President of Verizon Enterprise Solutions John Stratton
Yesterday, the president of Verizon Enterprise Solutions, John Stratton discussed how technology shifts would transform the IT landscape with a group of Industry Analysts. Verizon believes we've entered the next major era of computing that is based on cloud and mobility.
Stratton said we experience a 10X growth in number of users with each wave computing. He told us that this wave will create a discontinuity in a company’s business processes and commercial models. He likened it to the days of Wang and how a business must reinvent itself during each technology shift or risk destruction. Verizon believes that its standing in networks, mobility and cloud will afford it the opportunity to reinvent itself as we move into this next generation of computing.
Stratton’s assessment of the new IT landscape is spot on. Yet it’s unclear that businesses understand the order of magnitude shift that Mr. Stratton described. I also believe that we've entered the Mobile Cloud era (MOCLO). Mobile isn’t just an access method or a collection of cool devices. The move to mobile has created new operating systems (OS) for tablets and phones but will also change the OS for next generation laptops and desktops. In fact, this new foundation software will run across a wide range of connected devices that span phones to automobiles.
This is the Post PC era taken to a new level. How? Over time this new foundational software and these new devices will force a businesses to change how it builds applications and engineers its business processes. Applications will be device aware, location aware and network/cloud aware. Business processes will assume a multi-device landscape and data portability. The M2M market is also evolving to a set of services to compliment connected modules. In some cases those services are customer facing like “smart home” and “smart energy” services. In other cases, services are business related such as reporting and analytics services based on monitoring items such as sensors.
The cloud is also more than just cheap storage and processing power that resides outside of the corporation. Mobile devices and cloud technologies will shift IT's vision of where data should be located and how it will be accessed. Rather than an “on-premise” or “off-premise” dialogue, a business will build policies on where data should reside and how it should be accessed. Mobile and cloud shatter the “firewall/DMZ” approach where all data is locked inside the corporate walls. In the MOCLO era, firms will create context-aware security profiles that allow data to move seamlessly and securely between the corporation, the cloud and devices. These profiles will be based on items such as type of device, location, users, regulations and roles.
In the MOCLO era, IT will also leverage the cloud for real-time analytics and actionable business intelligence on the go. Verizon provided an example of this when it discussed its cloud-based fraud management service for healthcare, which uses predictive modeling technology to examine health care payment requests and route potentially fraudulent claims to case managers for investigation. This is just one example of many to come. Identity and real time analytics services that provide contextual and actionable information are nascent. The possibilities for new connected devices and new services based on integrating the data from those devices with open data from the cloud are endless.
To participate in the MOCLO era, businesses and vendors must have APIs that allow the exchange of data between companies and services. Verizon mentioned its focus on creating APIs to participate in the new world ecosystem. These are just several of the changes that I believe will occur over the next 5 years. Companies that understand and prepare for these tectonic shifts will deliver competitive advantage with technology. What's your perspective? Contact Lopez Research to share your thoughts on the MOCLO era.
