What is the IT crystal ball telling you about what’s hot in 2012? Shunra’s CEO Gary Jackson shares his 10 – no make those 11 – top projections in the IT world for this new year. It’s a tough market out there with the economy still muddling, but nonetheless, users expect faster responses and greater flexibility in how they use technology. To complicate matters it’s getting harder to find and retain top talent, so employers must be innovative in how they attract and hold on to their best people. Gary bases his predictions on information and personal observations from the hundreds of Shunra’s customers with whom his team speaks on a daily basis.
In a recent Shunra webinar, attendees were asked which IT projects were up front for the coming year. No surprise, the leaders are virtualization, mobile app deployment and cloud migration. In other words, in addition to mobility, companies continue to focus on the consolidation of resources through virtualization of all types. Virtualization does not just mean the Cloud; it also refers to all methods that centralize administrative tasks while improving scalability and workloads. These include network, storage and server consolidations.
These results, and their impact on end user experience, align with Gary’s first projection:
#1 End user patience will continue to become shorter and shorter and thinner and thinner
Whereas just a year or two ago, an SLA of 6-7 seconds response time was par for the course, 3 seconds is now the norm for just about everything. Companies that have already tuned their applications to meet the 6-7 second goal are now required to adapt to the new benchmark of 3 seconds, which is what Gary is referring to as “thinner and thinner.” As Shunra’s Performance team reports, when determining performance goals, users now have zero tolerance for repeat work and recurring clicks. However, many business apps have not caught on and require repeat actions. In addition, users now expect instant confirmation that their work has completed successfully. For more ideas about designing business processes, see Gary’s 11th prediction.
#2 IT spending will continue to recover this year despite the Presidential election
Although election years are traditionally cautious (because of a corporate fear that a new administration may negatively impact our business, influence capital tax rates, etc.) this year should see the IT sector continue to grow. A different balance of spending will occur as EAAS -’Everything as a Service’ – is promised and ‘deliver anything anytime’ becomes the norm. This type of growth requires more external resources.
One leading indicator is the hiring of IT professionals. Despite the overall unemployment rate in the US over 8%, it’s dramatically lower in the IT sector. The talent is getting scooped up. However, more of these IT expenditures may be on non-US soil as multi-national companies avoid high taxes from revenue generated abroad as opposed to what would be due if this income is spent in the US.
#3 Many mobile apps will crash and burn because they have not undergone adequate design and performance testing
The consumption of mobile devices has exploded – it’s now the norm, not the trend. It’s hard to believe that only two years ago tablets were associated more with Moses than Steve. With the expectation that new devices and features have to keep up a dizzying pace, many apps are released well before they have undergone appropriate design and testing cycles with performance considerations. ‘Just get it out’ is the motto, but the impact on the back-end systems is not being properly assessed.
While many new apps look great on the client side, if the effect of mobile sessions on the back-end resources is not properly taken into consideration, those super cool graphics are not going to make up for slow response time. In fact, almost half of Shunra’s inbound requests relate to troubleshooting failed applications.
Mobile is driving both new and traditional applications to agile and quick development cycles, but cutting corners on performance can result in disastrous post-production results. Even shifting 10-15% of enterprise users on a specific app to mobile can overwhelm the back-end so that the app will perform slowly for all users. Different memory signatures and data throughput signatures are made on mobile apps that must be taken into account during mobile deployment.
#4 New opportunities are being driven by the rise of mCommerce
We just finished an interesting holiday shopping season. Overall retail sales were weak in early December, just slightly above the previous year’s results, and projections for December show a lower than expected rise in sales. However, while store traffic is decreasing, mobile sales are skyrocketing. PayPal reported a 397% increase in consumer use of PayPal Mobile on Cyber Monday; JoS. A. Bank’s mobile checkout increased more than 3000% on Black Friday; and Boston-based Rue La La reported an increase in mobile sales from 2% last January to 33% of all sales in this past holiday shopping season; and an estimated 87% of tablet owners did some holiday shopping from their mobile device. (This data was compiled and published by Mobile Commerce Daily, a daily trade publication dedicated to mobile commerce.)
Mobile Commerce is making significant inroads and Gary predicts that 2012 will be year that indoor Location Based Services (LBS) takes off. Developers are figuring out how to combine the carrier technologies, Wifi radio and GPS that are part of your smartphone but not available reliably indoors. Outdoors, an app such as Google Earth will first use the cell tower location, then the Wifi hotspots, and then GPS to pinpoint your bearings. Indoors, this approach is not always effective so companies are now working on intercepting the cell tower signal and using a series of repeaters to provide a signal.
In addition, red-line scanning and price search, which most stores now see as a threat, will become a business opportunity. The combination of scanning, location based services and new pricing strategies are set to have a big impact on the retail experience. The business upside is that using geo-correlated behavior, retailers can now provide pricing and promotion from within the store, enabling the so-called “bricks and clicks” business model. For example, when a shopper is scanning a TV model’s stats, the retailer can recommend a Blu-ray package. The physical store can also promote the ways that their shopping experience is more positive in ways such as availability, location, convenience, service, etc.
#5 Enterprise IT is forced to compete for delivery of service
In the good old days, the CIO was ‘The Expert’ on technology issues. When “Everything” is being delivered “as a service”, including platform as a service, software as a service and cloud-based services, the CIO no longer controls the infrastructure, or the expertise about the infrastructure.
Consolidation of IT resources is occurring among bigger global systems integrators who are taking a bigger slice of the Fortune 500 accounts. The CIO must now look at outside resources and consult with specialized personnel, and become an internal Systems Integrator.
#6 Your digital strategy will affect your ability to recruit and retain the right staff
With low unemployment in the IT sector, attracting top talent is more than challenging. One of the top three issues for a new hire in 2012, beyond salary and health benefits, may include IT resources that address the employee’s work/life balance and allow for self-provisioning.
IT resources require continuous adjustment when millions of employees now travel and work offsite and require the flexibility of different devices, connectivity and means of access to core systems. How does a company track the value of the IT investments, such as firewall improvements or the changes required in CRM to accommodate tablets? When creating a budget that aligns with the company’s digital strategy, consider the aim of the improvement. Is it increased productivity, which ideally can be seen on a daily basis, or cost reduction?
#7 Tech companies that are VC-backed will feel pressure to do transactions faster
When Venture Capital firms makes an investment, one consideration is early ROI versus long term investment. In the past few years, a number of the VC dollars have come from institutional investors, such as pension funds. Unfortunately, many of these funds have been burned by the real estate crashes, the economic turndown and various scandals.
Whereas a decade ago patience may have been considered a virtue, today there’s limited tolerance for returns. In fact a ‘sure thing’ today may be worth more than double that a year from now, but the “sure thing” is preferred as it is less risky and provides immediate return versus waiting. Just as end users now expect an application to react in half the response time, VCs are looking for results and ROI sooner than ever before. Startups and technology must prove itself sooner, or fail sooner.
For those investing in new technologies, because of the abundance of choice, it may be harder to predict whether a new technology is going to make it. Therefore, Gary advises to pick your partners wisely, taking into account the strength of customer referrals, history, and financial condition of the company before signing on the dotted line.
#8 IT Capital investment will continue to decrease, while consumption of resources will continue to increase
The continued pressure to virtualize desktop, servers and just about everything else, and to migrate to the cloud and use less expensive platforms (such as a tablet vs. a more expensive laptop), means that almost every end-user wants more than last year – more applications, resources and more access to resources. Startups and new companies may even go straight to the Cloud to consolidate facilities and save on energy costs. This has placed a lot of pressure on low cost facilities to deliver and may bring unrealistic expectations that have not taken operational and other costs into account.
Some companies even have a BYO support strategy – bring your own device. Although it may save the enterprise in capital costs, the support costs will rise as the IT team faces the challenging task of supporting all these various devices and configurations.
#9 Cloud services will prove an ROI in 2012
Although no studies of real cost reduction for cloud ROI are yet available, Gary predicts that 2012 will finally be the year that demonstrates ROI for Cloud investments. Companies that have kept their figures in-house are now more likely to reveal stats regarding the backend impact, especially as pressure mounts to prove the effectiveness of prior years’ investments. Useful data about the hidden costs of failure, such are rewriting apps, will then become public.
IT cannot just toss legacy applications into the Cloud and expect them to work perfectly where they have no real control. They must now design for Cloud, test for Cloud, and optimize for Cloud. The CIO now must assume the role of systems integrator and must have ‘the fixers’ lined up should a disaster occur.
#10 Attention on infrastructure will increase while inversely decreasing on applications
We are now experiencing a paradigm shift to virtualization – from hardware to software to services. In addition, consumerized end-user devices necessitate a continued investment in infrastructure. It will probably take a long time for enterprise apps to catch up in terms of required attention and investment. The silver lining is that opportunity is created for outsourcing (and crowdsourcing): IT is looking for vendors who can help. For example, through its community, SAP now has hundreds of mobile apps developed in the past year. SAP users, instead of waiting for SAP or their own IT department, can now to tap via 3rd party mobile applications into legacy systems and access specific functions.
#11 bonus prediction – Reduced form factor providing only the “essential engagement” will become more common.
With so much happening in the IT sphere, it was a real challenge to select only 10 predictions. Gary was not actually successful in this endeavor. Therefore he gives us one of his most interesting observations: Enterprise apps are going to be reexamined via a mobile device lens. In other words, how we design and use mobile devices is going to govern how we design and use almost all other applications!
Careful attention will be paid to those actions that you or your customers are performing on a regular basis and how data is accessed. When dealing with complex systems, such as a CRM application or a business process, just navigating through all the various functionality could take over 30 minutes. But a sales team member most frequently accesses a CRM application only to update customer records and contacts, set meetings and look at the probability of closing a sale. The 80/20 rule applies; about 80% of the team is utilizing about 20% of the available functionality.
That’s where the application and device form factor can impact and improve productivity, by narrowing selections to frequently used actions. This requires analysis of what the user needs to complete his/her tasks and how best to present the information. In a mobile app this analysis is crucial, as each action and screen in the workspace is highly valuable real estate. Therefore designers and developers have to determine the essential actions, flow and optimal presentation. As users continue to consume smartly designed mobile apps, they will no longer accept cumbersome enterprise functionality. To optimize the user experience, each action and state presented should be one that is repeatable and modularized, and this must also apply to other corporate experiences.
Leave a Reply