Last week I attended the CeBit show in Hannover, Germany. CeBIT is the IT industry’s biggest, most international business to business (B2B) event. Thanks to its unique combination of exhibition, conferences, keynotes, corporate events and lounges, CeBIT represents an unrivalled tools for doing business and sealing deals.
CeBit is a huge show, with an exhibition area of roughly 450,000 m² (5 million ft²). More than 4,200 companies from over 70 countries participated at CeBIT 2011. The show had up to 850,000 visitors at the apex of the dot-com boom.
Why all the facts and figures you may ask? Like the dot-com craze that peaked 10 years ago; that marked a milestone in the history of irrational exuberance, Enterprise IT spending budgets also peaked around the year 2000.
You can’t argue that enterprise IT has evolved -pervasive virtualisation, cloud-based delivery, converged and unified infrastructure, unprecedented data growth, ubiquitous mobility are but a few attributes of the virtual era, an exciting new phase of enterprise computing that’s arrived IT’s doorstep. A lesson learnt from the dot-com era was that people in general were not ready for the kind of technology or online lifestyle that developers had in mind when building those platforms. They built those platforms and features for people like themselves, pioneers who were obsessed and enamoured with the new technologies – and not for the average person.
This is backed up by Gartner who has shown that enterprise IT spend and budgets have continued to decrease over the past three years. Whilst the enterprise has tried to reduce IT spend or get increased business value from IT spend, consumer IT spending went through the roof. There has been a large shift in expectations by people regarding computing and access. Until around 2002 – 2004 or so, the fastest computer you had access to was at work, and the fastest data pipe you had access to was also at work. Is this true anymore? Why is it that I know more about what my High School girlfriend had for dinner than what is going on in my organization?, a comment that I love from Tony Zingale CEO Jive one of the leading social software companies.
The global enterprise is being subjected to an explosion of consumer Internet applications, web services, smart phones, mobile applications and other consumer on-line services, based on the principle that the corporate IT experience should be as cool and easy to work or play with as the home entertainment and consumer device experience.
The fundamental revolution underway in consumer IT has been brought about by ubiquitous Internet access, the proliferation of powerful mobile computing devices, and the “consumerisation” of enterprise IT. The innovation is happening in the consumer market and then trickling down to the Enterprise market. I consider Facebook and Twitter—and the ability to tap into my network of friends and follower’s one the most productive ways I can start my day.
My simple conclusion from all of this is that the boundary between work and non-work is getting fuzzier by the day. There is a shift from systems of record to systems of engagement. The differentiators will increasingly be the people. Mike Fauscette of IDC consultants states that “People are the platform”. We need to transform the business conversation the same way social has changed the consumer conversation. Market shifts happen in real time, customers are won and lost in real time, and data changes in real time.
Many forward thinking IT organisations that initially put up a struggle are now facilitating the use of peoples own IT at work. It is about usability and culture. People, Process and Technology – help people to succeed. They enable us to reinvent customer relationships, they enable us to embody creative leadership and build operational dexterity. If people enjoy where they spend their time (online and offline) they will spend more time there.
This only strengthens my conviction that we are about to see the greatest revolution in enterprise software, ever. Well, really, the most exciting revolution in computing, ever. It will create more value for users, customers, and vendors by an order of magnitude over what we have seen before. And, it’s really starting to happen right now. It is real-time. It is social. It is mobile.
