IT Needs to Predict Future Technology Moves and Build on Its Expansion Plans

The most serious questions that they ask themselves and that business functions expect them to address are:

a)      How do I reduce the cost of IT?

b)      How can I capitalise on the new technology to build efficient systems?

c)       How can economies of scale be built for enhanced productivity?

Building efficiencies through cost effective methods
With changing business dynamics, most IT decision makers have a huge task ahead of them. That would mean they are expected to bring in business agility, drive simplicity and make it automated. Most often, CTOs are given the responsibility of making technology simple and easily available. For instance, we have about 16 technical advisors who are part of the advisory council. Also, most of our innovations around software defined stores, de-bugging open source, virtualisation and or other evolutions have happened with having customer inputs and using technologies effectively.

IT needs to predict future technology moves and build on its expansion plans. Technology needs to be used to build control systems which can help in automating the process. IT needs to apply Moore’s Law in building the automation process and increasing the procession power of technology, which will drive down the cost.

SMAC, the industry buzzword, has also evolved and aligned with this law. The law proves the point that   technologies that are evolved are enhanced versions which have the power to scale up.

Making new technologies Relevant
Every technological evolution in which IT is not an exception proves the point that it is adding value to the changing environment and is not anonymous to demand. For example, taking Hadoop is a good evolution and it has made an impact. The evolution of the data scientist with the discovery of Hadoop is also an example of innovation which is most relevant to the current need.

The idea here is to allow IT guys to ask more questions of customers and other business functions on what they demand. IT managers should possess constant curiosity to understand what the business needs are and prod them into demanding more and driving more innovation. This helps IT to innovate better and have the technologies put to relevant use in driving business innovation. The demand from the business would definitely help IT to build the economics of correlation and quantify past deployments and measure IT appropriately. Once IT managers understand how to measure IT, it would enable them to make technologies more relevant to business innovation.

Correlation with other functions is critical to play the role of a strategist
Asking the important and right question as a technologist will definitely pave the way to becoming a strategic thinker. One must move beyond quantitative methods of doing things. Long term planning is most important and, for a CTO, being a fast thinker is crucial. As CTOs or strategists, IT decision makers need to look beyond one solution and look for alternatives.

CTOs and senior IT managers are in an interesting dilemma. They are reveling in a certain ambiguity to find out what the right alternative is. Is it a board level profile they need to aspire for, or should they be valuable to the company and seek success in enabling people around them to listen to them? Do they need to think about the crazy infrastructure or build a vision that can define their success?

The answers to all of these questions would be to capitalise on the technology and its innovation and create a solid footprint in the organisation.

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