The IT industry has reached a crossroads, shaped by the macro-trends of globalisation and balanced by the more sobering reality of recession and our increased responsibilities around Green IT. Within that, the online world is undergoing the most significant transformation in its history, and there is a blurring of professional and personal space through the explosion in social media and online communications.
Change creates opportunity for those that embrace it and eagerly adopt new routes to innovation opened up by mass-adoption of the Internet. The trick is to harness all of this dynamism and make sense of it, in order to provide innovative and realistic solutions that can meet the growing needs of today’s organisations.
The “Connected Era” is being driven by a surge in always on connectivity; from mobile technology and unified communications, to RFID, overnight delivery and the immediate needs of today’s global businesses. It opens up new opportunities for innovation and interaction with our customers, friends and peers, utilising technology to make our lives simpler and more efficient. But somewhere along the way, the underlying infrastructure has become too complicated. The same systems that deliver so much benefit can also be expensive, difficult to operate and hard to maintain. Some complexity is unavoidable, providing differentiation and competitive advantage, but there is unnecessary complexity that needs to be identified and removed in order for our innovation vision to become a reality.
Vying variables
CIOs are faced with escalating management and cost issues in the data centre. Server sprawl, storage constraints, data protection and security concerns, compounded by ultra-mobile always-connected devices, continue to put pressure on resource and budgets. To cope with these pressures and the flood of digital data predicted to be generated worldwide by 2010, our customers have found themselves adding more machines, employing more staff and hiring more consultants to manage it all.
The CIO dilemma is that innovation is typically constrained today, in times when we need it most. A typical business spends only 30% of its IT budget driving innovation to support strategic business growth or aid cost control. That means 70% of the budget is spent on ongoing IT maintenance, compounded by reduced budgets with CIOs required to deliver the same or greater levels of service at a lower cost. CIOs need to scale and protect their current environment without creating more complexity, through realigning their investment.
What has become clear today is that this 30/70 investment ratio is no longer sustainable. If the EU is to meet its goals of fostering innovation, research and entrepreneurship across Europe (note 1), and if organisations are going to ride out the current recession; then the imbalance of investment on maintenance versus innovation needs to be quickly addressed by all sectors. For this to happen IT must be simplified. Ultimately, it is imperative that organisations act now to address the spiralling problem of IT complexity – ensuring long-term goals and objectives are still achievable and innovation does not suffer.
Ways opening
Fortunately, the proprietary systems that once dominated data centres are steadily giving way to standards-based computing, both more affordable and easier to maintain. But it’s not just a matter of getting the hardware right. Virtualisation technologies can make space in the data centre, save energy and streamline manageability; data can be de-duplicated and storage consolidated and tiered. Solutions that can be delivered from “the cloud” are becoming more attractive, economically, environmentally and in terms of performance. And a great deal of service, support and maintenance can now be handled remotely.
The positive news is that organisations are now exposed to more opportunities to innovate than ever before. Fundamentally, there’s increased opportunity to interact directly with customers. Listening to customers has been forever redefined; whereas it used to mean commissioning a customer survey, it is now about real-time engagement with your customers (and critics) online, then using those relationships to create a smarter, more innovative business. Tapping into the ideas of your customers is like having an open source R&D lab. Since February 2007, Dell has used such channels to encourage the sharing of ideas to improve products and services, at IdeaStorm.com. The site has attracted more than 11,000 ideas and boasts 280+ ideas in action.
360-degree inclusion
Across the industry, there are other examples of innovative IT in action, not least in the education sector. Using solutions such as unified communications (UC), our consulting team has supported local education and authorities in making the virtual classroom a reality. As well as bringing more innovative learning techniques, this technology is key in helping the sector meet government directives around 14-19 schooling (note 2) and inclusion. By incorporating easy-to-use Office Communicator Server (OCS) based voice and video conferencing, which enables 360 degree round table discussions, remote learners can now see their peers and fully participate. Location need no longer be a barrier to education.
Despite what the sceptics may be saying, I believe much progress has already been made across the private and public sectors. I continue to see more examples of innovative programmes in action. I have been involved in IT all my professional life and believe we’re embarking on our most dynamic period of technological innovation yet, opening up unseen levels of customer intimacy to those that can harness it.
The spread of social media and inventive communication methods, boosted by a real hunger within the corporate world and public sector to throw off legacy mindsets and get serious about investing in the future, will further open up the connected era. But managing complexity and keeping us all connected will continue to be the greatest challenge, and this calls for smart IT investments that will allow CIOs to do more with less, as they focus their energies and budgets on future innovation.
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