14.

4 Six Technology Trends Transforming Business (Technology Vision

2014)

TREND 1 DIGITAL- The convergence of several technologies is blurring the digital

PHYSICAL BLUR: and physical worlds. These converging technologies are:
EXTENDING
INTELLIGENCE TO • The explosion of connected M2M (machine-to-machine)
THE EDGE
devices and IoT (Internet of Things)
• Greater bandwidth
• Advanced robotics, including expanding human–robot
collaboration in industries beyond manufacturing
• Increased use of real time analytics
Six IT Trends Transforming Business

TREND 2 FROM With cloud, social, and collaboration technologies, organizations can
WORKFORCE TO access and leverage talent and resource pools located anywhere and
CROWDSOURCE: everywhere; in effect, an enterprise where ideas are solicited from a
THE RISE OF THE crowd of experts, that is, crowdsourced.
BORDERLESS
ENTERPRISE
6 Great Advantages of Crowdsourcing you can
Benefit From

1. Unexpected solutions to tough problems

2. A greater diversity of thinking
3. A reduced management burden
4. More marketing buzz
5. Faster problem solving
6. A rich source of customer data
Six IT Trends Transforming Business

TREND 3 DATA Because of legacy systems and data silos that limit the value
SUPPLY CHAIN: that organizations get out of their data, enterprise data are
PUTTING often underutilized. Accenture recommends that companies
INFORMATION start treating data like a supply chain. Data need to flow
INTO CIRCULATION
easily through the entire organization—and eventually
throughout the data systems of their business partners.
Achieving seamless data flows and treating data like an
asset require data storage, IT infrastructure, big data platforms,
and APIs. Walgreens, for example, opened its prescription API
to third-party developers in order to make it easier for
customers to refill their prescriptions.
Six IT Trends Transforming Business

TREND 4 For many years, software has been the focus of managers’ attention,
HARNESSING with hardware being largely ignored. With enormous demands for
HYPERSCALE: processing power, hardware matters more than ever in transforming
HARDWARE IS enterprises into digital businesses.
CRITICAL AGAIN
Every industry is being impacted by hyperscale computing
systems—the supersized, scalable, and resilient data centers
pioneered by data-dependent and social media companies.

Hardware is a hotbed of innovation as companies optimize their

power consumption, processors, solid-state memory, and
infrastructure architectures to increase data center efficiency, scale
upward, and drive down costs.
Six IT Trends Transforming Business

TREND 5 BUSINESS Enterprises are following consumers by rapidly adopting apps

OF APPLICATIONS: to create better operational agility. Accenture says that 54
THERE’S AN APP percent of the highest performing IT teams have already
FOR THAT! deployed enterprise app stores. This makes life simpler for
employees and accelerates business growth.

Business apps help to improve the entire company

management and also allow to automate many processes that,
if done manually, could contain errors. They also provide
substantial time savings, since the information is always in the
same place, organized and even shared with those who should
have access.
Six IT Trends Transforming Business

TREND 6 Business runs on networks and digital technology. Technology

ARCHITECTING failures are business failures. That is why companies such as Netflix
RESILIENCE: BUILT use automated testing tools to attack their systems to make sure
TO BE FAILURE they are resilient. For example, Netflix built resiliency into its IT
PROOF architecture by following two design principles: isolation and
redundancy. Isolation means that a failure in one component cannot
bring down the entire edifice, while redundancy means that every
component is backed up by an alternative in case it fails.

IT must adopt a new mindset to ensure that systems are dynamic,

accessible, and continuous—designed not just to specification but
also for resilience under failure and attack.