Time for both Machinists and Digital Humanists in IT

GOA, INDIA: On one hand the stress on solid processes and securing infrastructure would continue but on the other hand agility and digitization would run parallel and with equal force. Heralding the split-personality state in IT strategy, Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of Research today explained how both machinists and digital humanists would run the IT and business engines in near future.

He also emphasized the emergence of services as a critical component and driver of IT spends.

“This year enterprises will spend over $40 billion designing, implementing and operating the Internet of Things,” he put forth. “Every piece of equipment, anything of value, will have embedded sensors. This means leading asset-intensive enterprises will have over half a million IP addressable objects in 2020.”

Gartner estimates that 50 per cent of all technology sales people are actively selling direct to business units, not IT departments.

“Thirty-eight per cent of the total IT spend is outside of IT already, with a disproportionate amount in digital.” Sondergaard said. “Digital startups sit inside your own organization, in your marketing department, in HR, in logistics and in sales. Your business units are acting as technology startups.”

He reminded strongly that almost 50 per cent of spends are going to happen outside IT by 2017 and hence conventional approaches of lifecycle hardware, long-term service contracts etc would be replaced by ‘thought for business services before anything else’, and a corresponding leaning of spends towards services and not just hardware or software.

Dovetailing the view, Partha Iyengar, distinguished analyst and Gartner India head of research zoomed the lens on how India, which has always been a services space, is already witnessing the new undisputed role of behaving like technology start-ups that businesses are donning here.

This gets more interesting as Indian IT spending growth is appearing to be higher than global one, with an almost 10 per cent spike vs. a 1 per cent surge respectively.

IT spending in India, as Gartner sees it, is projected to total $73.3 billion in 2015, a 9.4 per cent increase from the $67.1 billion forecast for 2014.

“India is forecast to be the third largest IT market within the Asia/Pacific region by the end of 2016 and will further progress to become the second largest market for IT by the end of 2018,” Sondergaard added. “Much of the growth from being the number four market in Asia/Pacific to number three is likely to happen in 2015.”

At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo today, Sondergaard, had amplified the role of services in IT spends as well, explaining that IT services will record the strongest revenue growth at 15.7 per cent in 2015; and software will grow at 14 per cent.

“The impact that the digital business economy is having on the IT industry is dramatic. Since 2013 650 million new physical objects have come online. 3D printers became a billion dollar market; 10 per cent of automobiles became connected; and the number of Chief Data Officers and Chief Digital Officer positions have doubled. In 2015, all of these things will double again,” Sondergaard translated the new trends in terms of skill requirements outlining that augmented reality or Internet of Things or digital business moments are going to eke out new-age skills in robotics, automated judgement and Internet forces by 2017.

“Smart robots will appear not just on the manufacturing floor, where they do physical work, but in the workplace and even in the home. Smart machines will automate decision making. Therefore, they will not only affect jobs based on physical labor, but they will also impact jobs based on complex knowledge worker tasks.”

He gave many examples and iterated that new skills and a start-up-oriented, digital milieu is going to redefine IT budgets and management to a great extent in the next few years.