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Research company Gartner revealed its top predictions for IT organizations and users for 2012 and beyond. 

Gartner defines a top prediction based on the criteria of relevance, impact and audience appeal. 

"The continued trends toward consumerization and cloud computing highlight the movement of certain former IT responsibilities into the hands of others," said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow. "As users take more control of the devices they will use, business managers are taking more control of the budgets IT organizations have watched shift over the last few years. As the world of IT moves forward, CIOs are finding that they must coordinate their activities in a much wider scope than they once controlled. While this might be a difficult prospect for IT departments, they must now adapt or be swept aside."

Gartner analysts said that going into 2012 there is an increase in the amount of information available to organizations, but it's a challenge for them to understand it. Given the shifts in control of systems that IT organizations are facing, the loss of ability to guarantee consistency and effectiveness of data will leave many struggling to prevent their organizations from missing key opportunities or from using questionable information for strategic decisions. No regulatory help is on the near horizon, leaving each business to decide for itself how to handle the introduction of big data.

"Any organization which wishes to accelerate in 2012 must establish in itself a significant discipline of coordinating distributed activities," Plummer said. "They must establish relationship management as a key skill and train their people accordingly. The reason for this is that the lack of control can only be combated through coordinative activities. The IT organization of the future must coordinate those who have the money, those who deliver the services, those who secure the data, and those consumers who demand to set their own pace for use of IT."

Gartner's top predictions for 2012 include:

Industrialized low-cost IT services (ILCS) is an emerging market force that will alter the common perceptions of pricing and value of IT services. In the next three to five years, this new model will reset the value proposition of IT. Low-cost cloud services will cause the cannibalization of current and potential outsourcing revenue. Similar to what happened with the adoption of offshore delivery, it will be incumbent upon vendors to invest in and adopt a new cloud-based, industrialized services strategy either directly or indirectly, internally or externally. The projected $1 trillion IT services market is at the beginning of a phase of further disruption, similar to the one the low-cost airlines have brought in the transportation industry.

While enterprises are evaluating the potential cloud benefits in terms of management simplicity, economies of scale and workforce optimization, it is equally critical that they carefully evaluate cloud services for their ability to resist security threats and attacks. Inspectors' certifications will eventually become a viable alternative or complement to third-party testing. This means that instead of requesting that a third-party security vendor conduct testing on the enterprise's behalf, the enterprise will be satisfied by a cloud provider's certificate stating that a reputable third-party security vendor has already tested its applications.