2013 sees a paradigm shift in how
technology services will reach out to customers.
The coming year is shaping to be pivotal
for business and government agencies as they grapple with major decisions with
the direction of their technology systems. The rise of social media, demand for
mobile services and increase in Big Data has resulted in IT becoming more than
an essential tool for productivity and collaboration. In fact, it is now
critical to delivering new services to consumers, citizens and employees who
expect everything to be mobile, connected, interactive and immediate.
The
top 10 technologies are emerging amidst a nexus of converging forces – social,
mobile, cloud and information
According to Gartner, “the top 10
technologies are emerging amidst a nexus of converging forces – social, mobile,
cloud and information. Although they are innovative and disruptive on their
own, together these trends are revolutionizing businesses and societies,
transforming old business models and creating new leaders.”
This connectivity brings about enormous
potential for innovation, allowing businesses to deliver new products and
services to their customers in many new ways. It also blurs the lines between
professional and personal environments, where people view their personal mobile
computing devices as the new power tools that provide powerful capabilities to
create and connect in the workplace. As a result, CIOs are challenged to
protect corporate networks and information while delivering services that allow
users to take advantage of the information and processing power that are
present in the cloud.
The shift to everything as a service
For organizations today, gaining
competitive advantage requires technology to be at the forefront of innovation
and growth. To address this, we are starting to see leading business entities
leverage the cloud to deliver ‘everything-as-a-service’ – from computing power
to business processes to personal interactions.
For
organizations today, gaining competitive advantage requires technology to be at
the forefront of innovation and growth
As we move into 2013, we are seeing the
following trends emerge as companies – both big and small – look to address
challenges that the explosion of information, mobility and social media
created. They are now identifying new ways of delivering services that drive
business innovation and growth. They need to rethink how they can leverage
technology to capitalize on these latest innovations to expand operations.
Cloud as the platform for everything as
a service
In preparing for a world that is service
based, many enterprises and government departments are viewing the shift to
cloud as a key business strategy to tackle challenges in a demanding and
unpredictable environment. Certainly, technological innovations made possible
by the cloud can provide unconstrained access to IT services, which include
infrastructure, applications and information.
In order to drive true business value, CIOs
must choose how and when to implement cloud services alongside traditional
sourcing models – and they must ensure it all works reliably. They have to
think differently about IT and move beyond being a builder of internal
infrastructure and services to brokering and consuming third-party services.
Cloud
as the platform for everything-as-a-service
Hybrid models enable organizations to
maximize their existing infrastructure while retaining internal control as well
as being able to use public cloud resources where required. In fact, a recent
HP commissioned research exercise indicates that hybrid delivery will be
critical to driving successful business outcomes and innovations. By 2020,
senior business and technology executives expect public and private cloud
delivery models at their organizations to almost double. As such, cloud
computing will shift from delivering small, consumer-focused services to
sustaining secure, predictable and reliable enterprise-scale workloads.
Turning big data into big value
With information now being generated everywhere,
enterprises are beginning to understand that deriving actionable insights from
all types of data is the key to achieving success.
According to the same HP research, more
than 90-percent of organizations plan to incorporate unstructured data into their
enterprise insights, processes and strategy in the next three years. However,
the extreme volume, variety and velocity of information places unprecedented
burdens on such businesses and only 10-percent of executives revealed that they
are currently incorporating unstructured data into their enterprise analytics.
Legacy approaches to information
management, which rely on outdated information architectures, infrastructure
and analytics, fail to discover the concepts and value found in all forms of
information. They are also incapable of cost-effectively scaling and processing
the oceans of information collected in unstructured, structured and machine
data in real time.
These shortcomings are especially evident
in an age when changing customer sentiments play out over Twitter, Facebook,
YouTube, the web, phone calls and emails. In fact, Gartner predicts that “Big
Data will once again become ‘just data’ by 2020 and architectural approaches,
infrastructure and hardware/software that does not adapt to this ‘new normal’
will be retired.
Keeping on top of security
Cloud, mobility and big data initiatives
are helping organizations solve pressing challenges, while driving accelerated
innovation, enhanced agility and improved financial management. However, these
initiatives also can introduce big security concerns.
In
fact, almost two-thirds of those surveyed are concerned about mobile data loss
or theft
Another research survey conducted on behalf
of HP in Asia Pacific and Japan revealed that security issues around cloud
services and big data are top of mind for more than two thirds of business and
technology executives. In fact, almost two-thirds of those surveyed are
concerned about mobile data loss or theft. In addition, more than half of
respondents admitted that their organizations spend more time and money on
reactive measures than proactive risk management.
With 74-percent of organizations in Asia expecting
a significant security breach within the next 24 months, a reactive,
perimeter-based approach to such threats are no longer sufficient. Without a
proactive information risk management strategy, enterprise growth, innovation
and efficiencies are hindered.
Businesses must protect what matters most
to them by adopting intelligent security solutions that prioritize protecting
resources that help identify threats earlier and enable faster response times.
In providing advance security solutions
alongside the rapid proliferation of the cloud, Big Data and increased
connectivity, a services-enabled information economy, enterprise and
governments will finally have the unprecedented capacity to quickly access and
analyze data to deliver true value and insights.
