In IT managers vote for 11 technologies that will have the greatest impact in 2011
Enterprise IT has been reeling from the impact of the recession and economic gloom. With companies focussing on curtailing costs, investment in technology was not based on RoI, but CRoI (Cost Reduction on Investment). Hence, only those technologies and services were taken up by IT managers that resulted in tangible savings. The finance guys were making the calls.
Now, the cloud of gloom too seems to be dissipating thanks to the winds of economic growth and optimism. A renewed exuberance and optimism is evidenced in our latest survey. Over 500 IT managers share their views on what technologies will be prominent this year (and the years to come). Chosing from a shortlist of 20 odd technologies, IT managers selected the top 10, and also graded them on 4 parameters - ability to integrate with existing IT, maturity or readiness for use, potential benefits for the organisation, and, cost of acquisition.
Based on these inputs, we present the list of top 11 technologies for 2011. This list reflects the views of 535 senior IT managers. Unlike projections and forecasts made by consultants, this is a community generated list by the people who actually use and work on these technologies. So, this list more closely reflects the views and opinions of the ground reality in the Indian enterprise.
One of the biggest shifts this year, (over the survey done last year) is the positive outlook towards investment in technologies that can aid enterprises to expand and grow. Not surprisingly, Enterprise Apps rose to the top of the list, with more than 90% respondents rating it as a priority for the year.
Green IT, mobile computing and the cloud were next on the list. Thanks to all the excitement and clamour around 3G, wireless broadband debuted into the list. Meanwhile, BI and datacenter transformation held their places. The surprise dropouts this time were unified communications and enterprise-grade social software; both seemed to have slipped from the radar.
All the shifts and changes in the top 10 list point to the fact that IT managers will be exploring and looking at deploying technologies that can help their companies grow and become more profitable in 2011. There is less focus on cost-cutting and more on creating value.
SPENDING IS BACK
IT MANAGERS VOTE FOR 11 TECHNOLOGIES THAT WILL HAVE THE GREATEST IMPACT IN 2011 BY SHASHWAT D C & JATINDER SINGH
12
ITNEXT | JANUARY 2011
Enterprise IT has been reeling from the impact of the recession and economic gloom. With companies focussing on curtailing costs, investment in technology was not based on RoI, but CRoI (Cost Reduction on Investment). Hence, only those technologies and services were taken up by IT managers that resulted in tangible savings. The finance guys were making the calls.
Now, the cloud of gloom too seems to be dissipating thanks to the winds of economic growth and optimism. A renewed exuberance and optimism is evidenced in our latest survey. Over 500 IT managers share their views on what technologies will be prominent this year (and the years to come). Chosing from a shortlist of 20 odd technologies, IT managers selected the top 10, and also graded them on 4 parameters - ability to integrate with existing IT, maturity or readiness for use, potential benefits for the organisation, and, cost of acquisition.
Based on these inputs, we present the list of top 11 technologies for 2011. This list reflects the views of 535 senior IT managers. Unlike projections and forecasts made by consultants, this is a community generated list by the people who actually use and work on these technologies. So, this list more closely reflects the views and opinions of the ground reality in the Indian enterprise.
One of the biggest shifts this year, (over the survey done last year) is the positive outlook towards investment in technologies that can aid enterprises to expand and grow. Not surprisingly, Enterprise Apps rose to the top of the list, with more than 90% respondents rating it as a priority for the year.
Green IT, mobile computing and the cloud were next on the list. Thanks to all the excitement and clamour around 3G, wireless broadband debuted into the list. Meanwhile, BI and datacenter transformation held their places. The surprise dropouts this time were unified communications and enterprise-grade social software; both seemed to have slipped from the radar.
All the shifts and changes in the top 10 list point to the fact that IT managers will be exploring and looking at deploying technologies that can help their companies grow and become more profitable in 2011. There is less focus on cost-cutting and more on creating value.
CLOUD COMPUTING . DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING . MOBILE COMPUTING . DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM . DATACENTER TRANSFORMATION . ENTERPRISE APPS . UNIFIED COMMUNICATION . VIDEO CONFERENCING . BIOMETRIC SECURITY . E-COMMERCE . VIRTUALISATION . SOA . GREEN IT . TABLET COMPUTING . BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE . OPEN SOURCE . WAN OPTIMISATION . NETWORK SECURITY . ENTERPRISE MOBILITY . SAAS . ENTERPRISE-GRADE SOCIAL SOFTWARE . ENTERPRISE APPS HYBRID COMPUTING . WIRELESS BROADBAND . DATA WAREHOUSING . UNIFIED THREAT MANAGEMENT . UNIFIED STORAGE . SEO . DOTNET . DLP . FIREWALL . RFID . DR
We asked IT managers to evaluate the importance and relevance of enterprise technologies for 2011
RANK
CHANGE
TECHNOLOGY
2010
2009
1
Debut
Enterprise Apps (ERP, SCM, CRM)
2
7 5
Green IT
3 Debut
Mobile Computing
4
8 4
Cloud Computing
5
2 -3
Business Intelligence
6
4 -2
Virtualisation
7 Debut
Unified Threat Management
8
3 -5
Datacenter Transformation
9 Debut
Wireless Broadband (3G/WiMAX)
10 Debut
WAN Optimisation
TECH TRENDS | COVER STORY
13
JANUARY 2011 | ITNEXT
2
1
There is much excitement on the cards as far as enterprise applications are considered. Thanks to the recession, many companies were compelled
to eliminate the flab and look at their IT architecture
in ways they did not before. Also, considering that many companies have embraced the cloud for enterprise functions, the year ahead seems to be that of assimilation
and integration.
Secondly, the volume of data being accumulated is exploding, and it is yielding new value for those who know how to mine and refine it. Finally, the impact of enterprise mobility is also having its natural consequence on the infrastructure.
Green technologies are still high on the wishlist of many managers, despite some ambiguity. The main driving force is not the environment, but economy. With the increasing cost of power, any decrease in the consumption of electricity can produce a significant
reduction in operating costs.
The first port of call for green IT is usually the datacenter, which is not surprising, as it consumes a lot of electricity.
Automation, virtualisation
and use of green hardware can effectively curb costs.
Green IT has also an impetus
from the green building
movement, which relies heavily on usage of technology to reduce the
Enterprise Apps
From ERP to HRMS, IT managers are optimistic about deployments
Green IT
Power saved is money saved. This realisation is driving the uptake of green technologies by enterprise ITSo, effective utilisation of enterprise apps in ERP, CRM, financial applications, Web, and Content Management Systems will be the prime concern for the upcoming year, say IT managers. To reap the benefits of collaboration, IT heads will need to conduct a risk analysis of both internal & external strategies. The biggest challenge will be to accommodate the changeboth in functionality and behaviour patterns, rather than just strategy. Also, the pricing will play a role in determining the essential suite of services; however, its the network and reliability of service provider that will influence the execution plan.consumption of power.
Another reason for the gaining popularity of green in the IT manager community is that within any enterprise, the IT department plays a crucial role in driving the green agenda. In fact, IT managers are often the thought leaders and anchors in the roll out of green policies.
Vendors are also promoting green solutions, like green data centers and green storage solutions.
In 2011, while the hype is set to increase; hopefully, the implementation will too. It will be also critical for enterprises to identify vendors who are designing green products to manage the resources better.
7
PITFALLS
To make mobile apps deliver the business objectives IT heads will need to construct a risk analysis of both internal & external strategies
PITFALLS
Green as a concept has still not matured enough to convince organisations taking initiatives solely with the contention of protecting environment
Increased concerns about the power tariffs have raised the importance of Green IT, thereby taking it up 5 ranks over the last year
3.7
4.25
4.63
2.53
Leveraging existing
IT
Maturity
Low Cost of Acquisiton
Potential Benefits for the organisation
3.9
3.4
3.13
2.9
Leverage of Existing IT
Maturity
Potential Benefits for the organization
Low Cost of Acquisiton
DEBUT
COVER STORY | TECH TRENDS
14
ITNEXT | JANUARY 2011
3
4
Mobile Computing
Spurred by the popularity of smart phones and tablet devices, enterprise managers are looking
at incorporating mobile computing platforms
and aligning them with business
Cloud Computing
Driven by cost and convenience, cloud computing
is steadily gaining foothold in the enterprise. However, security concerns remain high
PITFALLS
While mobility will add wings to growing enterprise ambitions, the lack of best security practices could lead to critical data becoming vulnerable
PITFALLS
The evolution of cloud management technologies is still under process and accomodating technologies like virtualisation in their current format will take time
As the year 2011 begins, the industry is eying a swift transformation
towards new mobility platforms that threaten to displace traditional desktop computing. In 2010, tablets became mainstream, and the challenges related to internet security increased in complexity.
With the flow of information on a continuous rise, new enterprises expect their employees to stay connected all the time, thereby making a strong case for a mobile workforce. The trend is evident from the fact that in the last twelve months, there has been a tremendous growth in the market of tablet PCs, smartphones, collaboration tools and cloud computing. Whats more, in its recent report, research firm IDC projects 2011 to be the most challenging year for PC market. It estimates shipments of app-capable, non-PC mobile devices (smartphones, media tablets, etc.) to outnumber PC shipments within the next 18 months. And expects apps store phenomenon to spread up from smartphone and tablets to PC s and next generation enterprise solutions.
According to a recent survey commissioned by Check Point, IT security administrators expect a significant increase in the number of users connecting to their network in the next year, with 54% citing specific growth in the number of remote users.
While the mobile computing led remote workforce certainly provides an opportunity to businesses, looking to optimise their resources more effectively, this will place more stress on IT managers to enforce better security protection to secure data on-the-go.
In the year gone by, the cloud was the most prominent technology
in every report or prediction. The biggest attraction of going on the cloud has always been the low costs associated with the paradigm.
Just going by the hype-cycle alone, the cloud beat all the rest, hands down. Even while adoption lacked, vendors and service providers promoted cloud solutions heavily. To allay the security concerns of the IT department, the private cloud was proffered up as an alternative. However, despite the numerous flavors of the cloud, the IT community is still wary of putting its mission critical data or porting services to the cloud. People are still not very convinced about the security.
The tussle between RIM and the Government of India over security and sharing of data, brought the issue of data privacy and storage on the cloud to the fore.
The question that most large corporations planning to use the cloud are asking, Where will my data be stored? and What jurisdictions will apply to it? These sort of questions will gain much importance in 2011. Conceptually, a private cloud will look great on the paper, but it is much more complex a task to make it a reality for many organisations. The biggest obstacle comes in the form of lack of system management tools that can synchronise the data centre functions with that of the cloud.
Nevertheless, the benefits that are offered by the cloud, namely in terms of efficiency and costs, are just to good to be ignored. As more enterprise applications get ported on the cloud, companies will be more inclined to make use of them.
The future is indeed very cloudy.
3.43
3.13
3.75
3.43
Leverage of Existing IT
Maturity
Low Cost of Acquisiton
Potential Benefits for the organization
3.25
3.14
3.9
3.2
Leverage of Existing IT
Maturity
Low Cost of Acquisiton
Potential Benefits for the organization
DEBUT
8
IT managers are getting accustomed to the idea of using the cloud for applications and backup, hence it moves up 4 ranks on the charts
TECH TRENDS | COVER STORY
J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT 1 5
6
5
7
BI has been topping the technology
lists for a while, and in a special issue of IT Next (a few months back), there was a detailed dicussion on its new avatar, from being strategic to productive.
The recent recession demonstrated
that BI could play a diagnostic role and help increase productivity within the enterprise. The big shift that is taking place is that even small and medium companies are looking at BI solutions to get better insights about their customers and markets.
In 2011, the trend will only strengthen, as enterprises look to make most of the enormous volumes of data within the enterprise. Once the data is cleaned and
After the cloud, virtualisation
is the technology that has recieved much attention from the vendor community. The principal benefits of virtualisation
are cost and consolidation,
and the chief reasons why many enterprises have warmed up to the technology. Thus, enterprises that are looking for increased manageability,
application performance, energy efficiency, look to virtualisation. While the biggest trend is server virtualisation (consolidation
of many disparate servers into a single one), desktop virtualisation is also gaining traction. Many enterprises believe that virtual
desktops can substantially reduce IT infrastructure maintenance costs.
Business Intelligence
Analytics has transformed into a strategic tool for both business growth and productivity gains
Virtualisation
From the server to desktop, virtualisation is being heralded as the panacea for savings and improved mangeabilitydigitised, companies will be able to obtain prospects, new insights on their customers and suppliers.
Also, the fact that there has been a significant consolidation in the enterprise software market, with most of the smaller players being acquired by enterprise software vendors, are pushing BI and information management more strongly than ever. Also, during last one year, some organisations felt that standardise models are too complex.
Overall, BI is set to gain renewed traction this year, as enterprises with a growth agenda, deeply into their dashboards to know which customer segments to target, and which markets to enter.
However, many IT managers point out that consolidation of servers requires much planning and groundwork, and can result in some disruptions. Also, since there are only a handful of players in the market that offer virtualisation services, the license prices are still fairly high. Also, there are still areas of concern when it comes to hosting mission-critical applications in a virtualised environment.
Nonetheless, enterprise IT managers are excited about virtualisation and are keeping a tab on the latest offerings to deploy them within their companies. As virtualisation moves from the server to the desktop companies, it will find greater credence.
2
4
PITFALLS
A key challenge seen by IT managers in adopting BI tools is establishing the core transaction systems and suport from senior management
PITFALLS
Maintenance of virtual infrastructure like defining centralised control, security and access right management while scaling up, is a huge challenge
While BI may have come down 2 ranks over the last year, it still remains a high priority with the IT department for the year 2011
Among all the other technologies deployed and used, virtualisation has been termed as the most over-hyped, reflected in a fall of 4 ranks in the survey
3.78
3.86
4.38
3.2
Leverage of Existing
IT
Maturity
Low Cost of Acquisiton
Potential Benefits for the organization
3.56
3.83
4.24
4.09
Leverage of Existing
IT
Maturity
Low Cost of Acquisiton
Potential Benefits for the organization
COVER STORY | TECH TRENDS
1 6 ITNEXT | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1
7
8
Unified Threat
Management
Single solution to combat multiple challenges finds favour
Datacenter
Transformation
Reducing power consumption is a key concern for IT managers
3
PITFALLS
Rising performance demand and load balancing capabilities of UTMs through multi-core architecture have also made it a bit complex
PITFALLS
The risk of falling for an ad-hoc approach to data centre virtualisation itself can defeat the very objective of virtualisation and lead to significant losses
IT managers still thump their support for realigning the datacenter to business needs and requirements, and so, it continues to be a major concern
With security threats on the rise, UTM is being progressively
considered as the most efficient way of protection. The year 2010 saw a number of swift and growing attacks which were specifically targetted at individual organisations
or a small, select group. With a growing understanding
of critical data being lost and attacks being launched by cyber criminals hampering the business, enterprises looked to UTM solutions for cost efficiencies. In the view of experts, while small companies are not specific targets for criminals, because of the limited opportunity they represent.
But they are vulnerable to sophisticated attacks which may be very expensive to support and outside the ambit of medium businesses. UTM provides SMBs to manage
their security, without much effort or cost. Small organizations are increasingly
deploying it as gateway security solutions and are showing keen interest in the UTM concept of all-in-one security. Gartner defines small businesses as those with 100 to 1,000 employees, and revenue ranging from $50 million to $1 billion.
As per the Gartners report, the worldwide UTM market was worth approximately $1.5 billion in 2009, representing 25% growth over Gartners 2007 estimate. The analyst firm believes the UTM market will remain squarely focused on midsize enterprises.
The IDC report says that the UTM appliance market in India is slated to cross $100 million by 2012, which will generate fresh business opportunities for solution providers.
The emergence of new technologies like cloud computing, virtualisation and managed infrastructure services has reaffirmed
the faith of enterprises in third-parties for setting up data centres. Post recession, organisations are increasingly focussing on virtualisation. Given that high redundancy levels of servers and storage resources are common in data centres, a virtualisation strategy can result in immediate benefits
in terms of server and storage rationalisation. Application
virtualisation also leads to substantial savings in data centre costs.
From an IT Managers point of view, virtualisation of a data centre brings in a level of abstraction and pooling of IT resources, which comes handy in aligning IT with business needs.
The practice of maintaining smaller data centers all over the globe is quickly getting replaced by having a larger data center at selected locations. In case of new build-outs, green has to be grounds- up. According to experts, the overall design and layout of the data centre has to be such that it facilitates air flow and its management and reduces dependency on artificial cooling.
Experts have pointed out that most of the data centres suffer from the problem of over feeding, and that the solution lies in identifying the hot spots and facilitative airflow in deficient zones.
While elements such as unified architecture, virtualisation and green form the core of a data centre transformation strategy, the existing and prevailing best practices will continue to play their roles.
3.33
3.41
4.05
2.86
Leverage of Existing
IT
Maturity
Low Cost of Acquisiton
Potential Benefits for the organization
3.45
3.61
3.89
2.98
Leverage of Existing
IT
Maturity
Low Cost of Acquisiton
Potential Benefits for the organization
DEBUT
TECH TRENDS | COVER STORY
J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT 1 7
9
10
This year saw some really exciting developments in the area of wireless broadband. With 3G finally becoming a reality in India, the demand for quality voice network, and rich data applications like live mobile TV, video calling, music streaming and mobile conferencing saw a huge upsurge in the last quarter of 2010.
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) expects almost 60 million (37.5%) of the forecasted 160 million broadband subscribers
in 2014 to use 3G. It also estimates almost 400 million mobile data subscribers across both 2G and 3G technologies, thereby a considerable increase in the total internet users in the wireless over fixed.
Wireless Broadband (3G/WiMAX)
With the advent of 3G in India, IT managers are seriously evaluating the potential of using the same within the enterprise
According to Ovum, services such as MPLS VPNs, Ethernet, and CDNs will have a larger impact on demand for international bandwidth among the enterprise space. As the global demand for high-definition video services and collaboration solutions grow swiftly amongst businesses, service providers are increasingly aiming to deliver customised solutions based on the specific business needs of the enterprises especially in the media and entertainment sectors.
Ovum further projects the demand for international bandwidth rising through the usage of cloud and networked data hosting infrastructure.
PITFALLS
IT managers have to be extra cautious on the vendor support and making their transcoding engines future proof from all the vulnerabilities
DIRTY DOZEN - 12 MOST OVER-HYPED TECHNOLOGIES IN 2010
Cloud
3G
Green IT
WiMax
Hybrid Computing
Tablet PC
Data
Warehousing
Unified Communication
Unified Storage
SEO
Dotnet
3.33
3.65
3.8
3.6
Leverage of Existing IT
Maturity
Low Cost of Acquisiton
Potential Benefits for the organization
Over 500 IT managers rated the 12 most over-hyped technologies of 2010, which were much promoted by the vendors and analysts and would possibly not find much takers in the year to come
95%
81%
17%
FELT THAT CLOUD WAS MOST OVER-HYPED EVEN THOUGH RELEVANT
STATED THAT GREEN IT HAS GOT MUCH PROMOTION, MAKING IT THE SECOND MOST HYPED
FELT THAT UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS DOES NOT MERIT THE HYPE
SOA
Enterprise Social Networking
DEBUT
INFOGRAPHICS: PRASANTH T R
COVER STORY | TECH TRENDS
1 8 ITNEXT | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1
10
11
WAN Optimisation
As part of a growth strategy, companies are looking to optimise their Wide Area Networks through different ways
Document Management
Reducing paper not only curtails cost but also improves mangeability. And here managing documents in an effective way holds the key
PITFALLS
In the year 2011, WAN optimization will see an acceleration of demand, largely because of the IT practices skewed towards virtualisation and consolidation
PITFALLS
Building awareness and convincing people accustomed to hard copies to move to a digital way of working is a big impediment towards growth
Wisespread deployment of enterprise applications propelled
the spread of Wide Area Networks (WANs) and rise in spending on bandwidth. With the demand for video as a tool to communicate among business units rising, there is a need for a better conceived WAN traffic management strategies in the deployment pattern from enterprises.
According to the industry trends, in the year 2011, WAN optimization will see an acceleration of demand, largely because of the IT practices skewed towards virtualisation and consolidation. WAN optimisation has enabled many organisation to get more out of their existing infrastructure. WAN optimisation solutions aid and assist IT managers to improve their flexibility to run applications and save considerable amount of costs.
As per Aberdeens recent benchmark report, the top obstacles enterprises face in ensuring seamless delivery of data to end users are: increasing research hypothesis which amount of rich content, increasing TCP traffic, and Chattiness will be explored based on of currently deployed applications.
The report further says that the business benefits from shared WAN infrastructures based on underlying Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks that create high bandwidth aggregation are particularly focused on data centers.
Also, as the low cost internet connectivity is becoming a reality and making its way in India , businesses are swiftly getting into VPN to interconnect their networks.
As the businesses are growing, the organisations are looking for solutions that can help them manage things smoother and faster. A document management system (DMS) is one such tool, that manage the growing volume paper. It has also been referred as the Electronic Management System, Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Electronic Data Management and many similar things.
The worldwide market according to industry estimates, is expected to surpass over $75 million this year.
DMSs have been around ever since the idea of a paperless world came in many years ago. However, there is a significant cost involved with DMS. And thats what initially prohibited many businesses to buy the idea.
If an organisation is already running an ERP solution, then running a document management system is relatively cheaper. And since most large organisations are already on ERP, they find it a good bet to invest in content management systems.
DMS is also now increasingly becoming essential for compliance purposes. And that is one reason that even mid-sized organizations are opting for it at least the basic level of DMS, if not the advanced model.
Industry sectors that have been the early adopters of DMS in India include BFSI, telecom, IT and ITeS, government, transportation and logistics. According to experts, pharmaceuticals is the next big emerging vertical for DMS adoption.
Some key trends in the document management space include optimization of storage, and improving bandwidth, readiness and accuracy of data. DMSs are also being engineered to support more document formats and access from mobile phones.
3.66
3.88
4.1
3.54
Leverage of Existing
IT
Maturity
Low Cost of Acquisiton
Potential Benefits for the organization
DEBUT
DEBUT
TECH TRENDS | COVER STORY
J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1 | ITNEXT 1 9
We asked IT managers to evaluate the importance and relevance of enterprise technologies for 2011
RANK TECHNOLOGY
1 Enterprise Apps (ERP, SCM, CRM)
2 Green IT
3 Mobile Computing
4 Cloud Computing
5 Business Intelligence
6 Virtualisation
7 Unified Threat Management
8 Datacenter Transformation
9 Wireless Broadband (3G/WiMAX)
10 WAN Optimisation
11 Document Management
Add new comment