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Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, And Social: Convergence Will Bring Even More Disruption

Oracle

By Ravi Puri, Senior Vice President, North America Oracle Consulting Services

Everywhere you look, there is an article, blog post or tweet about one of the mega trends in technology—cloud, big data, mobility or social. As just one data point, a Google search on “cloud computing” yielded more than 300 million results.

These trends are already having a profound impact on our business and personal lives, and they will  continue to impact how we do our jobs, how we communicate, and how we gather, manage and use data to learn and make better decisions.

In my experience in IT consulting, I have found that many people have different—sometimes very different—views on what these trends are and how they are beneficial. Here is how my team defines them:

Cloud:  Cloud is often the most misunderstood big trend today. There are many types and variations of cloud computing including public, private and hybrid, delivering platform, infrastructure and software as a service.  Businesses are spending 4 times more on IT than on innovation. Cloud computing can reverse that while simultaneously reducing costs, increasing application deployment times and making IT more agile.

Big Data and Analytics: This trend uses the exponential growth in available data to perform analytics that model and control processes, identify deep trends and make better business decisions. This torrent of new data offers an opportunity to gain unprecedented insight and to quickly test new ideas. It also provides the power to fundamentally change business operations.

Mobile:  The mobility story is more than a smart phone connected to the web. It involves data mobility and the idea of safe and secure data transfer any time, any place, on any device.  Related issues include secure corporate intranet access by employees on personal devices, secure mobile point of sale devices, wireless RFID-enabled tracking devices for supply chain management, and terminal devices running business applications that track real time shipping detail.

Social Media It is the easiest to understand and perhaps the hardest to manage and control. Social media is changing the way businesses market their brands. It is also fosters how consumers share and discover new brand experiences and is creating a consumer who often knows more about the products and services they are procuring than the marketers and merchandisers selling them.

You are probably familiar with the above trends, but what you may not realize is that they’re starting to converge with, yet again, major implications. Mobility and social are driving huge changes in the business world. For example, a shopper goes into a store because they know from a Facebook post that the store has a great new product, then they make the purchase and tweet about it.  That tweet drives more friends to do the same. The store is able to gather these tweets, feed them into an analytics program that adjusts forecast and re-routes the closest inventory (which they know through mobile RFID tracking) to that store to meet the product demand micro-burst in real time.

Likewise, big data and cloud are converging to deliver tremendous scalability and agility , resulting in deep analytical insights that help businesses become increasingly more competitive and efficient.

The convergence of these trends is creating a coming wave of disruption that will let companies drive improved customer satisfaction, sustainable competitive advantage and significant growth in enterprise value—but only if you are ready for it.

Preparing For Transformation

An effective transformation starts with the CEO and requires collaboration across the enterprise. The CEO must have a vision for where the trends can drive value and mandate the organization to put these strategies (cloud, analytics, mobile, social) at the top of the business agenda.

Next the focus moves to the CIO or CMO. Although IT is ideally leading on technology trends, in this day and age of always-connected Millennials and an exploding digital marketing landscape, I often see that marketing is out in front of the IT organization, demanding a level of access to—and understanding of—the customer base that was unheard of a few years ago, but that is now essential to the growth of the businesss.

Whether the CIO is leading the charge or moving rapidly to catch up with marketing, I urge CIOs to put a strategy around cloud, analytics, mobile, and social convergence at the top of their agenda. In order to formulate this strategy, I recommend that the CIO explore critical questions in several areas.

Cost Structure.  Cloud provides for an asset-light model which, while lowering total cost of ownership, does result in a relative increase in operating expense while decreasing capital expenditure. Here are some questions for deeper discovery:

  • Is the IT budget structured to make this adjustment?
  • In companies where IT cost is charged back to profit centers, are the Line of Business (LOB) leaders prepared for this change in their cost structure?
  • Are finance and analyst relations aware of the changing cost structure so they can get ahead of that change in their communications to the investor community?
  • Is there a plan in place to re-invest capital gained from the move to these more efficient models?

Technology Capabilities.  While cloud enables an IT organization to decrease the use of hard assets, it requires more sophistication in certain areas, including integration and security.

  • Is the right technology backbone in place to support what will likely become multiple cloud and mobile environments, including public, private, and mobile backend-as-a-service clouds, and the hybrid clouds that tie them together?
  • If the technology backbone is not in place, what is the plan to get there?
  • Which new projects can be launched initially on the new backbone in order to demonstrate value rapidly?

Human Capital.  In the midst of this rapid convergence of major technology trends, it’s critical that CIOs remember to stop and consider the human side of the equation.

  • Are the people in the IT organization ready for this change?
  • How is the IT organization split among the three key generations currently in the workforce: Boomer, Gen X, and Millennials?
  • Convergence may enable the IT shop to reduce its headcount. Are there strategies in place to drive an effective workforce transition and then train those who remain to ensure that they are at the top of their game working in this new environment?

Transition.  Many CIOs I speak with are under immense pressure to leapfrog from the past to the future, today. But achieving a converged strategy cannot succeed without deliberation and planning, guided by experience.

  • Is there a roadmap in place that delineates when these technologies will be invested in, the expected enhancements, the business value provided, and the plan to sunset soon-to-become-legacy technology and applications?
  • Is there a plan and capability in place to continually monitor the environment to evaluate additional changes being caused by these trends, and incorporate them when it makes sense?

Finally, the strategy must move to—or back to—the LOBs. Again, marketing is typically at the forefront of this conversation. In order to be successful, each LOB and functional leader must:

  • Have an understanding of the IT roadmap, including what critical business services will be provided through public clouds, what services will be provided in-house, and what services require an integration between the two.
  • Have been provided an explicit mandate that they will communicate emerging business changes and trends to IT—collaboration must be fostered across the enterprise in this new environment.  This cannot be within the purview of IT . Every business leader in the enterprise must have a tangible stake in making the value that cloud, analytics, mobile, and social can offer a reality.

Change Is Constant

Having followed technology trends like this for many years, one thing I can tell you for certain is that the emergence and convergence of these mega trends will continue to evolve. There will be new trends and new innovations leveraging variations of these four trends.

As companies seize these opportunities, they can accelerate time to value and minimize risk by integrating world-class planning and processes, rapid deployment methodologies and a proven migration experience to every engagement.

For more on ways to drive and manage business transformation, see:

Oracle Consulting Services' Future State Blog

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