IT Trends: The Fourth Wave is Here

If you think Information Technology is on the brink of a major change, you may already be too late

Courtesy of HP Enterprise Services

From smart sensors that track the temperatures of products to personalized data, the latest information push is already here. HP Fellow Charlie Bess explains how your company reacts next will determine competitive showdowns and slowdowns.

If you think Information Technology is on the brink of a major change, you may already be too late. The accelerating growth of enterprise data gathered in real time is transforming IT. Automation will explode. Simulations will be deployed extensively. In response, businesses must master the capability to retrieve intelligence from this monumental surge of new ways to value IT.

Equally important, they must execute the adjustments necessary to compete.

According to Forrester Research, Inc., IT has been buffeted by three distinct transformative waves over the past half century. HP Fellow Charlie Bess says the fourth came crashing into the enterprise zone almost unnoticed in 2008.

“We’re entering a new wave with computers in things rather than as things,”

Bess says. For example, new jet engines monitor pressure, temperature and even speed. New technology provides diagnostic and predictive maintenance data, decreasing downtime and increasing longevity. Likewise, HP and Shell are collaborating to develop a wireless sensing system to collect and store extremely high-resolution seismic data. This technology could transform the ability to pinpoint abundant new oil and gas reserves.

Business Processes Must Evolve

Historically, each 16- to 20-year IT wave represents a paradigm shift in business processes accompanied by sweeping gains in productivity. These include:

1. The centralized mainframe wave (enterprise view of information)

2. The distributed personal computer wave (individual view of information)

3. The interconnected network/Internet wave (shared view of information between and across organizations).

The fourth wave will align IT and the business to a greater and far deeper extent than ever before. “The business is IT, and IT is the business,” Bess says. “Every individual at all levels will have IT skills, and IT professionals will have business skills.” Four key elements of the fourth wave include:

* Intelligent sensors. Businesses will increasingly use devices to pinpoint location, temperature and motion, for example. Using this abundance of data to identify enterprise events will provide competitive advantages.

* Computing abundance. Multi-core processors and cloud computing mean computing power can be harnessed to simulate and predict likely outcomes.

All that sensor data, then, turns into a deep understanding of corporate context.

* Targeted information. Data flows will be personalized to the roles and availability of individuals. Each individual’s contribution will be maximized with precisely tailored information, focusing his or her attention on tasks that require action.

* Application ebb. Standalone software issues will largely become moot.

Aggregations of services will deliver most of the value in the fourth wave.

Though it began in 2008, the fourth wave has been slowed by the struggling economy. Yet certain transformations have continued. “Interesting stuff will come out of this recession,” predicts Patrick Gray, president of Prevoyance Group, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based strategy consultancy. “Lots of IT projects are frozen right now. But resourceful workers are still cobbling together solutions to face these challenges.”

The Changing Workforce

Gray believes cultural pressures unleashed by an influx of new workers will further disrupt embedded IT functions. A workforce versed in social media and smart-phone applications will drive solutions once relegated to standalone IT departments.

Organizations keeping pace with these shifting undercurrents will possess significant competitive advantages, says Bess. Businesses that focus on innovation are poised to glean insight from data and emerge from the downturn with considerable momentum. Examples: Google, Amazon and eBay were among the few organizations to thrive following the tech bubble implosion a decade ago.

“IT was originally brought into the organization to maximize value and improve efficiency. Where that is happening and the business outcomes reflect it, IT has a reserved seat at the table,” Bess says. That’s the ultimate signature of an organization that understands the implications of the fourth wave. “It significantly alters the relationship between IT and the business, transforming how this value and efficiency is generated.”