Project 2012: Day 20
By now you’ll notice that we’re settling on regular categories for our Project 2012. As I’m CTO for Enterprise Cloud Services at HP, I’d like to contribute about the role, the industry, and IT strategy to our discussions.
Today let’s begin setting the scene for the Tech Industry in 2012 and beyond. Rather than list my “crystal ball” predictions (which has become so passé recently) I’d rather discuss the forces on the market, and how as CTO’s we can develop an effective technology strategy.
The overall theme in enterprise is the shift of control of IT resources away from IT. This is catalysed by 4 trends:
Access: Mobile
The way people access their Information is shifting from the desktop (within the organisational perimeter) to their pockets. Of course this started years ago. I installed my first Remote Access Infrastructure for Nokia in 1995 – all dial-up of course. But this is certainly accelerated by the smartphone, and more recently, the 3G enabled, light, powerful, and long lasting tablet.
Whereas with laptops, organisations owned these assets and tightly controlled access. Today, most employees own their own smartphone, and increasingly, tablet. With 3G, they often don’t need the company’s network to access information.
Deliver: Cloud
To date Cloud computing is still immature in the enterprise. Although again, I led a team building a multi-tenant, utility, Exchange Service for Optus over a decade ago in 2000. 
Nevertheless, enterprises are still talking about shifting compute (IaaS) to “Trusted Private” Cloud Providers or building Utility Type Services internally. PaaS and SaaS offerings still the domain of the start-up, small business, and consumer. Expect this to change rapidly as providers get their SaaS story straight, and the economy drives down IT budgets.
Also, as technologies like 4G over the air, and the NBN across the wire, become more prevalent, there will be more reason to shift from capital intensive facilities, including office buildings, to the opportunities that the cloud offer.
The biggest disruption here is the ability for the business, for the first time in our industry, to bypass IT and purchase services directly. I know of one CIO that scans AMEX receipts to learn what cloud services the business feels it can’t do without, hence resorts to putting them on the AMEX, in order to help mould their catalogue of Services to provide.
Ultimately we’ll deliver most, if not all, IT services from some form of cloud construct. Be that private, community, public, or some combination. Also, like your fleet of company cars, you’ll care less about how they’re manufactured, and more about the overall service.
Behaviour: Social/Collaboration
The most used website in Australia today is Facebook. The most widely sought after IT skills for the enterprise are for Microsoft Sharepoint. As technologies from Video Conferencing, to Dropbox, enable us to connect and share online, this improves overall business productivity.
As our access to these systems become more mobile, we can reduce the latency between where we work (home, client) and the information tools and people we need to connect to to manage this work.
Social and collaborative computing is affecting more than just enterprise organisations. They have played a major role in politics (Obama, Arab Spring), retail (Borders), and cultural norms (music, connecting with family, education). This is not a trend to ignore.
Context: Information Analytics
Both Smartphones and Cloud services contribute to growing our data exponentially. With these masses of data come unforseen patterns and context that will empower business. Dealing with disgruntled customers that would never have called (but now tweet criticism), having a comprehensive view of your customer, even understanding and meeting competitive threat in real time, is now possible if you can capture and analyse this data.
Of course Security is also still important, and will become increasingly so. However, I believe that this isn’t a (new) trend in itself, but has been prevalent since the first time we connected two computers together.
So those are the four major tech trends to watch. As we consider how this affects the enterprise, we’ll discuss vital questions we should answer to adapt our IT organisations to meet the changing world.
Note: Although I have considered these trends for some time, I would like to acknowledge the 2012 Gartner Predictions Webinar for linking Access, Deliver, Behaviour, and Context, to these trends.
Which trend do you believe is the most important to focus on in the short term?