The 12 Most Important Technology Trends

Monday, May 17, 2010
CIO Zone
By Laton McCartney

International consulting firm Deloitte has issued a report listing what it believes are the technology trends that are most relevant to today's CIO. Deloitte has divided these trends into two groups, "emerging enablers" and "disruptive deployments."

Emerging enablers, says Deloitte, are core disciplines that have evolved within the enterprise. CIOs have likely addressed these topics in the past but Deloitte argues they deserve another look due to specific factors in the technology or business environment. Disruptive deployments, on the other hand, represent significant new opportunities -- offering new business models or transformative ways to operate. The technologies themselves may not be disruptive, but in being deployed they may well disrupt the cost, capabilities, or even the core operating model of IT and the business.

With either group it's important for the CIO not to sit on the sidelines and wait for these trends to shape their businesses. The key, Deloitte says, is to stay in control and use them to your advantage.

Information Management Goes Enterprise (Emerging Enabler)

Enterprise Information Management (EIM) is about embedding information quality and management into everyone's job description. It needs to shift from a back-office IT responsibility to an organic part of how business gets done at the point of business impact. To accomplish this, Deloitte says, CIOs shouldn't wait around for a technology-based silver bullet. Instead, they need to develop a strategic plan for EIM and take measured steps to improve their capabilities in that area.

CIO Operational Excellence (Emerging Enabler)

With recent cost-cutting due to the global financial crisis, IT operational excellence has become critical for many organizations. As a result, CIOs have revisited the basics in terms of process effectiveness and overall efficiency of the business of IT. The efficiencies that have resulted allow IT funds to be redirected now toward strategic initiatives that create more value for the business, says the consulting firm. By providing clarity around the cost, nature and expectations of IT services, significant improvements are being achieved around business and IT alignment. The technological implications of achieving operational excellence cannot be addressed, however, without making simultaneous advances in disciplined governance, organizational and process considerations.
Cyber-security (Emerging Enabler)

So what's new here? Not much really, but Deloitte reminds us that today cyber-security must embrace both security and privacy as foundational elements of the business. An effective cyber-threat intelligence program (CTI) also needs to be systemic, well-funded, enterprise-wide and championed in the C-suite. In other words, it's no longer just IT's responsibility but a key component of any enterprise risk management strategy.

Best-of-Breed Enterprise Applications (Emerging Enabler)

CIOs have been down this road many times before, but today IT has the ability to customize individual services or processes at a granular level, enabling the overarching application to be sourced by the best-fit solution, regardless of package or custom, external or internal, owned or subscribed. Then there's software as a service (SaaS), where today vendors are building market segments based on the idea that a company's business requirements can be met by a mixture of specialized solutions that are diversely sourced. The CIO's big challenge here, Deloitte says, is to convince organizations to revisit and revitalize their application strategies and portfolios.

Wireless and Mobility (Emerging Enabler)

Mobile and wireless device and infrastructure improvements, plus an abundance of apps, are providing companies with new business capabilities and enabling them to rethink business processes. So how does that affect CIOs? IT needs to needs to work in defining the business requirements as a first step, Deloitte says. That means determining the targeted use cases by indentifying stakeholders and business scenarios that could benefit most, and pinpoint the specific business process improvements and new capabilities that will be enabled.

Virtualization (Emerging Enabler)

Aside from reducing cost and increasing effectiveness, virtualization can also change the IT operating model. One example involves IT chargeback, where business and IT can have different levels of virtualization deployed for servers, storage and network. Different levels have different chargeback models that should be deployed across the organization. Additionally, strategies to provide support of virtual resources may require a realignment of technical resources and a fundamental shift in responsibilities. The move toward IT services with leased or even "pay as you go" resources will require change management in order to achieve effective adoption.

Information Automation (Disruptive Deployment)

Here Deloitte is talking about business intelligence and analytics, and the demand for these capabilities will grow with cloud adoption and service orientation. Information increasingly will become the currency on which business strategy can be conducted. Only by acting on this shift in priorities can organizations expect to be ready for the next cycles of competition and collaboration, Deloitte maintains.

Value-Driven Application Management Services (Disruptive Deployment)

Deloitte views the transition to a value-oriented delivery model in application management services (AMS) as transformative in nature -- and says it potentially can prove truly disruptive. Successfully adopting the value-driven AMS model requires a shift to service-driven IT as well as the need for business operations to transcend historical issues with IT and business process outsourcing. The tier model for AMS retains market arbitrage principles on the lower maturity levels -- suppliers must match cost structure and service levels as table stakes. Beyond cost and scale, however, AMS provides a vehicle for enabling business results, allowing for resource fluctuations, distribution of risk and a full set of specialized, accessible skill sets.

User Engagement (Disruptive Deployment)

The trend here is based on the shift in mentality from laptops and desktops being the only terminal devices. These, of course, are being replaced by mobile, social media and entertainment assets -- many of which, Deloitte notes, are not be owned, leased or controlled by the organization, meaning users may not be directly engaged with their companies. The challenge for CIOs as well as the enterprise? Regain user engagement, starting with looking at the user value chain; study user behavior with a focus on what different systems, data feeds, communication, and unstructured activities are needed for employees to do their jobs. From there, says Deloitte, identify and prioritize the actual business scenarios that can develop as the result of increased user engagement -- i.e., bringing the bloggers, tweeters and Facebookers back into the corporate fold.

Services Thinking (Disruptive Deployment)

The next step with service-oriented architecture is what some are calling service-oriented business architecture (SOBA), which has been moved outside IT and into business strategy, organizational design and governance models. The goal for CIOs is to establish a new, holistic way to manage the relationship between IT and business. Here, make sure you define the goals and vision sufficiently to guide both initial and incremental investments in using SOBA to drive more business value.

Asset Intelligence (Disruptive Deployment)

Today, with advances in auto-ID, sensors, remotes and wireless devices, it's now possible for any and all business assets to transmit data and initiate events. This provides companies with the opportunity to redesign their IT environment using assets -- anything that's important to the company. Asset intelligence provides information such as the temperatures and humidity levels of facilities and the location of raw materials. But being able to piece events together and respond to the signals generated by the assets proactively is what really makes this trend valuable.

Cloud Revolution (Disruptive Deployment)

What more is there to say about cloud computing? Deloitte recommends starting the journey slowly with a pilot project. Don't assume cloud represents a silver bullet. Plan, measure and evaluate costs and benefits before, during and after. Finally, says the firm, don't forget to address the underlying issues of the new business or operating model. What, for example, are the account treatments for cloud subscription costs? What about tax jurisdictions for location-independent service provisioning? These are significant but often overlooked issues.