Simon Prentice

Gartner’s seminar on the growing role of technology in business gave attendees a glimpse of the future of technology and how it could impact on their lives. Gartner enterprise application analyst, Johan Jacobs, and Gartner fellow, Steve Prentice, shared the stage.

Prentice began by outlining key societal trends that are likely to impact on technology and business in the next few years. He believes the technology of the near future is mostly already in development today and will just become more mainstream. Among these he cited nearfield communication, augmented reality and the “Internet of things”, all of which are now only starting to enter public consciousness.

“In the first Harry Potter book, the main characters go to extraordinary lengths to sneak into the library. Why not just use Google?” he asked those present.

The answer was extraordinarily simple. Google hadn’t been invented then. “The first Harry Potter book was published in 1997; Google was incorporated in 1998.” It’s worth remembering how quickly things can change, he said. Jacobs spoke next about how businesses can make use of social networks and Web technology to encourage self-service. He argued that with an increasing dependence on Internet connectivity across the world, businesses could help customers and clients to help themselves. Through online communities, customers could assist each other. Additionally, using technologies like Web chat, helpdesk operatives could cater to four to six customers at a time, especially if certain popular questions were answered automatically by the system. In order for this to work, though, Jacobs stressed that it is vitally important for businesses to have up-to-date and organised knowledge bases.

Prentice took the stage again to speak about big data – unstructured data collected from various devices and platforms, such as the Internet of things and social networks. He said the current explosion of information available to businesses can be leveraged for strategic advantage, if the correct analytics are used.

“Traditional analytics is good at hindsight end eventually, insight, but analysing big data can give you foresight,” he said.

He encouraged businesses to share their data with other businesses and the public, as counter-intuitive as such a move might be. He explained that combining different sets of data helps reveal patterns, and can enable evidence-based decisions.

“Unless big data helps to make good decisions, it fails,” he concluded.

Some crystal-ball gazing followed, with Jacobs up again to theorise about possible professions of the future. He took into account factors such as the decline in availability of natural resources, medical advancements, increasing digital dependence and information overload, and globalisation. He concluded with his vision of the future role of the CIO: “A manager of talent rather than infrastructure and technology – this will be done by others in the business.”

Prentice wrapped up with some of Gartner’s top predictions for the next decade. Some of the highlights were:
• Through 2016, the financial impact of cyber crime will grow 10% per year due to new vulnerabilities.
• By 2014, the social media investment bubble will burst.
• By 2016, more than 50% of global 1000 companies will have stored sensitive customer data in the public cloud and will have lost it.
• By 2015, application development projects for smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by 4-to-1.
• By 2016, at least 50% of enterprise e-mail users will rely primarily on a browser/tablet/mobile client vs desktop.
• By 2015, the prices for 80% of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge.