Some of them, like cloud computing, might seem risky. But as Atul Jayawant, president corporate IT & Group CIO, Aditya Birla Group, says, "I see cloud computing as transformative IT. Of course, there will be risks. But what business doesn't have risk? I think IT executives should stick their necks out."
He's right: this isn't the time play safe. Nor is it a time to shy away from being a visionary. In fact, this is probably the most important juncture in the last decade. As the global economy pulls out of the worst recession in most people's lives, there's a new landscape bearing new opportunities. And suddenly first-mover advantage is the new flavor. And your organization needs you to lead it. The 10 for 2010 will help. Some of you are probably going to say, "Dream on!" at our list of next year's technologies. That's ok. Predicting the future isn't easy. The 10 for 2010 are meant to help you meet your goals. Those three simple ideas that will pull your company ahead of the pack, will align your IT better with the business, and will win you more respect from your peers. Why would you want to stay away?
Watch CIOs in conversation with business leaders
“Despite all the security threats, cloud computing is a risk worth taking. We need to take the plunge instead of sitting around and waiting for things to happen.” — Atul Jayawant, President corporate IT & Group CIO, Aditya Birla Group”
Cloud Computing -
Cloud computing is poised to win the title of the most popular buzzword of 2009. It's no surprise. Budget-minded CEOs are ordering IT leaders to look into cloud computing to reduce the amount of expensive hardware in their datacenters; CFOs are interested because they've heard the model can slash costs associated with new IT projects; and tech-savvy employees want it because it sounds cool.
However, the actual number of organizations that have deployed cloud computing remains small - only about 6 percent of Indian CIOs say they are currently using cloud services, according to The State of the CIO 2009.
But that's about to change. The same survey shows that 37 percent of Indian CIOs are actively researching the delivery model (with an intent to use in 2010) and another 50 percent say it is on their radar. And why shouldn't it be? Cloud services, despite their challenges, tease CIOs with lower infrastructure and IT staffing and administration costs.
Embarking on a cloud computing project may take extensive research and preparation, but the payoff can be significant if you can get it right. In order to realize its promised reductions in cost, complexity and time-to-launch, companies need to make sure they pick the right projects to send to the cloud.
CIO Speak - "Cloud computing is definitely going to be an It mantra in 2010. I see SaaS and cloud computing as transformative It. I think more organizations are going to adopt cloud technologies and organizations that have already deployed it will extend it to other areas," says Atul Jayawant, president corporate IT & group CIO, Aditya Birla Group. but what makes the cloud so attractive? "reduced time to-market, scalability, and lowered TCO are the prime business drivers," says Jayawant. However, as the technology gains popularity, concerns are beginning to grow about just how safe the environment is. "Cloud computing is a step in evolution. It is reasonable to have concerns over cloud security, but one must address these in a practical way," says Jayawant. "after all, It risk is business risk. today, the cost of business downtime due to It downtime outweighs the potential It cost benefits from the cloud. and that is perhaps why the actual number of organizations that have deployed cloud computing is still very low." that, he says, shouldn't stop CIOs from auditioning the delivery model. "despite all the security threats, it's a risk worth taking. as the technology evolves, the rules of the game will be defined and a legal system will fall in place. We need to take the plunge instead of sitting around and waiting for things to happen."
Quick fact- 75%Of Indian CIOs say cloud computing will be disruptive in 2010.Source: State of the CIO, 2009
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To Know more about what to expect in 2010 read :
5 Must-Have IT Management Technologies For 2010
Mobile Apps
Mobile applications made an easy entry into our list. Why? 'Cause
we're a humongous country and with built-in, customized, Web apps, smart phones are steadily taking over as the chief tool for enterprise communication and collaboration. We're willing to wager that 56.4 percent of nationally-present Indian companies are using mobile applications to span the enormity of the country. No one's done such a survey but we're pretty sure that figure is accurate. As Bill Piatt, the CIO of the International Finance puts it, "The only thing that works reliably in emerging markets is cell phones." Thank you, Bill. What is helping the cause of les portables, as the French like to call it, are chip makers who are developing mobile processors that look like the PC processors of yesteryear says Carl Claunch, a Gartner analyst. He - and we - believe that there is an increasing potential to create an environment on cell phones to allow an enormous pool of PC applications on a smart phone. So what can you expect in 2010? More mobile money transfers, search and browsing applications, mobile health monitoring and cell-phone advertising, location-based services, among other things. What to watch out for: vociferous debates around customizing apps or using a one size-fits-all approach, security challenges, and users that are smarter than the IT dept.
3.Energy efficiency -
Your skepticism is palpable. But we think that's only part of a long journey. From the Energy Star Program in 1992 to the Copenhagen summit, the green movement and its effects on IT have come a long way. But let's admit it; even as the term turns into a moldy cliché, there are still precious few enterprises that have real green IT programs. Less than 10 percent of 1,200 firms across Asia Pacific have a formal green IT strategy in place, says Springboard Research. But there is reason to believe that things might change in the near future. Nick Jones, a senior analyst at Gartner says green IT is one of the top-10 strategic And it isn't only the analyst community that's going down green street in 2010. The IT industry and its products have been and are likely to remain focused on green IT. The writing's on the wall and it says green.
Quick fact - 36%of Indian IT leaders see alternative energy sources as a
technology worth watching out for next year. Source: State of the CIO, 2009
CIO Speak - Anil Khopkar, GM (MIS) & CIO, Bajaj Auto, is very critical about the elite status given to green It and he questions its sudden upsurge in the industry. Green It, he says, is not a novel concept but merely another buzzword, deliberately created by vendors to sell their equipment under a fancy name. "Give me one specific thing that happened recently that makes green It so important," he challenges. "the concept of green It has been around for many years. Every year there have been significant improvements in servers by manufacturers," he says. "Where do I draw a line and say that some of my actions are driven by technology whereas the rest strive for green It only?" he asks. "If what we are doing now is green It then how would you describe what we have been doing for the last decade or so?" these are some of the questions that nag at Khopkar. his advice to CIOs for 2010? "don't wait for anything big to happen, or new technology to arrive," he says. "Every time you get an opportunity, do whatever you can to improve the environment."
Quick Fact - 91%Of IT decision-makers say that a product's energy efficiency will be an important or very important criterion in their purchasing decisions in 2010. Source: Symantec Green IT report
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To Know more about what to expect in 2010 read :
10 Big Cloud Trends For 2010
10 Top Outsourcing Trends
Desktop Virtualization-
Why do we think desktop virtualization is something to keep tabs on? Simple: we're watching the way the river's flowing. Fact 1: applications are getting increasingly network- and server-based. Fact 2: more users are moving to non-PC devices including smart phones and netbooks. Fact 3: more employees are demanding flexible work times and environments, like working from home.
These drivers are - and will - increasingly boost diversity in hardware, operating systems and applications that organizations have to deal with. Yet CIOs still need to manage their IT infrastructures and their costs. There's one way to synthesize the two opposing forces of user flexibility and IT control and that's desktop virtualization.
A study conducted by Enterprise Management Associates in August showed how important the quality of the user experience was as a criterion enterprises use to evaluate virtual desktop infrastructures. Asked to rate the most important factor in choosing a desktop virtualization system, out of 10 options, 75 percent of companies chose "ease of use for end-users."
But even if your enterprise can swing computing environments that are not user-friendly, virtual desktops can still help you cut costs and increase security.
Of course, there are challenges. Like any other new technology, enterprises are reluctant to be the first one in the desktop virtualization pool. The high capital expense desktop virtualization requires and the fact that it'll require new servers in already densely-packed datacenters are some of the reasons behind the technology's slow start. That said, a senior analyst with the Burton group, Chris Wolf, expects desktop virtualization to pick up speed in 2010. He suspects penetration levels to go up to between 20 and 25 percent. So in 2010 look out for more people around getting on the desktop virtualization boat, slowly at first and faster and faster as the year progresses.
Quick Fact - 40 percent Of Indian CIOs are currently implementing desktop virtualization and another 54 percent say that it's either on their radar or that they are actively researching the technology.
Source: State of the CIO, 2009
5.Server Virtualization -
While IT media and analysts have been discussing server virtualization for what seems like eons in the technology time-space, IT leaders have been busy implementing it and have made it the most common form of virtualization in enterprise IT today. There's more to come, though. According to Gartner, the year 2010 will see virtual servers handle 28 percent of server workloads, up by a massive 10 percentage points from 18 percent currently. In terms of sheer numbers, there are 5.8 million virtual machines (VM) in use today. Come 2012, and Gartner says half the server workloads will be served by virtual machines.
Until now large enterprises have driven server virtualization, but the big growth action is anticipated among small-to-midsize businesses, according to Gartner analyst Thomas Bittman. For most organizations, immaterial of domain and size, the question won't be whether to virtualize or not, but which VM provider to go with.
There's another reason virtualization will dominate enterprise IT in 2010: it's tied to the cloud computing revolution. Enterprises are likely to consider various strategies from private clouds to public cloud services and hybrid models. The choice of in-house virtualization platform enterprises make now (and in the near future) are likely to influence their cloud computing choices. Despite the allure of dynamic provisioning, disaster-recovery support, server consolidation and lower operating costs, there are challenges IT leaders must watch out for with server virtualization. Virtualization vendors may still be touting the potential of putting 20, 50, or even 100 VMs (virtual machines) on a single physical machine,
but CIOs and industry experts say those ratios are dangerous in production environments, causing performance problems or, worse, outages. Too much
of a good idea can be bad. That said, the benefits far outweigh the challenges and you can expect us to talk more about server virtualization as you and your peers reap benefits from the technology.
Quick Fact - 90 percent of Indian CIOs say that they already use server virtualization.
Source: State of the CIO, 2009
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To Know more about what to expect in 2010 read :
10 Big Cloud Trends For 2010
10 Top Outsourcing Trends
Storage Virtualization
6. Storage Virtualization-
The writing on the wall is clear and neon-loud: enterprise data will grow by 650 percent over the next five years. Most of it will be unstructured and not belong to any database. This growth "is going to cost us dearly if we don't pay attention," says David Cappuccio, chief of research for Infrastructure teams, Gartner.
Which is why we're sure enterprises are going to pay more attention to technologies like storage virtualization. By virtualizing storage, the complexities of managing, backing up, archiving and migrating data across disparate storage devices are reduced. It helps enterprises increase capacity, better utilize their resources, and reduce costs. Virtualization also increases the efficiency of storage; allowing files to be stored wherever there is room, rather than let some drives go underutilized. In just a few short years, the technology has traveled that well-worn path from pricey boutique solution to affordable commodity. That aside, enterprises coming out of a tough macroeconomic climate are more willing to invest in storage virtualization in 2010 says research firm TheInfoPro. In fact, it points out that going forward technology purchases will increasingly focus on optimizing existing storage assets, stressing on a six- to 12-month ROI.
7. Social Computing
370 million unique visitors in a month, 160 billion page views. These are Google Ad Planner figures for Facebook (August 2009) and are the envy of any online marketing expert. So why haven't enterprises found a way - that isn't lame - to leverage social networks? Maybe because social networking opens new attack vectors. And there isn't a CIO out there who won't admit they fear social engineering-based attacks.
More telling, however, is the scanty number of companies that have blocked social networking sites. What does that tell you? They realize its potential business benefits. The challenge is to find the right balance between security and usability. And there is reason to stay positive: Every year, more companies dedicate staff to monitoring how employees use online assets - 57 percent this year compared to 50 percent last year and 40 percent in 2006, according to a CIO-CSO study done in collaboration with PricewaterhouseCoopers. And, like it or not, the industry is already moving to develop tools that can harness the power of networking. Some examples include Novell's Pulse, and Salesforce Chatter. It's a list that is still being populated and we're going to see more action in 2010. Count on that.
Quick Fact -25% Of Indian CIOs say that enterprise wikis and blogs will make an impact in the year ahead. Source: State of the CIO 2009
8. Business Intelligence
Business intelligence has been a top CIO priority for so long that we're beginning to get tired of it. And it's back again in 2010. According to the State of the CIO survey 2009, Indian CIOs say BI is their highest technology priority for 2010. Nor is this an India-specific commitment. In 2008-09, as IT markets everywhere were being pummeled, the market for BI tools in Asia Pacific grew by 7.7 percent, according to IDC. But just as persistent are the challenges to analytics - something CIOs will have to face in the coming year. According to a recent survey by Kognitio (which provides business intelligence solutions), over 75 percent of BI projects take over a year to produce results. And almost two-thirds of companies who have such a system get regular complaints from users. Not that this is making users are turning away from BI. "Following the economic crisis, many decision makers and information workers felt the pain of insufficient, inaccurate or contradictory information as they tried hard to grow their business," says Sharon Tan, Research Manager of IDC's Asia/ Pacific Software Research. "IDC expects this need to fuel interest in BI solutions and pave the way for future BI growth. In fact, despite tough times, a significant percentage of organizations surveyed are already planning to equip users, such as managers and customer-facing employees, with timely information over the next 18 months by having BI more pervasively available in their organization," Tan says. The slowdown might have bitten deep into CIOs' pockets, but it isn't stopping them from investing in their favorite application. Re-lock, re-load.
Quick Fact- 39%of Indian IT decision-makers say that they are currently implementing BI and another 41 percent say they intend to do so in the following year. Source: State of the CIO, 2009
CIO Speak - Business intelligence will definitely be big next year. It has to be. look at the main issue organizations are facing: consolidating reporting systems. Every other system, like SAP, runs in clusters within the organization but managements still need consolidated reports. that's where BI can be a real-time solution. I'll give you an example. at Raymond, we have three instances of SAP and the data from one instance cannot be pushed into another. now apply that to our apparel business, which supplies our retail business. both have their own GIT (goods in transit) systems. If they don't match, we're going to have a lot of stock that's lying around un-reconciled. Using BI, we're bringing these two systems together, in what we call a 'sail-through' report. and that's what BI can bring other enterprises: a clearer picture and more visibility. but to get there, CIOs have to market BI. Without marketing, it's going to be hard to find takers. that's because users enjoy the comfort of reading reports they have been using all this while. What they don't know is that with BI, the user has the capability to create reports according to their needs, and this is not possible in other business system. It's also necessary to sit with users and understand their requirements. Arindam Sinha is GM (Corporate It) at Raymond.
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To Know more about what to expect in 2010 read :
10 Big Cloud Trends For 2010
10 Top Outsourcing Trends
Business Process Management
9. Business Process Management
The tide's turning. The need of the hour is for organizations to make workflow changes on the fly and cash in on the recovery - or lose consumers and trading partners alike. Your ability to ensure that your enterprise leads the charge on the up-slope makes it imperative to leverage the power of automation. Business process management (BPM) could be one of the most significant weapons in your arsenal to meet changed business needs over the next few months.
BPM, most CIOs realize, can help derive more value from business transformation initiatives. Perhaps, that is what's behind these numbers from the State of the CIO 2009: 30 percent of CIOs say they are already implementing BPM - and another 60 percent are either upgrading their current BPM projects or looking to start one in 2010.
There are other indicators that BPM will be big in 2010. Sixty percent of CIOs from around the world continue to rank 'improving business processes' as their top IT priority, says Gartner. The research firm also predicts that the BPM market will grow from $1 billion to $2.6 billion by 2011 (about Rs 4,000 crore to Rs 11,700 crore) - a CAGR of 23.8 percent. And PricewaterhouseCoopers thinks that demand for BPM tools will exceed that of BI tools! Also, BPM edges over other technologies to get into our list because it can help enterprises with their compliance challenges. Bottom line: BPM will play a greater role in 2010 as enterprises zero in on market enhancement and customer satisfaction. Over the next year, expect to see process automation free up more manual operations and resources, which in turn will contribute to more strategic objectives.
CIO Speak- In the next few months, as the market finds more robustness, what we need is agility. the ability to identify errors and weak links in processes and the flexibility to rectify them will give us an edge. and BPM provides that.
at reliance life Insurance, we deployed a BPM application - one of the first in the Indian insurance industry. It cost us Rs 2.58 crore but it saved us over Rs 32 crore in operational costs and over Rs 5.66 crore in It infrastructure costs - all within its first year of implementation. here's another way of looking at it: if we hadn't used BPM, we would have needed to hire 45,000 people more. Plus, by automating 1,200 branches with BPM, we have cut the time to issue a policy from 30 days to seven days.
CIOs with BPM on their radars need to be clear about the processes where the biggest challenges lie. also, look for a champion who can handle change management and share global benchmark practices. Chandrasekaran Mohan, CTO, reliance life Insurance, won the 2009 Global awards for Excellence in BPM and Workflow.
10. Data De-duplication -
At a recent Storage Network World conference a number of IT leaders and CIOs from across the globe argued on many topics but agreed on one: that data de-duplication would be a key technology in the near future.
It's hard to disagree with that. Databases have grown to such mammoth proportions that it has become impossible to manage them. According to a recent Gartner report, enterprise data is likely to increase by 650 percent by 2014. The same report predicts that data de-duplication will be one of the top-10 IT management trends among CIOs.
And why not? Data de-duplication helps IT departments cut costs and use storage more efficiently. "The vast amount of unstructured data is costing enterprises dearly and this cost can be reduced by using technologies such as data de-duplication," says David Cappuccio, chief of research for the Infrastructure teams at Gartner.
There's plenty of vendors offering de-duplication. The choice of which to use is yours. But ignoring this trend? We think not.
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To Know more about what to expect in 2010 read :
10 Big Cloud Trends For 2010
10 Top Outsourcing Trends
- Page 1 : Top 10 Technologies for 2010
- Page 2 : Mobile Apps
- Page 3 : Desktop Virtualization-
- Page 4 : Storage Virtualization
- Page 5 : Business Process Management
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