Businesses are driven by the need for optimization and cost reduction as the first and immediate response from the
economic meltdown. The ongoing economic crisis is originated
from the highly-income world as
represented by most of the OECD economies. The
crisis today is far larger in shape and depth.
The scale of this present situation has a serious
impact in operational and Information Technology (IT) budgets and
in any case IT is not immune and is suffering from both the supply and demand
side. At the same time for being
competitive as a business or as a country is considered for granted to be a top performer in new technologies, because
technology is providing among the strongest competitive advantages against any competition.
Under these dramatic circumstances how the economy
of the future will look like is the real question.
Currently the situation has no room for major
investments ready to be seen in the short run, never mind a few exemptions. Most
IT departments suffer conservative cost
reductions and the slow recovery as
major analysts claim will last for many years. The future of the IT seems
rather different in any case, from what we used to know by now. The forced
retrenchment of the recession though gives the chance to business leaders and decision
makers to reassess and reinvest in new growth areas.
Key areas in IT that will shape the leading sectors of
the near future are the following:
1.
IT
Architecture: It is common sense that businesses need to expand or enforce their international presence with whatever that means to their IT architecture design and infrastructure. Viewing everything through applications will soon
come to an end. An IT Architecture project means to undertake hundreds of high
level detailed tasks, including justifying changes, identifying data and security
requirements, to further reduce complexity, to consolidate and centralize
technology resources, to improve efficiency by restructuring enterprise resources.
It means also that a server-centric topology will evolve to a service-centric
topology, decoupling systems, data, infrastructures and business processes from
one another.
2.
User
Experience: The clear expectations creating a positive User Experience
(UE) environment can be overwhelmingly complex with many issues. These issues can
involve usability, interaction design, brand identity techniques, industry
specific strategies and requirements. In order to achieve high levels of user
experience you need to clearly distinguish UE from the User Interface (UI) even
if UI is a critical element of the user experience design. You need to
encompass all elements of user interaction including, the organization, the
customers, the products and the services.
3.
Social
Platforms: Company websites may no longer be the first point of
contact for customers. IT is affected by a great manner from the way organizations
conduct business. Isolated information will ultimately die, since social
platforms evolve as a new source of business intelligence. The benefits to a successful social brand are
significant, and there are already known cases of businesses that successfully
revitalized their image. Brands with relatively small budgets can achieve brand
awareness, but they need to focus their resources, time and attention in a larger scale, in order to attract new customers. On which platforms to be, is a
crucial question in any case. Social Platforms can also become for your
business a place where you can provide advantages to your customers such as a loyalty
card within a mobile rewards game, the
ability to do very tight targeting that combines gamification techniques that
might include criteria such as geographic location, time of day, recommendations
etc.
4.
Cyber
Intelligence: Top Information security trends and vulnerability
warnings will continue to shape and drive Information Technology, with
hacktivism across the globe, a trend that started some time ago. Mainstream
Cloud and Mobile adoption will engage security concerns that will become a more
practical discussion in the near future. Executives are trying to take
advantage of the productivity upside that new technology is capable to offer,
with trends such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), thus creating a new security
concern that must be under the radar. DDoS attacks against organizations that we have
seen in the past, presages a future of blind full scale attacks to any
intervening service provider. Other threats and vulnerability warnings combine,
malware, sandboxing smart phone applications, cross platforms attacks, QR codes
targeting, and digital wallets that will become a cyber crime target that will
draw attackers’ interest.
5.
Data
Privacy: This is already huge issue for international organizations which they are undertaking incisive analysis of important legal
issues from a global perspective. Data processing at a company level,
International data transfers, and technology issues related to privacy,
conflicts between US privacy rules and European data protection law will become
a much more serious concern. In a scale of a country, governmental surveillance
technology issues related to privacy will be addressed more thoroughly in the near future.
