By Suzanne Chartier, WW Mobility Offering Leader, HP Enterprise Services
To find the next trend in enterprise IT, look no further than the device in your pocket. The functionality that comes with your smartphone has transformed consumer use of IT from a novelty to a driving force in the enterprise IT trends.
The new information consumer is changing the entire enterprise model. Four consumer traits are driving these trends:
Consumer-centric IT culture
When it comes to business, staying apace with IT consumer trends is swiftly moving from a way to innovate to simply keeping up with competitors. (Are you cutting-edge connected?)
“The genie is out of the bottle,” says Vijay Gurbaxani, director of the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations at the University of California “We often hear Generation Y saying that the worst technology they encounter is at their first job. We have to get ready for that segment of workers.”
At the company’s recent symposium in Orlando, Gartner managing vice president David Cappuccio named consumerization as one of 10 key trends for 2012, along with virtualization, context-aware apps, and social networks, among others. Gurbaxani agrees. The consumerization of IT is the key trend to watch for all enterprises in 2012, he says.
ROI may not matter
For those who still aren’t convinced of the ROI, Gurbaxani is willing to bring cash into the discussion.
Travel back in time a generation to another technology that put power into consumer hands, he says: the rise of the ATM. The first bank that used the technology saw a huge return on its investment. The next 50 banks, less so. But after that, ROI no longer mattered, he says. Banks that didn’t offer ATMs started losing customers. With this in mind, Gurbaxani says that the question isn’t should you embrace the consumeratization of IT, but what will happen if you don’t.
From office to marketplace
That is how the trend is impacting first world nations. But Gurbaxani, who regularly travels to India to teach at the Indian School of Business’ CIO Academy, sees other applications.
Thanks to this trend, he says, you no longer need a wired infrastructure to do business. In countries like India, there are a number of people who use mobile technology who may never have traditional computer access. That requires practical innovation, like the integration of mobile and cloud technologies. As more information and services are delivered via the cloud, some say the traditonal PC might eventually be re-termed to mean “personal cloud.”
From the ability for rural villagers in emerging technology countries to transfer money back and forth to fisherman able to call to shore to find the best and closest ports to sell the day’s catch, consumerization of IT is as much a social movement as a business development.
Significantly, those emerging markets are estimated to be a game-changer. As reported by The Economist, Boston Consulting Group predicts that in BRICI countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Indonesia) there will be 1.2 billion internet users, exceeding the U.S. and Japan. And the device of choice? Mobile phones.
Competitive dominance
Gurbaxani, who has a talent for bringing high-level technological concepts home, recently put it another way in a conference before CIOs in India: “If social media can democratize a country, you had better believe you can democratize your company.”
His quote, appropriately, was soon tweeted around the world.
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