New technologies rewriting business rules

Addressing delegates at Gartner India CIO & IT Executive Summit Gartner Global Head of Research Peter Sondergaard, shared the analyst firms’ insight into emerging trends that are transforming the technological landscape.

He said up to 1980s Information Technology (IT) was used to automate business functions such as HR, accounts and supply chain. While these boosted productivity of organisations they also created isolated islands of technology. After 1980s, IT was concerned with integrating the different islands to provide a unified experience to the users.

But ‘90s saw proliferation of three technologies which have now gained momentum. The first was PC, which goes back to 1970s. The number of PCs which stood at a few millions in 1990, has now spread exponentially and resulted in widespread availability of the computing power.

The rise of GSM cell phones in 1991 and the SMS in 1994 have made mobile telephony ubiquitous. With the proliferation of smart devices, which pack more power than the computers of 1960s, computing technology has reached pockets of most individuals.

The third force is the rise of Internet which existed as geek technology to exchange simple messages prior to 1990. But with the emergence of worldwide web, Internet usage has exploded in last 10 years.

First, is cloud computing, which delivers scalable and elastic services. Cloud will impact most businesses the way Internet disrupted the music industry by forcing a shift from selling CDs to selling individual songs.

Second is social computing which is most dramatically manifested by Facebook. Social computing will help businesses find new customers, develop and sell products better.

Context aware computing is the result of explosion of wirelessly connected smart devices. Physical devices are also getting connected to Internet and by 2020, 200 billion physical devices will be connected. These provide insights into people’s desires and inputs to create new products.

Pattern-based computing is about making best use of information companies already have. This technology will help companies mine all data they have.
These four new platforms are changing the role of CIOs who will come under pressure to use these platforms to transform their organisations and increase their revenue, he said.