Vince Kellen
In the first half of 2009 firms cut people and cut costs, and waited to see how the dust would settle. As the year progressed, top firms raised the battle flags, poised to pounce on market opportunities. The laggards are either quixotically attempting to take on the dominant force in their market, or are desperately seeking refuge in the arms of an acquisition partner. Against this backdrop, Cutter Senior Consultant Vince Kellen made his annual prognostications, highlighting what he sees as the top 8 trends and 5 anti-trends for the year ahead.
Three of the trends Kellen predicts are:
Trend: Lean ITIL. Lean enterprise architecture. "Look for ITIL and enterprise architecture programs to get pointed not at 'solving world hunger' but at finding significant cost reductions. Top IT shops will be more successful by casting these initiatives as productivity enhancers rather than grand unification theories," says Kellen.
Trend: Social network analytics. "Gosh golly, the visuals depicting social networks are so cool! And they grab executive eyeballs. We all love novelty items and this one has some legs. Why? Understanding how networks of people consume or deliver value is both a powerful and a simple concept. The analytic models work well for understanding networks of customers, employees, suppliers, and partners. Social networking systems or simple survey designs can tease out levels of trust and information flow across the networks. New toys! New models! Game on!"
Trend: Cloud bursting. Defined as data center systems that can redirect overflow computing processing to cloud service providers, cloud bursting is a natural starting point for cloud initiatives. Says Kellen, "I have never seen a conversation generate more CIO frowns than a discussion of the cloud. If CIOs are dour on the cloud, why am I positing this as a trend? Two reasons pop to mind. First, large software vendors are clearly pouring a lot (if not most) of their R&D efforts into leveraging cloud computing. That is always a good predictor of the future. Second, while many CIOs pooh-pooh the cloud, they do so because of the lack of time they have spent in understanding it more deeply. As knowledge of how cloud services actually work grows, look for initiatives in 2010 to take lower-risk items, such as testing and development and some overflow demand into the cloud. Do you see the pattern emerging? Smaller investment + less risk + greater payoff + growing vendor support = trend."
As he did last year, Kellen also predicted what's "heading south" -- what he calls "anti-trends" -- in addition to what's looking up. Three of these are:
Anti-trend: Big ERP CRM. "With the recent hype regarding social network analysis (SNA) and the extraordinary growth in social media in 2009, expect more and more firms to pause on any large-scale customer relationship management (CRM) investment," predicts Kellen. Why? According to Kellen, "Firms will want to figure out how these new tools may affect their customers and their markets. Big vendors would be wise to extend their conventional CRM tools into the social network world. Look for some vendors to drop the 'C' from the acronym. The social networking world doesn't know the differences among customers, employees, and suppliers. The software doesn't have to either and can be bought once and used many times for different things. Look for more niche social media CRM solutions in 2010."
Anti-trend: Generic BI. "Generic BI suffers many of the same ills as big CRM. Gone are the days of dozens and dozens of vendors slicing up the market. Large software houses want to charge $1,000-$10,000 per seat to cover their equally large selling and overhead costs. They also want to sell lots and lots of seats. Unfortunately, like making wine, squeezing value out of data is a leveraged affair. It is better to have a few masters of the data do the harvesting, destemming, crushing, pressing, fermenting, and barreling of the data. The vast majority of workers in an enterprise don't want to have to think harder and longer, they want the computer to do more thinking for them. Generic large-scale BI for the masses should be a permanent anti-trend. I will refuse to discuss this any further!"
Anti-trend: Microsoft. Says Kellen, "As much as I hate to pick on any one vendor, I can't help but think as I watch the competitive landscape evolve that I have seen this movie before. While many Microsoft enthusiasts are still among us, so many other players are now shaping the industry. I can't help but feel that Microsoft's time has come and we are witnessing the long tail of its decline. It may not end in a bang, like so many other technology flameouts, but with a whimper."
The Business Technology Trends & Impacts E-Mail Advisor (December 17, 2009) containing all of Vince Kellen's predictions is available here. To schedule an interview with Mr. Kellen, contact Kim Leonard (+1 781 641 5111).