The perfect storm of emerging technology from mobile to cloud and big data is driving significant disruption within the corporate IT department. While change is hard, it also brings opportunities for better utilization of enterprise data.
Cloud has moved data out of the corporate datacenter and BYOD has pushed hardware management to the user. These trends are shifting the responsibilities of IT departments from managing hardware to managing enterprise data and supporting new ways to leverage this corporate asset.
Data such as: customer lists, customer preferences, product specs, sales trends, operational data, are just a few examples of the vast amount of enterprise data that support competitive advantages. Making this data more accessible to users anywhere, anytime, on any device and in any format can make workers more productive and companies more successful. In the old days, IT controlled how data was stored accessed and consumed, today this control is being decentralized and users have a much greater influence on the accessibility of these digital assets, creating new opportunities for of business process innovation that provides a higher Return on Data (ROD).
In order to achieve a greater ROD, a shift in mindset is beginning to emerge within the organization where IT refocuses on facilitating user’s access to data and sustaining new ways to utilize data, improving productivity. The concept of IT pushing solutions to users is dying and collaboration between IT and end users will be the future.
As consumerization has infiltrated IT, employees are discovering and downloading consumer applications and applying them to their work tasks. In many cases this is leading to significant security risks but also improves the efficiency of the worker. IT managers who understand security and compliance issues need to work with users to make them aware of enterprise ready applications and solutions that comply with company security standards. Outlawing consumer applications will not work as users will go behind IT’s back and use them anyway. IT needs to understand the needs and processes of users so they can make solutions available and apply existing solutions in new ways to support end users business process innovations while still protecting enterprise data.
While collaboration and communication around existing solutions and applications is important, significant opportunities exist through increased focus on users in the application development process. The cloud is enabling mobile developers to leverage new user centric design techniques, leading to more user friendly and functional applications.
The plethora of mobile form factors and screens connecting to the internet is forcing, developers to create tools, technologies and platforms that support these various front ends. On the backend, APIs are making data much more accusable and horizontal. With databases more flexible and open, developers can focus squarely on the user’s needs and don’t need to develop around data models. With flexible cross platform front end development tools coming to market, developers can also more effectively present data tailored to a particular device. These trends are leading to more agile development techniques where rapid iteration is crating tailored and innovative experiences.
The cloud is also providing an environment for develops, designers and stakeholders to collaborate. In the near future, development platforms in the cloud will provide an environment where designers, developers and stakeholders can work together on apps using the same code base. Non-techies can create interfaces thought WYSWG and drag and drop tools while developers can do the hard core coding that incorporates data, business logic and services. This will all be done on a single platform in the cloud.
The transformation of the IT function in the enterprise is just beginning and flexibility agility and collaboration will enable forward thinking enterprises rise above their competition. IT departments that push back on this emerging trend will find themselves replaced by more dynamic teams.
