ORLANDO, Florida – Enterprise metaverse investments will account for 30% of IT budgets in 2023 as businesses look for ways “reimagine the office experience,” according to Daryl Plummer, distinguished VP analyst and Gartner fellow who presented his top predictions for IT organizations and users in 2023 and beyond during the Gartner IT Symposium 2022.

In addition to the metaverse, businesses are also looking at investing in "moonshots," or high-risk technology investments with little-known returns and potential failure. They are adopting an anti-fragile approach, he noted. Other trends include managing labor volatility, improving sustainability when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and coping with the financial impact of burnout.

Here is a run down of additional trends Plummer highlighted.

“The lines between personal and workspaces are blurring,” he said. “Fully virtual workspaces will account for 30% of the investment growth in metaverse technologies and it will reimagine the office experience through 2027.”

The capabilities of the metaverse to transform the office go beyond simple meetings and interactions. We are going to move beyond the notion of just [virtual reality] and start thinking, what does it need to collaborate to work with people,” Plummer said. “We're going to actually start imagining that work happens in different ways.”

"Labor volatility will cost 40% of organizations to report a material business loss, which will force them to shift their approach from acquisition toward resilience," Plummer noted. “In other words, we're not going to be so focused on getting new talent hired that we aren't making the talent we have more resilient.”

Sustainable IT practices are also important for businesses heading into the new year. While using AI and machine learning to achieve business goals is a priority, unless mitigated, the power consumed by these technologies will “cut out all those gains,” said Plummer.

If current AI practices remain unchanged, the energy needed for machine learning training and associated data storage and processing may account for up to 3.5% of global electricity consumption by 2030.

“Without sustainable AI, AI will consume more energy than the average European country,” said Plummer. “We're using more and more energy all the time to train artificial intelligence. It costs more storage, uses more energy to re-feed, and as you're using reinforcement learning, you've got to use different techniques — efficient coding. You've got to use mechanisms that allow you to understand how data is going to be stored and how it's going to be processed to reduce the amount of energy that you use.”

The impact of "quiet quitting" and the "great resignation" will impact businesses so much so that "employee value metrics," such as well-being, burnout, and brand satisfaction will override return on investment evaluations in 30% of successful growth investment decisions, according to Gartner. "The human metrics will drive this financial health and the enterprise and then a new enterprise value equation," Plummer said.

When taken as a whole, Plummer said that IT investment for the near term will focus on seizing uncertainty and "challenge thinking and change expectations" as they face future headwinds.

Photo: Gartner distinguished VP and fellow Daryl Plummer at Gartner IT Symposium 2022. Source: Gartner