HP Discover is focused on IT’s future
The IT industry behavior is definitely changing. We’re moving from a focus on cost savings and RFP driven engagements between companies and suppliers into an environment that is more consumption-based. Where nearly anything in IT can be purchased “as-a-service”. This allows for a much more business-led approach, focused on business value generation, yet with a demand for a relatively short return on investment. This leads to many asking for advice on what they should do or just a level-set on what is actually happening and what others are doing.
HP Discover 2013 in Las Vegas is an opportunity to interact with others and see where HP is focusing its efforts. If you want to see what it is like, you can see highlights from Discover Frankfurt in 2012. Or visit the full HP Discover Session Catalog to see where HP Discover 2013 is focused and the sessions that matters most to you and your business.
There is even a blogging community developing where you can get the inside scoop - Buzz
Four of the big trends organizations want to know more about today are: mobility, analytics, cloud services (flexible resource acquisition) and security. All of these will be covered by multiple sessions from multiple perspectives. Nadhan put out a post the other day on how CIOs can get their priorities right at HP Discover 2013 in Vegas , the approach he descibesmay also be of interest.
Follow HP Discover at:
CRM, Cloud computing, 2013 and changes in IT spending
Recently Gartner put out a press release saying Cloud and CRM will drive enterprise software spending in 2013 and 2014. I found this focus on CRM a bit confusing based on all the other demands on spending. One of the interesting areas is the use of private clouds. HP has some new hardware coming out soon that should be of interest to anyone interested in cloud hardware.
See if moonshot will be right for you. Many of the issues defined as tech trends, should be addressed more effectively and economically by the moonshot approach than traditional hardware.
A view on the strategic assessment of an organization’s application portfolio
Technical debt and the coming year
- “75% are still using outdated core banking systems, affecting their ability to accelerate growth.
- 80% said that outdated core banking systems were causing them to struggle to bring new products to market quickly.
- 75% face difficulties getting access to timely data, and close to two-thirds feel that existing systems do not support regulatory change.
- 55% are focusing on increasing wallet share within the existing client base, with only 20% trying to achieve growth through new customer acquisition.
- 79% said that the complexity of IT, combined with insufficient expertise within the business, was a major barrier to core system replacement.”
This concept of technical debt has been talked about for about as long as I can remember. Its focus is that we are constrained by the systems in production. These systems can constrain us in multiple ways:
1) They consumes funds for maintainance that could be applied to new investments
2) The codified models may not align to the business needs of today, so they limit our flexibility to respond to shifts and they may even limit our ability to see the shift at all
3) They constrain the workforce as well, since eventually the skills needed may no longer be readily available in the marketplace.
That’s one reason why organizations need both a strategic view of the alignment of the business, technology and investment through an enterprise architecture as well as a more tactical view through the application portfolio assessment. If they haven’t already, organizations should plan to measure technical debt in 2013 and plan for how to use this reality to their advantage. This can be especially important as organizations plan on implementing cloud, big data and other newer techniques.
In technology, today’s investment is tomorrow’s debt – plan on it.
