Gartner has named cloud computing, green IT and social-computing platforms among technologies that are poised to reach broad enterprise adoption in the next two to five years.

The report "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008" by Gartner Vice President and Fellow Jackie Fenn and other analysts, also cited video telepresence, which utilizes high-end videoconferencing systems to provide remote conference participants with the feeling that they are in the same room, and microblogging popularized by the Internet application Twitter as being on the brink of widespread adoption among enterprises.

All of these technologies are at the peak of what the report calls their "hype cycle," a term Gartner began using in 1995 to describe the human response to technology -- from overenthusiasm at the beginning, through a period of disillusionment with the technology, to an eventual understanding of the technology's relevance and role in a market or domain.

Gartner uses the hype-cycle assessment to advise IT managers about when they should begin to adopt certain technologies that are getting a lot of attention but whose value to the enterprise is not yet known, according to the report. IT professionals generally have a better understanding of how to implement technologies at the peak of their hype cycle in a few years, once the initial excitement about them dies down.

The impact of technologies that are at the peak of their hype cycle in 2008 will differ depending on the technology, according to the report.

Cloud computing, defined by Gartner as "a style of computing where massively scalable IT-enabled capabilities are delivered 'as a service' to external customers using Internet technologies," in particular should have "transformational impact" on the enterprise, according to the report. This means the technology will change the way the IT industry "looks at user and vendor relationships," Fenn wrote.

"As service provisions (a critical aspect of cloud computing) grow, vendors must become or partner with service providers to deliver their technologies indirectly to users," according to the report. "User organizations will watch portfolios of owned technologies decline as service portfolios grow. The key activity will be to determine which cloud services will be viable, and when."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.