By Chris Harding, The Open Group
The convergence of technical phenomena such as cloud, mobile and social computing, big data analysis, and the Internet of things that is being addressed by The Open Group’s Open Platform 3.0 Forum™ will transform the way that you use information technology. Are you ready? Take our survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/convergent_tech
What the Technology Can Do
Mobile and social computing are leading the way. Recently, the launch of new iPhone models and the announcement of the Twitter stock flotation were headline news, reflecting the importance that these technologies now have for business. For example, banks use mobile text messaging to alert customers to security issues. Retailers use social media to understand their markets and communicate with potential customers.
Other technologies are close behind. In Formula One motor racing, sensors monitor vehicle operation and feed real-time information to the support teams, leading to improved design, greater safety, and lower costs. This approach could soon become routine for cars on the public roads too.
Many exciting new applications are being discussed. Stores could use sensors to capture customer behavior while browsing the goods on display, and give them targeted information and advice via their mobile devices. Medical professionals could monitor hospital patients and receive alerts of significant changes. Researchers could use shared cloud services and big data analysis to detect patterns in this information, and develop treatments, including for complex or uncommon conditions that are hard to understand using traditional methods. The potential is massive, and we are only just beginning to see it.
What the Analysts Say
Market analysts agree on the importance of the new technologies.
Gartner uses the term “Nexus of Forces” to describe the convergence and mutual reinforcement of social, mobility, cloud and information patterns that drive new business scenarios, and says that, although these forces are innovative and disruptive on their own, together they are revolutionizing business and society, disrupting old business models and creating new leaders.
IDC predicts that a combination of social cloud, mobile, and big data technologies will drive around 90% of all the growth in the IT market through 2020, and uses the term “third platform” to describe this combination.
The Open Group will identify the standards that will make Gartner’s Nexus of Forces and IDC’s Third Platform commercial realities. This will be the definition of Open Platform 3.0.
Disrupting Enterprise Use of IT
The new technologies are bringing new opportunities, but their use raises problems. In particular, end users find that working through IT departments in the traditional way is not satisfactory. The delays are too great for rapid, innovative development. They want to use the new technologies directly – “hands on”.
Increasingly, business departments are buying technology directly, by-passing their IT departments. Traditionally, the bulk of an enterprise’s IT budget was spent by the IT department and went on maintenance. A significant proportion is now spent by the business departments, on new technology.
Business and IT are not different worlds any more. Business analysts are increasingly using technical tools, and even doing application development, using exposed APIs. For example, marketing folk do search engine optimization, use business information tools, and analyze traffic on Twitter. Such operations require less IT skill than formerly because the new systems are easy to use. Also, users are becoming more IT-savvy. This is a revolution in business use of IT, comparable to the use of spreadsheets in the 1980s.
Also, business departments are hiring traditional application developers, who would once have only been found in IT departments.
Are You Ready?
These disruptive new technologies are changing, not just the IT architecture, but also the business architecture of the enterprises that use them. This is a sea change that affects us all.
The introduction of the PC had a dramatic impact on the way enterprises used IT, taking much of the technology out of the computer room and into the office. The new revolution is taking it out of the office and into the pocket. Cell phones and tablets give you windows into the world, not just your personal collection of applications and information. Through those windows you can see your friends, your best route home, what your customers like, how well your production processes are working, or whatever else you need to conduct your life and business.
This will change the way you work. You must learn how to tailor and combine the information and services available to you, to meet your personal objectives. If your role is to provide or help to provide IT services, you must learn how to support users working in this new way.
To negotiate this change successfully, and take advantage of it, each of us must understand what is happening, and how ready we are to deal with it.
The Open Group is conducting a survey of people’s reactions to the convergence of Cloud and other new technologies. Take the survey, to input your state of readiness, and get early sight of the results, to see how you compare with everyone else.
To take the survey, visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/convergent_tech
Dr. Chris Harding is Director for Interoperability and SOA at The Open Group. He has been with The Open Group for more than ten years, and is currently responsible for managing and supporting its work on interoperability, including SOA and interoperability aspects of Cloud Computing, and the Platform 3.0 Forum. He is a member of the BCS, the IEEE and the AEA, and is a certified TOGAF® practitioner.
