The 3 top burning issues for IT departments today

Recently, there was this question posed in one of the linkedin groups, (I thought of sharing my response in this blog) -

What are the 3 top burning issues for IT departments today?

 My take (in no particular order).

1. Enabling the enterprise to go after new revenues. IT has thus far optimized the enterprise - streamlining & automating business processes, thus enabling the enterprise to operate efficiently. Though there are incremental values yet to be realized in optimization, there is bigger role for IT to play in increasing business. For example - consumers are more tech savvy than ever. Proliferation of 'always connected' lifestyle a.k.a mobile devices along with Social networks making headway in consumer spending habits. Suddenly the enterprise is looking for IT to help navigate this change.

2. IT today sits on a 'data' treasure trove (note: I deliberately used 'data' instead of 'information' :-) ). Mining this data and gathering useful business intelligence is a challenge. Most large enterprises lack an effective enterprise data architecture and governance. IMHO, this is one of the bigger challenges in large organizations with many 'legacy' systems. Technology is not the issue here (we have had technologies like ETLs, DWH, MDM etc.,). The challenges lie in data stewardship, governance, and basically the culture of the enterprise.

3. In addition to these strategic priorities, IT does have an important role of 'keeping the lights on' function. While this takes a very chunk of IT budget, every IT department faces the challenge on how to free up resources from pure 'lights on' task to invest in strategic priorities. Outsourcing, cloud technologies are few options. While outsourcing and related management has matured, Cloud (Virtualization, *aaS) is still emerging (vendor management, security, integration, SLA, etc.). There are big opportunities here for System Integrators here. In other words, the challenge is how to reduce the operating cost for keeping the lights on without degrading SLA and invest the savings towards strategic objectives.

Voice of the Customer : Love to engage 'Virtually'

Blame it on technology, consumers no longer prefer the 'personal touch'. Customer Satisfaction goes down every time they have to engage with the enterprise in person. Internet and lately applications on smart phones are enabling more ways for consumers to perform their business. Here are some examples -

• Internet and eBusiness enabled online shopping, online banking, bill pay etc.
• Lately, banking applications on smart phones allow consumers to deposit their checks without visiting a branch or ATM
• Streaming video has almost shutdown video stores
• Self serve kiosks, self checkout in grocery stores

This bodes well for business too, reduced labor overhead. The challenge for enterprises to find the right sweet-spot, so they won't delineate their customers. Every consumer facing vertical will have to deal with this challenge differently. While retail (esp. media), can completely go online (or require near zero direct physical interaction with the customer), it is different for hospitality or healthcare verticals (will have to check in into the hotel room, or use hospital services at some point). A challenge for enterprises is to make this physical and virtual interactions seamless. IMHO, this trend is an important input while formulating longer term IT strategies.

Another Arguement for Blackberry to go Android

Follow up from my earlier post  (Blackberry, Nokia and Android) , now from eWeek - BlackBerry Smartphones Should Use Android: 10 Reasons Why

SmartPhones - History Repeating ?

Windows or Mac - is the OS choice for personal computing. (yes, there are many variants of Linux, but their share is minuscule). Over the years, Microsoft Windows supported by many different hardware vendors (albeit on standard hardware platform) gained dominance against the more 'reliable' and 'user friendly' Mac OS. While Mac OS maintained its Niche with a single vendor delivering integrated Hardware and OS and single digit market share, Microsoft Windows thrived on commodity hardware. IMHO, Google has similar opportunity with Android OS.

Agreed, iPhone has the first mover advantage and successfully built a huge critical mass with the app store. Android is following closely and closing the gap. The other Smartphone platforms - Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian are out of the race for dominance, and it would not be surprising if they get clubbed in the "others" category.

Google, in addition to providing SamrtPhone OS, is also providing many compelling cloud based services (like, email, office tools, calendar etc.) to complement and extend SmartPhone features.This, in my opinion is a big change from the past PC evolution days, and plays into the present technology trends.

Following the PC model, I think it is time for Google to partner with hardware companies and define standards similar to the PC mother board, PCI, USB etc. so smartphone hardware can be commoditized and Android OS being the standard.

If not anything else, Silicon Valley being a late entrant in the Mobile handset technologies has stolen the thunder from other established players.