Prediction for 2014
We are living in a fast changing world where technology dominates everything. As technology changes, it creates more challenges to both companies and workers. According to several studies, 2014 will be a significant challenging year for many companies due to emerging technologies such as mobile devices, cloud computing, social networks, big data, and the interoperability among these systems. Since technologies advances rapidly, market needs will change, and customers will demand companies to adopt these technologies. Managers at all levels will pressure Information Technology (IT) workers to have knowledge and skills to implement these technologies in order for the company to stay in the market.
In the past, companies are slow to change but in this globalized world, technology has become a dynamic force for change. If a company does not change quickly, it will be eliminated, and it is predicted that 2014 will be the year of many bankruptcies. If an industry does not adjust quickly, it cannot compete against competitors, and when an industry goes down, many companies will sink with it. If a country does not keep up, foreign investments will be shifted from one country to another and impact the local economy significantly. Today the role of IT is no longer supporting but strategic, Chief Information Officer (CIO) and IT management must move quickly to evaluate each technology to adopt it quickly to create new business value for the company. To do that they must thoroughly understand the business of the company and the technology challenges it faces. They must have knowledge of new technologies to address how it helps the company meet its strategic goals. A Wall Street analyst wrote: “In the past the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) played an important role but today, it is the Chief Information Technology (CIO) who must lead the company. The success or failure of a company will mostly be determined by how fast it adjusts to market needs. Today many large companies promote CIOs to the role of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or Executive President instead of CFO because technology is becoming the key competitive factor in the global market.”
The obvious change happens in 2014 will be the advancement of mobile devices. Today desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones are all being used in companies. The questions are: “Will tablets replace laptops?” “Will desktops go away completely? According to several studies, tablets and smartphones already perform many tasks previously completed by desktops and laptops and many users have switched to tablet and smartphone. That means companies must adjust quickly to mobility by develop more applications to mobile devices. Smartphones and tablets require different approach to application development as their screen is small so future application must create display suitable for screen-size variations. Since there are several platforms (IOS, Android, and Window 8) company must develops strategy to deal with these differences and make sure that their applications will work well with all platforms. Today most developers are trained in personal computers (PC) and standard Microsoft's window operating system but they must be retrained to build applications with IOS or Android too. That is why college graduates with mobile skills are in high demand and often command higher salary than others.
In the past creating business value was part of the financial aspect but today it shifts to IT and is top priority. IT organizations and its workers must focus on improving values to users and market needs. To do so, IT managers must remove any non-essential activities and it means a different way of building applications to keep the focus on value creation. It is predicted that many companies will move as many services to the cloud as possible. There is no reason to own or maintain software or hardware when they can be moved to cloud computing company for standardized services. IT managers must evaluate every IT function and ask: “Does these activities improve the company's business priorities and create business value?" If not then they must eliminate that function and focus on the important tasks.
Cloud computing is one way to reduce costs, improve efficiency and increase value (i.e., more profits) but according to recent industry report, many companies have not yet to have cloud computing plans. They continue to keep their data and applications in-house and manage everything themselves. To keep an internal group to maintain these IT systems is expensive; to keep all software and hardware up to date are also expensive. With the advances of cloud computing offerings, it is better to let special cloud computing company to handle most IT related things so the company can focus on their core business. The industry study projected that by the end of 2014, over half of companies will use cloud computing for all IT needs and it could help reduce the IT costs and increase profit by 35%.
Managers need to have the best information to make decision. Today having internal data such as sales, costs, revenues, operating expenses etc. is not enough as managers must look outward for technology trends, markets trends, customers preferences, competitor's pricing etc. Most of these data are available on the Internet but they are not defined and often unstructured. Unstructured data varies in its format, including plain text, email, blog, formatted document, standard and non-standard image, video, voice, animation, sensor input, Web search logs and more. Unstructured data is growing faster than structured data. These unstructured data has the potential to reveal more important information that was previously difficult to determine. To provide the best information for the company, Big Data analytics requires new approaches to capturing, storing, and analyzing these data. Traditional data management processes cannot collect the variable nature of Big Data. New data analytics offer new methods to do that but it requires new training, new skills and new tools. Industry analysts believe that companies that adopt Big Data faster will have significant advantages over slow adopters. The use of Big Data has helped Walmart and Amazon.com to be two largest retailed companies in the world and help them to eliminate most of their competitors just within few years. It is predicted that 2014 will be the year where many companies will adopt big data analytics as a key strategy to increase their competitiveness.
Another new trend that will happen in 2014 is the “Aging issue” where approximately over a million workers will retire each year from 2013 to 2023 and they must be replaced. A lot of those potential retirees are IT people, who have many years of both technical and business knowledge. To find replacement for them is not easy because entry-level workers who are graduating from colleges often come with different technical skills and attitudes. A Wall Street analyst warned: “In the past, most workers are loyal to their company but younger workers do not have that attitude, they will change job often to get the best wages for themselves. Company must have strategy to deal with this high turnover issue quickly. The younger generation often does not have the patient as of previous generations, they want instant gratification so company will need to offer mentoring program so experienced people who need to be replaced can share their knowledge and provide advices to these younger workers to make the exchange smoothly.
It is predicted that 2014 will be a year of many changes as technologies will impact many businesses. Many established companies will be replaced by newcomers that have better technologies advantages. The change will happen in many developed countries as they do not have enough skilled workers to make the transition smoother and the lack of technology workers will be a key determinant in future economic growth. Another key factor is 2014 is the success or failure of education reform that focuses on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) that giving new advantage to countries that can attract more IT workers to come as human capital will be the most important asset in this Knowledge age.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
