Innovate or fail, CIOs told

Technology managers must become adept crystal ball gazers in the realm of convergence, software and pervasive computing or their companies will disappear by 2011, IT delegates heard yesterday.



Gathered at IDC's Expo and Forum in Boston, CIOs were told they have five years to hone the art of predicting the unintended consequences of technology in three seminal areas.



The analysis firm confirmed to Contractor UK that John Gantz, its chief research officer, warned how an unstoppable wave of irreversible change will wash over IT segments from data centers to software to telecoms.



Hapless IT managers who fail to heed the warnings will face the toughest time in 2011 or 2012, when the emerging trends will accelerate, forcing their companies to adapt or disappear.



"I hope you're all really good adrenaline junkies," Gantz told delegates on Thursday, alluding to the need for energetic CIOs and IT managers.



The first challenge is posed from the convergence of the World Wide Web and the telephone network, which he said will create a type of new infrastructure - "the great Internetwork."



This will extend far beyond desktop PCs and telephones to reach cars and other mobile platforms, meaning the corporate landscape will evolve as the number of 'customer touch points' multiply.



In turn, CIOs will face a security test, as their enterprise systems will extend beyond the company firewall, alongside the demands of constant uptime from their business superiors.



The corporate database will continue to play a central role, to the extent that its increasing importance is expected to create a type of 'turf war' between competing departments.



"Everyone will want to connect to the database, like a wildebeest wandering through the Serengeti, where everyone wants to feed on it," Gantz said.



The second area of potential disruption will come from software, in particular the explosion of open-source development; service-orientated architecture, the merger of Web-based and desktop services, additional to composite applications.



The entire sector, regardless of location, is expected to change – some companies will be forced into acquisitions, while others will make mistakes, risking an "end user veto" of unpopular features.



Microsoft was cited as one such provider that has already fallen victim to such an error, in light of its move to allow system administrators to block users from copying data onto memory sticks, under plans for OS Vista.



Although memory sticks do pose a threat to information security, the popular devices are already an indispensable part of IT and business professionals' toolkits.



Gantz believes Microsoft has reacted too slowly, and could suffer from a backlash from users.



The third area of potential chaos will be pervasive computing, spreading beyond PDAs and music players. Entire buildings will be added to the network of the future, while sensors in rubbish bins and parking spaces will be deployed to improve collection rates and traffic flow.



Supporting the trend, demand will explode for phones, games, toys, cameras and handsets enabled with VoIP or GPS, while sales of PCs will level out by 2015, Gantz said.



Such change will put pressure on CIOs as they strive to cope with constant bursts in network traffic, the need to manage a growing array of devices and a reversal of data flow, as the network's edge will increasingly 'talk' to its centre, the analyst said.