Predictions 2013: The year of transformation

BANGALORE, INDIA: It is that time of the year that IT and business leaders define the new trends for the times to come. Mostly, these predictions are connected with the trends of the year that has gone by and weave a similar thought process. Although the fundamentals remain the same for the coming year however they are tied to a principal element - ‘Transformation'. Every disruptive technology such as Cloud, Big Data that has created ripples in the IT world in 2012 will lead to transformation of IT, business and workforce in 2013.

This transformation is being led by a rapid evolution to a digital world wherein organizations are slowly waking up to the power of data. To reinforce this evolution, perhaps the latest evidence comes from the EMC-IDC on the "Digital Universe". Findings suggest that the proliferation of devices such as PCs and smartphones worldwide, increased Internet access within emerging markets and the boost in data from machines such as surveillance cameras or smart meters has contributed to the doubling of the digital universe within the past two years alone -- to a mammoth 2.8 ZB.

The study further reveals that the digital universe will reach 40 ZB by 2020.This findings also suggest that we're creating far more information -- at a much faster rate -- than previously thought just a short year ago. We are moving to a virtual world and our world is getting re-made, before our eyes in the process. Businesses and organizations now have to re-engineer their fundamental models for this new world. The enterprise IT functions now have to be re-engineered to support these new models.

Global trends, like Big Data, cloud computing, and advanced security threats, are challenging the relationship between IT and the business, forcing a new operating model for IT. CIOs today must act like independent service providers, competing for the end user's business in an open marketplace. A global survey by EMC suggests the transforming role of a CIO in the prevalent times. CIOs are at the center of value creation with technologies like Big Data and cloud fueling the evolution. These trends will change the profile and makeup of IT staff along with skills and new roles will emerge to take on this new digital era.

The survey further divulges that cloud computing and virtualization are transforming IT on a global scale, by increasing efficiency, improving business agility and making IT personnel not only more productive, but more attuned to service delivery in their relationship with business units. Majority of the data which will be produced by 2020 will reside over the cloud technologies.

Here are the top five trends that I see in 2013:

#1 Digital Business Model

SCAM (social, cloud, analytics, mobile) will transform business and IT. Each of the four areas are critical

but their relevancy in isolation pales beside their power when combined together.  The result would be a "digital business model" -- a complete re-envisioning of an organization's value proposition using entirely digital construct.

#2 -- Enterprise Users Going Mobile

The vast majority of IT organizations have very limited ability to control over the consumption of mobile services by their knowledge workers. Most of users are now quite comfortable with all of this, and are strongly motivated to set up our own IT environments completely outside the view of enterprise IT. I think that 2013 will be the year when most enterprise IT organizations fully come to terms with the fact that mobility is a reality, and start the unenviable work of building enterprise mobility environments that bring users back into the fold by offering a superior set of services.

#3 -- Big Data Analytics Starts To Change IT Thinking

Big data analytics is one of those tools that can be applied to just about any pressing business problem, and that includes the business of running IT itself. During 2013, we'll see the big data analytics discussion take root with IT professionals around the globe including India -- not as something that they have to deliver to the business, but as toolset that they can use to better run their own businesses. It will inevitably start with the security community, but it won't be long before the other disciplines: infrastructure, applications, user experience, etc. start to appreciate the power of a good predictive model.

#4 -- App Factories Become The New Model

Applications are ideally fresh instantiations of business ideas, put into practice as quickly as possible, learned from and enhanced. Unfortunately, the norm seems to be development processes heavily biased towards really big applications with big teams and big investments. But, this will start changing in 2013 especially in larger enterprise IT settings as business users start demanding it from IT.

#5 -- Everything Goes "Software Defined" -- And "As-A-Service"

The "software-defined" descriptor is now everywhere.  It is less about a precise technology definition, and more about an idealized architectural philosophy going forward: IT resources made available as dynamically provisioned and composed virtual instances. In 2013, more and more IT vendors pivoting towards the new supply and demand concepts:  IT capabilities produced through dynamic instantiation of virtual instances, and variably consumed as a service.

The author is president at EMC India & SAARC.