3 megatrends in businesses every chief information officer should know

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Businesses in Hong Kong and worldwide face a world transformed by new technologies and fast changing attitudes to interpersonal communications shaped by mobile devices. At the forefront of these changes in the enterprise is the CIO or Chief Information Officer.

The role of the CIO is something of a moveable feast today. Gone are the days when these C-level executives were merely responsible for the information technology and computer systems residing within the organization.

Fujitsu Hong Kong General Manager Mr. Derek Yiu, a well-versed professional in IT solutions and services, has identified three megatrends having a dramatic effect on the CIO’s job and prospects today.

Mr. Derek Yiu, General Manager, Fujitsu Hong Kong.

Megatrend #1: The Cloud

A sound cloud services strategy is fast becoming a requisite for success in the enterprise. The evolution of the cloud has seen business owners and IT professionals alike transform their mindset as data, information and systems have shifted over the years from being siloed, to virtualized to cloud-based.

The trend is only set to continue, with IDC forecasting that the cloud market in Asia Pacific will grow from US$2.9bn in 2011 to US$32bn in 2020 at 31% CAGR.

In view of the megatrend, CIO should look for service provider with consolidated multi-site systems and applications, world-class cloud platforms that offers various cloud services including IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.

The business transformation embracing cloud is a golden opportunity for organizations, from large corporations and government departments to start-ups and SMEs, to enjoy reduced costs by eliminating up-front IT expenditures.

In fact, a tailor-made cloud service can provide vast pools of IT resource on a pay-per-use basis to grow the business by rapidly and easily scaling up their operations, and increasing business agility with its flexible infrastructure and on-demand pricing.

Megatrend #2: Mobile

The ability to access the enterprise from smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices poses a huge opportunity for efficiencies as well as to quickly leverage the organization’s capabilities. According to Gartner, 61 percent of CIOs plan to enhance their mobility capability over the next three years, with 48 percent saying their organizations have an opportunity to become leaders in their sectors by fully adopting innovative mobility solutions.

In the next year or two, we will see more technology that combines cloud, web browser technology, HTML5 and mobiledevices in a compelling way. These solutions will help companies reduce the maintenance costs of front-end systems and get to a more standardized, user-driven working space.

However, some of the business-critical applications required by end-users are not yet ready for this kind of infrastructure; the web services of some applications are not as good as many native desktop apps and not as robust, but development efforts in this mobile/cloud direction will continue to narrow that gap, especially for commodity apps.

Increasingly, CIOs will see they do not need the full IT stack any more, but that cloud-based offerings will be accessed via web browsers. Mobile and cloud will change the role of the CIO and those that don’t anticipate the trends will deal with a lot of upheaval – they will need to see what is coming, adjust their strategy and IT to succeed.

Megatrend #3: Big Data

In recent years, “Big Data” has become an industry catchphrase, as the amount of data which exists in the world continues to grow exponentially. Total spending on big data technologies and services is expected to reach a market value of US$16.9 billion by 2015, up from $3.2bn in 2010, representing a CAGR of 40 percent — about seven times that of the overall ICT market, according to IDC.

The essence of big data utilization is collecting the information generated from various business activities and performing analysis on this to discover trends and make predictions precisely and in a shorter analysis cycle. For this reason, we believe that big data utilization has serious significance for companies looking to improve interactions with their customers, and maximise business agility and enter new fields previously closed to them.

As such, big data has presented a big challenge – businesses need to maximize the value of this diverse range of collected information more effectively and efficiently. Those that do can unlock new sales opportunities, grow their customer base, strengthen loyalty and sharpen their competitive edge.

These megatrends highlight how new technologies are changing the role of the CIO. Business strategies already intertwined with IT are increasingly tied to mobile applications.

CIOs are becoming increasingly service-oriented as the cloud trend shifts focus from hardware and IT within the business perimeter to a cloud-based per-use model. Ultimately, the CIO’s role will adapt as the world of business rides the waves of the latest technological trends.

CIOs that succeed will be those best prepared for change and who understand that IT and digital strategies cannot be separated from business strategies in the future.