The research firm predicts these technologies will coalesce into a new mainstream platform for both the IT industry and the industries it serves.

According to IDC, the platform transition will be fuelled by another solid year of recovery in IT spending. The research firm forecasts that next year, global IT spending will be US$1.6 trillion representing an increase of 5.7 per cent over 2010.

Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC notes that next year will see the critical transition of the transformative technologies from early adopter status to early mainstream adoption.

The IT industry will thus revolve more around the build-out and adoption of this next dominant platform, characterised by mobility, cloud-based application and service delivery, and value-generating overlays of social business and pervasive analytics.