Come January.... and every technology enterprise company, every CIO forum, every research agency associated with the IT World and even some CIO themselves start looking into their "crystal balls" and attempt to predict the technologies that will impact and change the way businesses is done in the coming year. Lets call them the "hot" technologies. Predictions are made on what are the "hot" technologies for the year, what should CIOs do about them, how should CIOs go about deploying these "hot" technologies in their businesses. And then there are CIO Round-table discussions seeking the CIO perspective and seeking the CIO "seal of validation" about these "hot" technologies. Finally, a consensus on the "hot" technologies for the year is arrived at.
Well... after all of the above and the euphoria around it even in 2013, there seems to be a board consensus on the Top three (03) "new" and "hot" technologies for year 2013 amongst the CIO community at least here in India -
CIOs, the logical people they are, like clear, precise definitions, but "Big Data" is a relative concept. Also, it depends on who is defining it. On a very board conceptual front, "Big Data" collectively an be referred to as -
- Big Data
- Cloud Computing
- Mobility
"the strategy, business processes, tools and technologies that relate the datasets in an organization that are, in fact, beyond the ability of traditional database software tools in size and complexity when it comes to capturing, storing, managing and analyzing them."So, "Big Data" would mean different things to different vendors, CIOs and all those involved with it. In fact, the majority of the "Big Data" projects underway today are primarily in the space where a lot of customer-centric information is been collected through various individual and perhaps stand-alone systems. These datasets on their own may not help derive as much business benefits as if they all are looked at and analyzed together collectively. For example - inventory positions, truck delivery logos, RFID based product location, POS logs etc. in case of a retail company or maybe - loyalty card database, customer visits to the company website, ticket booking and billing information for an airline company or holidays booked for a time-share company or even insurance policy buying. It can be even customer demographics, buying transactions, GIS-based development patterns for an infrastructure company. In short, it is all about looking at all the diverse datapoints available in an enterprise which could be either - structured, non-structured or even semi-structured and then using tools and technologies on these datapoints to analyse them all and aid effective "business decisions".
The next "hot" technology seems to be - "Cloud Computing". A few of my eminent CIOs friends would like to perhaps see 2013 as the "year of the Cloud". "Easy provisioning", " easy manageability", "effective OPEX model", "dynamic resource availability" etc are typical points sighted when marketing the cloud and of course, all that is true. There have been great success stories around "cloud computing" technologies particularly in the SME community. Big enterprises with their heterogeneous and virtually environment seem to have adopted hybrid cloud solutions - maintaining their internal private clouds and deploying applications on an external public clouds. In my personal view, Cloud Computing has great potential from the disaster recovery (DR) perspective and with service offering like Amazon Glacier even with all its limitations there is potential. Data which if archival in nature and which requires to be stored and managed for various statutory requirements over a long period can definitely be a candidate for such a service. In the end, it is all about cheap and nearly limitless processing power and storage capacity. Cloud Computing is useful wherein the reach of the application needs to be maximized and available 24 by 7 and Cloud Computing coupled with Mobility Apps solutions will be the future of application delivery.
That brings us to the third of the Top three "hot" technologies of 2013 - "Mobility". There is a bit of a confusion when it comes to mobility... It seems to have many names - BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), Mobile Data Management (MDM), in fact, I once attended a seminar where in a technology enterprise classified secure VPN solution and security under mobility solutions. Well.... whatever be the case, the fact is that the cheap smartphones are here to stay, all consumer interactions are becoming mobile, even physical interactions are getting converted into digital signals and social networking is becoming a rage and reality. Businesses today cannot afford to ignore this trend. Mobility and mobile apps are been written and are fast entering the mainstream business processes and making the enterprise data available to a wider audience and also making it available "anytime anywhere". In fact, mobility is leading the consumerization of data and will be a major "disruptive" technology in years to come.
The newer technologies are great and they definitely help CIOs perform better. It is also true that these technologies are here to stand and they will impact businesses and business processes. It is the CIOs' ability and imagination on how the use these technologies in their businesses that will determine their success.
But before you jump in on that journey to success using these technologies, just a few pointers...
- get on the bandwagon and initiate projects around the "hot" technologies ONLY when you think there is a "Business Case" for them in your business and not just because a peer CIO in a similar industry as yours is doing so;
- check, evaluate and retrospect the use in your business;
- bounce off your ideas with peers in the CxO team within your enterprise and get a buy-in from them;
- demonstrate the business value;
- it has a better chance of success as a "business" project with a business sponsor rather than a "technology" project conceived by the CIO alone, and
- most important, remember - you need the budgets to deliver it all.
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