Only a few days away from the new year, many crystal balls are spinning, colorful magic hats are throwing, and some are eating out their fortune cookies, we, also start shaking up our tea leaf, the leaf danced around and shaped into the silver elephant: her ears like the big question marks, her legs like pillars of knowledge hall, her trunks stretch out the myth., etc. Could it symbolize 2012 be the year of wisdom, for individual, for technology, for business and for humanity? Or the year of strength: the power for overcoming obstacle and the magic for creative disruption, to framework more agile, open and intelligent businesses and society?
Technology brings up many revolutionary and evolutionary progress to advance human society, may Year of 2012 be the year of wisdom via the following ten transformative trends spit out from big elephant’s trunk:
- Compete for Uniqueness
If business philosophy of 20th century is more about competing for win or the best, then the more digitized, interconnected era of 21st century is about competing for uniqueness; the businesses are facing unprecedented uncertainties, accelerated changes and hyper-competitive global competitions, winning needs a purpose, growth needs a vision.
Competing for uniqueness means to build up the business strategy to amplify your purpose and reflect your vision through the latest technology and talent people. The uniqueness could mean the enchanting customer service, the niche marketing player or the innovation powerhouse., etc.
Technology becomes the competitive edge to help business recognize the future trend, re-imagine the possible new business potential, build up the process strength and re-invent new products or services.
- Value-Creating IT Leadership
There are many great insight and brainstorms about future of IT leadership, future is here, the monolithic heavyweight IT need be transformed into more mosaic style lightweight digital technology such as cloud/mobile/social, from the cost center to value center; the IT leadership would follow the same theme: from command-control to more open and collaborative; CIO need transform from infrastructure manager to value creator, the business strategist, the culture influencer, the revenue seeker, the cost optimizer, the innovator and the producer.
The value-creating IT leadership push by purpose, pull via the long-term vision, lead though the value and discipline, to manage IT as business, and to value IT as game changer.
- Cloud Keep Flowing
Cloud should be fine in the coming new year, keep flowing, keep growing and keep maturing; to unleash its full potential: from SAAS to IAAS, from PAAS to BPAAS (Business Process as a Service); public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud has the leverage power; community cloud, industry cloud, the key point is to make cloud more customized fit, to grow the cloud-ecosystem via the standardization, customer protection, and the right governance & measurement.
“Doing More with Less” is the new mantra for IT in the new year: Cloud also provides business opportunity to re-imagine enterprise architecture, IT service/delivery model; fast delivery, easy to provision, from CapEx to OpEx, cloud is not just for cost-cutting, more about for value adding.
- Data Keep Growing
Data is like a little mustard seed, now grows into the tallest tree, we are transforming from era of information scarcity into the age of information abundance; Big data grows into the strongest trunk at the information tree; becomes the umbrella of opportunities and also brings some shadow of risks; the advanced analytics will help grab the chance and the next generation of security & GRC will help clear the shadows.
Now data also turns to be the 80% of business asset, data life cycle management need be mastered to gain insight of business effectiveness, and win the foresight of future business, the data analytics will also help amplify customers’ voice, and catch up the wisdom of crowd.
The new wave of analytics tools will be more agile, easy to use, fast to deploy, better to visualize and with widespread adoption rate.
5. Mobile
The mobile computing is beyond talking about smart phone or tablet, It’s about the internet of things, the smart devices connect and flow with cloud, and sharpen & grow with data, it’s about mobile applications & infrastructure to provide customers convenience for shopping and payment, it also about IT providing choices for employees to work remotely, access the right information at the right time to make the right decision .
Mobility is the new life style for people to communicate with the extended border of business, and collaborate or compete from anywhere at anytime. Though it takes years to mature, mobile is stretching its muscles for its strength.
6. Social Keep Soaring
The social computing and enterprise 2.0 technology keep soaring, reach the sky to meet cloud, the next generation of business, some call it social business start fledgling: it means pyramidal organization structure becomes flatter; it means command-control leadership becomes more open, it means static project team becomes more dynamic, it also means, now, talent can grow, without too much limit: you can break through the career ceilings, you may also go cross the functional silos more seamlessly.
Social computing makes business not only more agile, but also wiser, more collaborative working environment via gamification mechanism allows business to incubate the next generation of talent strategy and pipeline, to collect the innovative ideas or feedback via the crowd-sourcing and collective wisdom.
7. BYOD is a new Fashion
The BYOD (Bring you own device) fashions are crafted via the convergence of IT consumerization and enterprise IT, more IT organizations are supporting it to improve staff productivity, and implement cost optimization, Though security and governance are the big barrier to overcome, BYOD might be here for staying.
The BYOD trend empowered with DIY (Do IT Yourself) culture may also decentralize part of IT “chore” to the business, so IT now can more focus on the core service & application portfolio, the customer communication and risk management.
8. Technology Frugality
The IT mantra of The Doing More with Less” is the new trend of technology frugality: from cloud to social, from infrastructure to application, all IT projects are for business’s sake, IT cost optimization structure and business process management will be enhanced by embracing the latest technology trend and price model.
From Technology frugality to innovation frugality, the leverage point is to maximize the business growth via the right technology through the right talent to serve the right customer at the right time with the right cost.
9. Green is New Gold
The sustainability is no longer just for corporate social responsibility, the energy efficiency now is both the bottom line and new gold for IT and business as a whole.
From virtualization to cloud, the more digitized enterprise can explore green IT via the latest technology, the module design and the right analytics tools & metrics.
10. Hybrid “Word” at Hybrid World
The vivid hybrid words become the creative vocabularies in such a wonderful hybrid world:
IT’s new attitude: Boldacious (Bold + Audacious)
IT’s new mindset: Creatology (Creativity + Technology)
IT’s new reality: Simplex (Complex problem via the simple solution)
IT’s new threat: Hackivist + SpamDexing
IT’s new partner: Coopetitor (cooperative + competitor)
IT’s new purpose: Betterness + Manyness
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