IT Technology Trends Picking the winners

IT, Technology Trends: Picking the winners

For real business flexibility and innovative business solutions, it’s time to experiment with the last mile technologies such as RFID

Sandhya Sule

Monday, March 31, 2008

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Every year the market is flooded with predictions, trends, niche technology reviews and opinions on the "technology radar" for the next year. Yet we know that no amount of "modeling" or "analysis" is able to accurately predict which technology will be the winner or loser, simply because there are multiple drivers and inhibitors in the game, with complex interests and differing end goals.

And, it further gets compounded if you are not a direct "influencer" to the market, as is the case with IT services companies.

In this article, let's try to address the problem of technology identification that most CIOs face today.

Business is all about making money!

The business of technology has very little to do with technology being esoteric, new or "next gen". The CEO is interested in new technology if it can help to increase his top line, delight his customers, and improve his bottom line by using the technology as a lever to reduce operational expenses, while allowing fine grained control and monitoring of the organization, for compliance and timely decision making.

On the other hand the technocrats in the organization (and these would be from the CIO's or CTO's team) select and champion emerging technology based on some facts, some hypothesis and some hype!
But we forget technology innovation and adoption is not cheap, and at the same time risky. Every organization's risk-taking ability varies and management gurus have partitioned organizations into- techies, visionaries, pragmatics, conservatives and skeptics based on the "technology culture" they exhibit.

The partitioning is based on the "technology focus" organizations exhibit and their ability to take risks on emerging technologies and innovate for business transformation.

While organizations have a culture as stated above and defined risk taking ability, we have often seen competition influence technology choices and even the declared 'laggards' are forced to invest and take risks simply because their competition is doing so.

It's important to understand the industry as a whole, the business models that are emerging and the technology choices competitors make. Technology readiness and the ability to bet on emerging technologies, is not the only reason why adopters are classified as they are.

Geoffrey Moore in his seminal work redefined the Technology Adoption Lifecycle (TAL) from a market development perspective and created the "chasm" between the visionaries and the pragmatics. He claimed that overall environmental characteristics play an important role in market development phases rather than solely by adopter psychographics.

Moore's model also introduces gaps between each subsequent phase. These gaps represent transitions where market momentum can be lost if organizations fail to adjust their strategy to accommodate the new adopter segment's values, priorities, motivations and fears.

Creating the perfect fit

Now that you have a handle on what the industry is moving towards, and your likely strategic and technology focus, create a "prioritized technology matrix as there are "many ways to achieve the stated goals and emerging technology adoption is not a "one shoe fits all" kind of venture.

Hence engage into a dialogue with the stakeholders, at all levels to map what the CEO wants, what the technocrats in the organization are looking for and what the business is trying to achieve in the short and long term.

Based on our market and technology research, here are some pointers:

SOA is here to stay and is no longer limited to "integration" and "web services". The first level adoption is exposing organizations to faster ways of introducing new products, services and business models, and making it to the "strategic initiatives" list.
The rich user experience that techniques such as AJAX Adobe Flash, Flex are providing is propelling the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in the front end. High bandwidth Internet access, cheap and powerful mobile devices, gadgets and social networking and personalization technologies such as Mashups will further propel this into mainstream in the near future.
Gartner Inc. analysts predict that, business process management (BPM) will become the driver for SOA implementations. The technology for the convergence of BPM and SOA may not fully mature until 2010, but the analysts urge business adopt "process architecture" now if they want to take a leadership role in this trend. We recommend that CIOs evaluate composite application frameworks that address both process and architecture flexibility needs of your organization
With reducing IT budgets and doing more with less, Server Virtualization and Consolidation is not a strategic requirement any longer. Virtualization technologies like Grid computing are targeted to create scalable solutions without human intervention and provide ability to increase computing capabilities within the same cost.
While there is enough noise about business intelligence solutions, the key to having actionable information is "good data", in terms of time, place and events. For real business flexibility and innovative business solutions, it's time to experiment with the last mile technologies such as RFID, Wireless sensor networks, converged fixed and mobile networks, smart mobile devices in the context of your business.

(The author is Associate Vice President, PTI Group, Patni Computer Systems. The views are personal. CIOL.com or CyberMedia Group need not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in part or in full)

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