers, products, assets, sites, hierarchies and the chart of accounts.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: A trusted version of master data domains remains a
central component in the pursuit of digital business goals. MDM is a strategic program that can
require several years. The need for business case creation and program management, and the
requirement to deploy information governance, restricts MDM’s success to organizations that fulfill
these requirements. The technical challenge is to align the technical capabilities of MDM (such as
data integration and data quality) in a fashion that supports business requirements.
The market penetration of MDM as a whole is still low due to the technical and organizational
complexity of implementation. This is often compounded by a lack of understanding of the
differences between master data and application data. But the technical profiles for MDM for some
single-data-domain implementations (such as customer and product data) have now reached the
Slope of Enlightenment, ahead of the position for MDM overall.

Confusion also reigns when it comes to defining what is master data; thus the greater majority of
data in any and all applications — application data — is often confused with also being master data
and so part of the MDM program (which it is not). Demand is again being driven by the pursuit of a
“360-degree view” of critical data, which actually leads to integration of MDM and ADM along with
other data. MDM is now only beginning to leave the Trough of Disillusionment as organizations
better understand the challenges, but they still most often are unable to overcome them without
substantial external guidance.
User Advice: Organizations with complex or heterogeneous application and information landscapes
typically suffer from inconsistent master data, which in turn weakens business-process integrity and
outcomes. Any number of business applications may be affected, including customer-facing,
supplier-facing, enterprisewide and value chain applications.
If your business strategy depends on the consistency of data within your organization, you will likely
consider MDM as one enabler of this strategy.
Companies investigating MDM should:
■ Ensure a clear “line of sight” to business benefits and sponsorship. Understand which business
initiatives require better master data to succeed, and explain the need for MDM to appropriate
stakeholders.
■ Identify one or more solutions for the most important master data in your organization, such as
customer, product and financial data, based on business process enablement and optimization.
Plan on using the solution(s) for at least the next several years as changing incumbent MDM
solutions can be quite challenging. Look for solutions that support a holistic implementation and
end-user experience across domains, use cases and implementation styles.
■ Identify the architectural role that each implemented MDM solution will play in your approach to
enterprise information management (EIM). Use MDM as an opportunity to implement sound
information architecture fundamentals, such as canonical transaction formats for master data
domains as part of a well-managed data integration practice.
■ Use previous experiences in dimensional data development for business intelligence initiatives
to identify your organization’s most fragmented but reused data domains. Begin your MDM
efforts with those domains and expose newly managed master data early in analytics platforms.
■ Avoid confusion and hype related to MDM and ensure that it is supported with the appropriate
level of discipline and technology, for example, application data management.
■ Classify only the most widely shared application data as master data in order to focus “the least
amount of data governance on the least amount of data that has the greatest impact on
business outcomes” and treat all other less-shared application data as subject to ADM.
Business Impact: Leading organizations that create a strategy to implement MDM and supporting
technology that is well-thought-out, holistic and business-driven will be able to deliver significant
business value. They will do so in terms of enabling competitive differentiation and business growth,

improved customer experience, reduced time to market and delivery on operational efficiency as
well as by meeting governance, risk management and compliance requirements.
MDM strategies that are linked to strategic IT enterprise transformation efforts (such as ERP and
CRM implementations) provide significant additional value to those efforts. Conversely, MDM-
centric business cases are often used to highlight opportunities for significant business process
optimization.
In some cases, we have seen the need for MDM to trigger improvements in other areas such as
data quality, information governance, enterprise metadata management, although conversely, we
have also seen those programs initiate the need for better master data management.
Sample Vendors: Ataccama; IBM; Informatica; Profisee; Reltio; Riversand Technologies; SAP;
Semarchy; Stibo Systems; TIBCO Software
Recommended Reading: “Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions”
“Use the 7 Building Blocks of MDM to Achieve Success in the Digital Age”
“Mastering Master Data Management”
“Create a Master Data Roadmap With Gartner’s MDM Maturity Model”
Citizen Developers
Analysis By: Mark Driver
Definition: A citizen developer is an employee who creates new business applications for
consumption, normally by themselves but potentially with others, using development and runtime
environments sanctioned (or at least not actively forbidden) by corporate IT or the enterprise line-of-
business organizations.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: In an era of shoestring IT budgets, businesspeople

are increasingly looking outside the IT organization for applications, as well as building an increasing
number of applications themselves. Today’s rapidly changing business climate demands greater
application agility — IT’s timelines are often too long to meet business needs.
Although agile development methodologies can help IT respond to business needs more rapidly, a
lack of resources often prevents a prompt IT response. Furthermore, resource constraints force IT to
focus on only a few high-priority applications. Consequently, the long tail of applications needing
development grows still longer.

In addition, the tacit knowledge of businesspeople is often difficult to translate into project
requirements, making IT’s application development (AD) projects slow and time-consuming for
business end users. Sometimes, it is faster, less expensive and better for end users to build the
applications they need rather than engage the IT AD group.
Today, end-user developers are empowered by new forces, including the evolution of low-code
development tools, the industrialization of infrastructure through cloud computing, and changing
workforce demographics. Many smaller vendors and some large ones (such as Microsoft and
Salesforce) now provide powerful low-code application platforms that make it easier for end users
to develop their own applications — even applications that once required IT AD skills.
Often cloud-based, some of these tools operate completely outside of IT’s view. They require only a
web browser and a credit card to build, deploy and run an application, and make it available to
anyone with access to the internet. The growth of consumer computing has taught many in the
workforce that they don’t have to wait for IT to provide the hardware or software needed to do their
jobs. These combined forces have resulted in more end-user developers creating more applications
of greater scope outside of IT’s visibility.
User Advice: IT must engage end-user developers more actively to enable them to become “good
citizen developers.” The new, more powerful applications that end users are building have the same
risks and rewards as some professionally developed applications, and they need an appropriate
level of quality, security, performance and availability.
Ignoring or attempting to prevent end-user development carries high risks and limits enterprise
innovation. Specifically, IT should:
■ Embrace AD outside IT — Actively challenge and dismantle negative IT attitudes toward end-
user AD. “Shadow development” away from IT’s oversight generally occurs when working with
IT is too slow, restrictive or expensive to meet business needs, not because end users are
capricious or malicious.
■ Set clear boundaries — Be proactive and engage with the business to design a citizen
developer program that meets both business and IT needs. Ensure that the rights and
responsibilities of IT, the citizen developer and the business are clearly defined.
■ Support safe and effective end-user AD — Don’t just roll out IT’s tools to businesspeople.
Instead, offer sanctioned development platforms that are end-user-friendly, and enable IT staff
to manage and monitor citizen development. Extend user support to include citizen
development, and measure progress in the volume and sophistication of citizen-developed
applications.
■ Trust, but verify — Provide just enough governance to enable IT to review the quality, security,
performance and availability of major end-user applications before they are deployed.
Implement monitoring to detect end-user applications that could create risks for the enterprise,
and develop procedures to handle them. Create a protocol for transferring responsibility for
risky and problematic applications to IT.

Business Impact: A citizen developer program that includes IT guidance; IT-supported, end-user-
oriented AD platforms; and just enough governance can create a safe environment for end users to
unleash their innovative potential. By engaging with end users and helping them to help themselves,
IT can accelerate the exploitation of new technology, help end users create competitive advantage
and new business innovations, and reduce the risks of modern end-user development.
Sample Vendors: Appian; AppSheet; Caspio; LANSA; Mendix; Microsoft; Oracle; OutSystems;
Quick Base; TrackVia
Recommended Reading: “Cultivate Citizen X Practices to Maximize Digital Dexterity”
Climbing the Slope
Adaptive Learning Platforms

Analysis By: Glenda Morgan
Definition: Adaptive learning platforms dynamically adjust the way instructional content is
presented to students based on their responses or preferences. Adaptive learning is increasingly
dependent on large-scale collection of learning data and algorithmically derived pedagogical
responses.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Adaptive learning platforms allow institutions and
instructors to add their own instructional content and build adaptive courses or supplements to
courses. They differ from adaptive textbooks and other tools where content comes preconfigured,
such as adaptive homework and practice systems. Purchasers for adaptive textbooks and
homework and practice systems generally are students. Purchasers for adaptive platforms are
institutions.
There are multiple types of adaptive platforms. These vary from macroadaptive platforms where
content and delivery are tailored to a specific audience or segment based on preferences or learner
profiles, to microadaptive platforms that continuously tailor learning delivery based on assessment
of student mastery of the content.
Adaptive learning platforms hold a lot of promise, and are high on the list of desirable features that
education leaders want to see in online learning. They are especially attractive in that they allow for
instructors to not only build their content in the system but also sometimes bring in external
content, override grading scales and rules, and customize the platform in other ways. Yet, due to
the workload and culture change required to implement adaptive learning platforms at scale, the
rate at which they have been implemented beyond pilots and individual course offerings remains
low. There is hope that some of the larger projects involving adaptive learning (such as those at

National University and the University of Central Florida) will result in broader acceptance and
lessons learned, allowing more widespread adoption. Adaptive learning platforms have moved out
of the Trough of Disillusionment further up the Slope of Enlightenment toward the Plateau of
Productivity, but the movement remains slow. The number of vendors offering platforms is shrinking,
contributing to the slowness of movement up the slope. There will need to be strong growth in
confidence and willingness to take on the work of implementation before adaptive learning
platforms make their way onto the Plateau of Productivity.
User Advice: Adaptive learning platforms support and supplement student learning, but they are
difficult to implement. CIOs are advised to follow a four-stage process:
1. Educate themselves about the products.

2. Pilot the product that meets most needs.
3. Review lessons learned.
4. Move to implementation.
CIOs should approach adaptive learning projects less as technology projects and more as large-
scale curricular redesign undertakings. To this end, CIOs should:
■ Seek to identify faculty champions.

■ Find ways to incentivize the faculty.
■ Ensure that they have broad buy-in for these projects.
■ Make clear the projects’ advantages and how they supplement and augment, versus replace,
the work of faculty (which is what many faculty fear).
Business Impact: Adaptive learning has the potential, in part, to solve the problem of cost-effective
scalability while retaining and improving quality.
The ultimate aim of adaptive learning in education is to enhance the learning experience and
empower students. These changes will lead to tangible results such as improved learning
outcomes, higher retention rates and better graduation rates, all of which are important
accountability measures in education.
Sample Vendors: CogBooks; Fishtree; Realizeit; Smart Sparrow
Recommended Reading: “Analytics, Assessment and Adaptive Learning Will Prepare You for the
Algorithmic Education Evolution”

iPaaS for Data Integration

Analysis By: Eric Thoo; Bindi Bhullar
Definition: Data integration technology in the form of an iPaaS increasingly offers capabilities such
as ETL and data replication as cloud services. The use of iPaaS technology for data integration
applies to diverse scenarios, including the integration of cloud-based, on-premises, interenterprise
and Internet of Things (IoT) data. System integrators can leverage iPaaS tooling to build data
integration solutions that can be offered as a service.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Data integration initiatives continue to grow in
importance and are largely addressed via on-premises implementations. However, the pressures of
digital business transformation are adding complexity to data integration strategies in terms of
achieving rapid deployments and diversified ways of provisioning data. The adoption of hybrid
deployment models and cloud data stores, as well as the movement of enterprise data into cloud
applications, fuels demands for using cloud services for data integration. Increasingly, on-premises
data integration tool vendors are actively competing in the iPaaS market. iPaaS is also known as
cloud enterprise integration platform services in the PaaS taxonomy (see “Platform as a Service:
Definition, Taxonomy and Vendor Landscape, 2019”). These providers target specific data
integration opportunities, such as integrating SaaS endpoints and supporting IoT and multicloud
solutions, or by offering an iPaaS rendition of existing on-premises integration platforms. These
solutions reduce the complexity of and barriers to implementation, especially for organizations with
deployment time constraints and limited resources. In many cases, users of iPaaS favor offerings
that support both data and application integration within a single toolset. Midsize organizations —
plus business roles and citizen integrators outside of IT in larger organizations, and teams focused
on event-driven IT capabilities — are using these capabilities to move and synchronize data that
includes cloud sources. Various SaaS providers embed their own or a third-party iPaaS to efficiently
onboard customers. As the use of hybrid delivery models continues to grow, organizations are
increasingly considering iPaaS as a strategic component, or as an extension to their data integration
infrastructure to enable a hybrid integration platform strategy.
User Advice: Consider iPaaS for data integration as an extension of the organization’s data
integration infrastructure, and as an enabling technology for hybrid integration platform capabilities.
Be aware that some offerings may be purpose-built for integration problems involving cloud data,
where either the source or the target (and sometimes both) are known and are static structures,
such as data residing in specific SaaS or operational databases. Those in less-technical roles who
perform integration, but are not inclined to make significant customizations, should consider using
iPaaS. In supporting a data integration workload involving cloud integration, evaluate iPaaS as a
way of accelerating time to value, minimizing costs and resource requirements relative to on-
premises models, and simplifying the deployment of data integration infrastructure with an adaptive
or incremental approach. However, recognize that iPaaS may not address the full scope and
complexity of broader data integration requirements, such as extremely large-scale bulk/batch
workloads for on-premises enterprise data warehouse support. Some iPaaS providers are limited in
their partnering and metadata extensibility to operate with broader data management infrastructure
capabilities such as data quality. Migrating data from one part of the cloud to another, or into
internal applications, may elicit data integrity or quality issues (including incomplete or inaccurate
data) that aren’t necessarily addressed by an iPaaS solution. Plan to ensure that data integration

processes are governed, traceable through data lineage support, and reconfigurable for a broad
range of integration use cases.
Business Impact: The use of iPaaS for data integration offers potential for most organizations.
Early benefits are relieving some of the common challenges in data integration initiatives,
particularly in the areas of flexibility, scalability and entry cost. Resource-constrained businesses
can apply data integration capabilities offered in iPaaS to targeted issues — such as the
synchronization of data between on-premises and off-premises applications, and the composition
of integrated views of data sources residing both inside and outside the firewall. Organizations
experienced in dealing with SaaS and other cloud services are expanding their techniques to create
a more dynamic computing environment for data integration workloads. An example is simplifying
deployment and expanding access to data sources in the cloud. With increasing interest in cloud-
based solutions for data warehousing and analytics, requirements for access to, and delivery of,
datasets utilizing the cloud environment present growing opportunities to leverage iPaaS for data
integration. In complementing established on-premises platforms and supporting an HIP strategy,
iPaaS for data integration will become an increasingly common component of an organization’s data
management and application infrastructures.
Sample Vendors: DBSync; Dell Boomi; Etlworks; Informatica; Jitterbit; Oracle; SAP; SnapLogic;
Talend; TIBCO Software
Recommended Reading: “Use iPaaS to Extend Your Data Integration Strategy to the Cloud in
Hybrid Ways”
“Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service”
“Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools”
Alumni CRM
Analysis By: Terri-Lynn Thayer; Robert Yanckello
Definition: Alumni CRM is defined as systems that are used by higher education institutions to
engage and serve alumni. The functionality may include alumni directory, alumni networking, alumni
contact management, online giving and event management. This functionality may be a part of an
institutionwide CRM solution, an alumni advancement system, an ERP suite or a stand-alone
product.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Alumni development or advancement systems, as

they are often called, have been in place on campuses for many years, with the primary purpose to
support back-office activities for fundraising, campaign management and gift accounting. Alumni

engagement, relations and networking activities were supported in a variety of often disparate
systems, including printed alumni directories, alumni portals, event management systems, email
and Microsoft Excel. However, there are emerging requirements for sophisticated communications
functionality that leverage social media, mobile technologies, digital marketing, online fundraising
and analytics. Institutions seek to reap additional value from the alumni community, as well as to
appeal to alumni’s perceived value of a sustained connection to the institution and the broader
alumni network. As a result, there is growing interest in moving away from this Swiss Army knife
approach of many best-of-breed components to solutions that bring together many of these
capabilities in one product or suite, or a set of more integrated components.
Some vendors in the student enrollment CRM and student retention CRM space are now leveraging
their foundational platforms and CRM expertise to provide alumni CRM product offerings to meet
these needs. These products are positioned to support the much-hyped vision of a cross life cycle
view of a student. Additionally, niche vendors are emerging with alumni CRM point solutions. Higher
education ERP vendors and CRM vendors are building new solutions that combine the back-office
functionality required to support institutional advancement with constituent relationship
management capabilities into new multifaceted products. Many of these offerings are incomplete
relative to the back office, but have sufficient and much needed functions to support the growing
alumni relations and networking needs. Campus stakeholders are not limited to the alumni office,
but also include career services, athletics, events management and continuing education — all
these have something to gain from having data about, and access to, the alumni community.
The technology is now in the early mainstream phase. We see a coalescence of the previously
disparate components, there are new areas of functionality emerging such as social donor
management and tools that support alumni mentoring of students — many of which are being
offered again as stand-alone solutions. There is mounting interest in solutions that are delivered on
enterprise class CRM platforms. The vendor offerings that are the most comprehensive solutions
include both alumni CRM, institutional advancement and fundraising all in one solution. Not
surprisingly however these broad comprehensive solutions are still the most immature market
offerings — often with some functional gaps today.
Last year, Gartner placed Alumni CRM in the Trough of Disillusionment, as we saw institutions
struggling with deployment and product either highly niche but limited in scope, or functionally
broad but incomplete. This year, we see new entrants gaining some traction, and some maturing of
both the products and the market. Therefore we have it climbing the Slope of Enlightenment with a
plateau trajectory of less than two years.
User Advice: Classic alumni development systems are mature tools to record alumni demographics
and donations, but may not be adequate to meet emerging CRM needs. Modern CRM technologies
can benefit institutions by allowing them to maintain consistent and fruitful relationships with their
alumni. The selection and deployment of these solutions should be done with an eye toward how
they will integrate with other CRM components supporting enrollment and retention, thus enabling a
cradle-to-grave perspective of the constituent. This should not be confused as advice that demands
the same product/solution to be implemented across the life cycle. Rather, the components must be
integrated and, more importantly, the data must be standardized and shared across the life cycle.
CIOs should review their legacy advancement vendor roadmaps and consider upgrades, as well as
how this fits with the institution’s vision and strategy for CRM.

Business Impact: Alumni CRM technology offers the promise of enhancing alumni engagement,
and in doing so, increasing both the degree value to the alumni and increased customer lifetime
value for the institution. Interest in lifelong learning is creating opportunities for institutions to utilize
this data to grow institutional revenue at a time when the pressure on other traditional revenue
sources is acute.
Sample Vendors: Affinaquest; Blackbaud; Campus Management; Ellucian; Graduway; iModules;

QuadWrangle; Salesforce; thankQ USA; Technolutions
Recommended Reading: “Market Guide for University Alumni Advancement Systems”
“How to Overcome Three Higher Education CRM Myths”
Bluetooth Beacons
Analysis By: Tim Zimmerman; Annette Zimmermann
Definition: Bluetooth beacons are Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices that typically serve as
proximity beacons to Bluetooth 4.x and Bluetooth 5-enabled mobile devices, such as smartphones.
With BLE’s Proximity profile, mobile devices and apps can derive their proximity to the beacons at a
granularity that may not be possible with other location technologies, especially in an indoor
environment.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: The Bluetooth beacon technology continues to attract
significant interest beyond marketing and wayfinding applications from a variety of industries. The
focus on location use cases and advances in the technology, not only to provide better location but
also momentum, are pushing this technology quickly into mainstream.
In recent years, Google has launched its Eddystone beacon protocol to challenge Apple’s more
established alternative, iBeacon (the most popular Bluetooth beacon protocol to date). Eddystone
differentiates itself from existing beacon protocols (such as iBeacon and AltBeacon) by removing
the need for an app on the smartphone in order to interact with the beacon. Google has promoted
this architecture as the “physical web.”
The new Bluetooth 5.1 definition also includes angle of arrival (AoA) and angle of departure (AoD)
which assist in better location data as well as momentum of the device. The rapid adoption into a
variety of market continues to reduce the cost of beacons.
Vendors have continued to struggle with battery life but many infrastructure vendors have integrated
BLE into their Wi-Fi access points to provide a management infrastructure that assures the location
as well as the status of deployed beacons.

Bluetooth beacons face competition from other wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi, UHF and HF
in applications such as location-based services.
User Advice:
■ End users must define specific use cases including granularity to determine whether BLE
should be part of the technology solution set.
■ Enterprises that can benefit immediately from the Bluetooth beacon’s location and context-
aware capabilities are advised to engage with technology providers to determine the cost and
complexity of such a deployment.
■ Beacon infrastructure providers should offer a comprehensive beacon management platform
that allows users to quickly deploy and easily manage the beacons.
Business Impact: Bluetooth beacon technology has the potential to impact businesses and
enterprises in the areas of information delivery, customer analytics, promotion management, asset
tracking, access control and site monitoring. Given the technology’s broad reach and potential
benefits, enterprise leaders (both business and IT) are advised to monitor the technology’s progress
and evaluate its business potential.
Sample Vendors: AiRISTA Flow; CenTrak; Cisco Systems; Hewlett Packard Enterprise (Aruba);
Juniper Networks; Zebra Technologies
Recommended Reading: “Magic Quadrant for Indoor Location Services, Global”
“Critical Capabilities for Indoor Location Services, Global”
Entering the Plateau
Student Retention CRM

Analysis By: Terri-Lynn Thayer; Glenda Morgan
Definition: Student retention CRM is defined as technology used by higher education institutions to
identify and engage at-risk students, assess their progress, create and track engagement plans, and
enable successful intervention strategies. Solutions in this space have significantly variable
functionality.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Student retention CRM is the student life cycle
centerpiece bounded on either side by the student enrollment CRM and alumni CRM. The
functionality is a combination of analytics for assessing the risk of failure or withdrawal (often
referred to as “early alert”) and intervention and outreach tools that assist the academic

administration in helping students maintain their academic progression. These solutions are often
implemented as a part of student success initiatives, sometimes in response to external demands
for accountability. CRMs are also being used to more proactively engage all students — not just
those in immediate jeopardy of leaving or failing to make progress. They often make heavy use of a
number of communications channels (such as voice, SMS, email, social, chatbot). However, the
tools are limited in the types of interventions that can be automated. Thus, the need for human
intervention raises staffing implications.
Administrators are interested in analyzing the reasons why students leave an institution, including
those that are not related to academic achievement. Some systems provide the ability to track
anecdotal data provided by faculty members, as well as integrate with other campus systems to
provide student engagement indicators (for example, classroom attendance, and the utilization of
dining hall, library and dormitory). Often, the best results can be achieved when CRM components
are bidirectionally integrated with analytics engines to provide a virtuous circle of insights, driving
action and in turn driving insight. Despite a fairly high penetration of these tools and many vendors
in the space, the market is still in an early phase, in which standards have yet to emerge and there is
virtually no commoditization of solutions. The high benefit is fueling strong interest that is driving
increasing numbers of market entrants. This makes comparison of products difficult. Products in
this space do not neatly fit into categories, as many products have varying combination of features,
including early alert, analytics, CRM, nudge, messaging, pathways, GPS and advising. A substantial
number of institutions build their own solutions, sometimes on top of enterprise-class CRM
platforms.
The significant anticipated benefit of these solutions has increased adoption and propelled student
retention CRM systems into the early mainstream. As institutions work through complex
implementations, requiring which require faculty participation to track data, mounting integrations,
interventions to be taken and the results measured, disappointments have occurred. Although, there
is a lack of a consistent view on which attributes to consider as well as inconsistent results across
use cases, they are demonstrable and mounting successes with these tools. That is why we have
positioned student retention CRM as just entering the Plateau of Productivity this year and we
expect it will reach the Plateau in less than two years as the market space and institutional practices
both mature.
User Advice: Evaluate student retention offerings from a broad spectrum of providers of SIS, LMS,
CRM, analytics and service providers. Carefully assess the functions for alerting on academic
engagement and success, as well as consider how these systems address nonacademic factors (for
example, financial pressures, behavioral problems, and adjustment and maturity issues). Student
retention algorithms are still not well-understood. So look for solutions that provide significant
flexibility for alerting functions and data analysis techniques, as well as open APIs for integration
with a variety of campus systems and external data sources, to ensure investment will have
maximum longevity. Seek solutions that allow you to integrate not only data from your systems of
record but also insights from your (other) analytics tools.
Start small with defined objectives. This is likely to be a very iterative space, and it is important to
jump in and not get overwhelmed by a “boil the ocean” approach. Student retention CRM projects
have high failure rates. This is often not a fault of the technology itself but a lack of attention to the

workflow required, and active engagement of the larger community of stakeholders in the process
with well-understood roles.
Business Impact: In addition to the obvious social good of helping students to be successful and
receive value for their tuition, it is often more cost-effective to retain a student than to recruit a
replacement. Government-enacted outcome-based funding incentives add to this benefit. For some
institutions, even small improvements in retention can significantly mitigate declining enrollment
concerns. Such systems will assist institutions in maximizing the student lifetime value and respond
to public demands to improve graduation rates and time-to-degree completion.
Most institutions can benefit from improving student engagement, even for students who are
academically successful. Increased student engagement during enrollment is an indicator of alumni
giving and volunteerism, ultimately making these systems valuable to even the most selective
institutions, where retention is not an issue. To benefit most from these solutions, they should be
well-integrated with data analytics systems and functions to ensure that insights identified are acted
on and that this action is automated where possible.
Sample Vendors: AspirEDU; Ellucian; Engage2Serve; Enrollment Rx; Hobsons; Jenzabar;

Microsoft; Salesforce; TargetX
Recommended Reading: “How to Overcome Three Higher Education CRM Myths” e
“Achieve a 360-Degree Student View With CRM in Higher Education”
“Top 10 Business Trends Impacting Higher Education in 2018”
Enterprise Video Content Management

Analysis By: Stephen Emmott
Definition: Enterprise video content management (EVCM) comprises software, appliances or

software as a service (SaaS) intended to manage and facilitate the delivery of one-to-any, on-
demand or live video across internet protocols. It may also include associated network services —
content delivery networks: eCDN and CDN — intended to facilitate the delivery of video. EVCM
serves workers and customers who need to watch videos.
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: YouTube has inspired the consumerization of video in
the digital workplace, and serves as a model for employee-generated, video-based
communications. Nonetheless, resistance to the democratization of video in the workplace
continues, limiting the potential for video to attain parity with written documents. For live broadcasts
to large audiences, such as town halls and briefings, EVCM is an established option. So too, for the

management of video to service on-demand usage in training, sales and other use cases. EVCM is
the content services platform for video.
Although mature, recent developments herald opportunities for innovation and differentiation:
■ Computer vision and speech-to-text improve access, usability and analysis of video
■ The continuing development of APIs to better integrate EVCM into customers’ digital platforms
The emergence of enterprise content delivery networks (eCDN) — technology that facilitates video
transit through company networks — as a now-separate market, and the increased overlap for live
streaming with meeting solutions, emphasizes the part EVCM plays in the wider visual estate. That
is with respect to the capture, management and delivery of video on demand. EVCM has now
entered the Plateau of Productivity.
User Advice: For live meetings and events such as town halls and executive briefings with large
audiences, use EVCM together with an eCDN. This enables audiences to be reached both in real
time and after the meeting through video on demand. The use of eCDN reduces the impact on
internal networks while improving the quality of experience for viewers. Where meetings are
conducted in real time via meeting solutions, capture these to the EVCM solution for sharing and
recall.
For on-demand, embark on projects that explore ways in which video can uniquely enhance
communication and knowledge sharing. Seek ways to use integrations to existing applications
within your digital platform. An EVCM solution enables workers to make their own decisions,
without support, by turning to online video sharing to improve performance and ultimately provide
value to customers. But this needs to be delivered to multiple touchpoints, according to where in
the digital workplace employees carry out their work.
Make video an asset and EVCM part of a platform for innovation. EVCM success depends on
content creation; enterprises focusing on digital dexterity should encourage the workforce to
develop video skills so that as a medium video will attain parity with other common business
documents. When capturing, presenting and archiving video or meetings, you will find that saving
videos as short, topical pieces will result in better viewing and long-term value. Choosing an EVCM
solution with strengths in both interactivity and integration can enable you to make video engaging,
and to blend it into the digital workplace.
Business Impact: Video is highly effective for sharing knowledge and communication. It can
improve audience empathy and deliver value in an engaging and timely manner. It can also
transcend language and skills, as it narrows the gap between novice and expert for visually complex
tasks.
Enabling easy contribution (through simple interfaces and effective governance for uploading) and
easy access (through effective organization and comprehensive search) positions video as a key
content asset for the enterprise.

The increasing use of many-to-many video within meeting solutions (multiparty videoconferencing)
provides additional sources of video content, and EVCM introduces the possibility of integrating
with and capturing these exchanges. All business units can benefit from the use of video, and
should leverage EVCM in pursuit of this. Externally, videos have become increasingly important for
engaging customers, suppliers and other third parties.
EVCM offers the potential for substantial benefits through incremental but significant improvement
of business processes in pursuit of reduced costs (e.g., peer-to-peer sharing of “know how”) or
revenue generation (e.g., supporting sales).
Sample Vendors: Brightcove; IBM; Kaltura; movingimage; MediaPlatform; Panopto; Qumu; Sonic
Foundry; Vbrick; VIDIZMO
Recommended Reading: “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Video Content Management”
“Critical Capabilities for Enterprise Video Content Management”

Appendixes
Figure 3. Hype Cycle for Education, 2018

Hype Cycle Phases, Benefit Ratings and Maturity Levels

Table 1. Hype Cycle Phases
Phase Definition
Innovation Trigger A breakthrough, public demonstration, product launch or other event generates significant
press and industry interest.
Peak of Inflated During this phase of overenthusiasm and unrealistic projections, a flurry of well-publicized
Expectations activity by technology leaders results in some successes, but more failures, as the
technology is pushed to its limits. The only enterprises making money are conference
organizers and magazine publishers.
Trough of Because the technology does not live up to its overinflated expectations, it rapidly becomes
Disillusionment unfashionable. Media interest wanes, except for a few cautionary tales.
Slope of Focused experimentation and solid hard work by an increasingly diverse range of
Enlightenment organizations lead to a true understanding of the technology’s applicability, risks and
benefits. Commercial off-the-shelf methodologies and tools ease the development process.
Plateau of Productivity The real-world benefits of the technology are demonstrated and accepted. Tools and
methodologies are increasingly stable as they enter their second and third generations.
Growing numbers of organizations feel comfortable with the reduced level of risk; the rapid
growth phase of adoption begins. Approximately 20% of the technology’s target audience
has adopted or is adopting the technology as it enters this phase.
Years to Mainstream The time required for the technology to reach the Plateau of Productivity.
Adoption
Source: Gartner (July 2019)
Table 2. Benefit Ratings
Benefit Rating Definition
Transformational Enables new ways of doing business across industries that will result in major shifts in industry
dynamics
High Enables new ways of performing horizontal or vertical processes that will result in significantly
increased revenue or cost savings for an enterprise
Moderate Provides incremental improvements to established processes that will result in increased revenue
or cost savings for an enterprise
Low Slightly improves processes (for example, improved user experience) that will be difficult to
translate into increased revenue or cost savings

Table 3. Maturity Levels
Maturity Level Status Products/Vendors
Embryonic ■ In labs ■ None
Emerging ■ Commercialization by vendors ■ First generation
■ Pilots and deployments by industry leaders ■ High price
■ Much customization
Adolescent ■ Maturing technology capabilities and process ■ Second generation

understanding
■ Less customization
■ Uptake beyond early adopters
Early mainstream ■ Proven technology ■ Third generation
■ Vendors, technology and adoption rapidly evolving ■ More out-of-box methodologies
Mature ■ Robust technology ■ Several dominant vendors

mainstream
■ Not much evolution in vendors or technology
Legacy ■ Not appropriate for new developments ■ Maintenance revenue focus
■ Cost of migration constrains replacement
Obsolete ■ Rarely used ■ Used/resale market only
Gartner Recommended Reading

Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.
Understanding Gartner’s Hype Cycles
Predicts 2019: Higher Education — Digital Transformation in Progress
2019 CIO Agenda: A Higher Education Perspective
2019 CIO Agenda: A K-12 Education Perspective
Education Administrative Systems Innovation Primer for 2019
Education Learning Environment Innovation Primer for 2019

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Hype Cycle for Education, 2019

Analyst(s): Robert Yanckello, Kelly Calhoun Williams

A new era of innovation is emerging for education CIOs, focused on

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Table 1. Hype Cycle Phases................................................................................................................. 58

Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Education, 2019...............................................................................................5

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The Hype Cycle

■ Require effective ways to scale learning (personalized, people-augmented learning)

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Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Education, 2019

The Priority Matrix

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We continue to incorporate non-industry-specific innovation profiles (such as 5G Services) to

Figure 2. Priority Matrix for Education, 2019

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Off the Hype Cycle

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Benefit Rating: High

Market Penetration: Less than 1% of target audience

Definition: Self-integrating applications use a combination of automated service discovery,

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■ Application interoperability within portfolios from a single vendor.

Benefit Rating: Transformational

Market Penetration: Less than 1% of target audience

Gartner, Inc. | G00369459 Page 9 of 60

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“Innovation Insight for Digital Integrator Technologies”

“Reimagine How to Simplify Integration Using Artificial Intelligence”

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■ Insurance companies are using audio-based emotion AI for fraud detection.

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Benefit Rating: Transformational

Market Penetration: Less than 1% of target audience

Recommended Reading: “Competitive Landscape: Emotion AI Technologies, Worldwide, 2018”

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Benefit Rating: High

Market Penetration: Less than 1% of target audience

Sample Vendors: Cisco; Honeywell Building Solutions; NetApp; Ruckus Networks

Recommended Reading: “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends Impacting Higher Education in

“Turning Smart Cities Into Intelligent Urban Ecosystems”

“Hype Cycle for Smart City Technologies and Solutions, 2018”

Social Analytics in Education

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Organize cross-functional teams across the institution including stakeholders of customer

■ Trends, such as deterioration in student or alumni satisfaction.

Benefit Rating: High