'Afraid of consumerisation of IT? Need not be'

KOLLAM, INDIA: Information technology (IT) is no longer restricted to the four walls of an enterprise. Today, where having one mobile device is a passé and more than one is the in thing, the world of IT is gradually undergoing change and moving out of its well protected walls, heading towards consumerisation.

In an age where people believe that they can do more with tools that are outside the company than inside, the likes of Facebook, Twitters and iPads have wiggled through the walls of enterprise, noted Ray Wang, principal analyst & CEO at Constellation Research, on the second day of CIOL, DataQuest C-Change 2012, here.

However, the same changes are bringing along challenges galore for IT heads or the chief information officers.

“Every CIO today thinks that they are charge of IT in their organization, but are not because there are lots of things going on in the background which they are not aware of,’ he added.

Today, workplace dynamics are changing, technology adoptions are happenings at a faster pace, business models are changing and macro dynamics of company is undergoing change.

Going forward, mobile, social, cloud, big data & analytics and video and unified communications, will be the five important trends that will dominate enterprise conversation for the decade

“Consumerisation of IT requires a shift of enterprise class. Business models need to be simple, scalable and sexy, whereas, IT requirements need to be safe, secure and sustainable and these should co-exist,” he added.

Under this scenario, CIOs are responsible to take care of these changes because these changes impact their businesses, he noted.

On the other hand, these changes are inevitable, and so the challenge today is how to make use of these changes for the benefit of an enterprise.

So the new CIO is not just the chief information officer alone, but he/she needs to also don the caps of chief integration/innovation/infrastructure/and intelligence officers.

And going forward this ‘five faced’ CIO need to apply the following five steps for success:

Begin with the end in mind,

Identify cost optimization to pay for innovation,

Apply design thinking to re-evaluate business models,

Determine which disruptive technology to adopt and not adopt, and

Fail fast, iterate and keep experimenting.