Gartner Inc. recently released their 2009 Hype Cycle Report. The report is a comparative tool for risk judgment which and looks at over 1,500 technologies and nearly 80 tech sectors. Among the data points mapped on the cycle are public virtual worlds, an area which Gartner thinks is nearing an inflection point as a technology: virtual worlds, says Gartner, are close to owning the basement of the hype cycle, bottoming out in the dire-sounding Trough of Disillusionment. But, "looking at real benefit, rather than the hyped expectations, we see a number of potentially transformational technologies that will hit the mainstream in less than five years, including Web 2.0, cloud computing, Internet TV, virtual worlds and service-oriented architecture".