Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2014. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by John Michelsen, CTO, CA Technologies
Widening Skills Gap, IT’s "APPetite", Experience-Centric Everything and More
In 2014, IT will become the glue between the
business and the services it provides that drive competitive advantage, create
new market opportunities, and ultimately, that help organizations keep their
edge. CIOs must become more comfortable giving up control, bringing together third-party
and in-house services, resources and technologies that are required to deliver
a seamless user experience. By focusing on enabling enterprise mobility and delivering
high-quality applications that enhance customer engagements with the business,
IT is equipped to take on the role of a trusted advisor and service broker in
this brave new world of dynamic IT.
This rapidly evolving world of IT presents
many challenges and opportunities. In 2014, I predict IT organizations will see
the following:
1. A Mounting Skills Crisis:
While organizations were quick to invest in social, mobile and cloud, the
unprecedented rise of these technologies unleashed tremendous disruption in the
enterprise. However, to truly achieve the promised business benefits, most IT
organizations do not have the necessary skills or culture.
Big Data demands
a new breed of data scientists, and advancements in mobility, social, and
sensing technologies rely on resetting the design and architecture of
applications and user interfaces. These are highly specialized skills that are currently
nearly impossible to recruit.
Experts believe that the fastest-growing occupations in the next decade
will demand workers skilled in science, technology, engineering and math
(STEM). But the supply of these highly skilled workers is not growing fast
enough to meet the demand.
The June 2013 study from Georgetown University's
Center on Education and the Workforce, "Recovery: Projections of Jobs and
Education Requirements through 2020," predicts that by 2018 in the U.S. alone
there will be three million fewer workers with technical degrees than needed by
enterprises. We can help foster a new
generation of innovators and leaders by investing in education and training at
all levels.
Companies that
take a proactive approach-embracing community-based development in the short
term and investing in technical education in the long term-will emerge as
winners.
2. IT Gains an "APPetite" and Fuels the
API Economy: Widespread adoption of cloud computing,
mobility and more have driven fundamental changes in how applications are
created and deployed.
No longer
monolithic and hosted on a single platform, we can rapidly assemble applications
from in-house and/or provider-built components residing independently, either
on-premise (on any hardware platform), in a cloud, or both. CIOs that move up
the value chain to focus more on managing apps and services will increase their
company's ability to drive business success.
More than ever before, IT is primed to
become application assemblers and brokers of business services. As
SaaS, PaaS and IaaS provide turnkey access to compute capacity, IT will
increasingly focus on composite business applications-rather than a
buy-build-manage model-to achieve new levels of speed, innovation, performance
and cost/risk efficiencies. To successfully make this transition, CIOs will
need to increase their focus on service-oriented style architectures through
more efficient use and better control of APIs (Application Programming
Interfaces).
3. Rise of Experience-Centric Everything: Both
customers and employees are embracing disruptive technologies faster than
businesses. Today, IT services are all about the consumer.
This is driving
dramatic changes in how applications are developed, which will lead to a rise
in experience-driven design and, in turn, necessitate DevOps-style development,
a method of developing software where developers and IT operations
professionals work together to speed up the delivery of new business services.
There will be
increased use of sensing technologies available in most modern mobile and
wearable devices. "Mobile First" development will give way to "Experience
First" multi-channel approaches that will leverage smartphones, tablets, smart
TVs, gaming consoles, laptops, or any other platform that a consumer is likely
to be using when they want a product or need a service.
Managing and
securing mobile/social IT will become less about the devices themselves, and
more about the mobile applications and data that reside on them, all while
delivering a compelling and engaging user experience.
4. Demand for Accelerated Delivery: We
now have a new generation of self-informed consumers who are very comfortable
sharing experiences and information via social media. Consumer and employee
demand for more engaging experiences will continue to increase at a dramatic
pace as they become more comfortable with experience-driven, multi-channel
applications and technologies such as sensing. Barriers to entry have been
removed-competition has gone from nowhere to everywhere overnight.
In this reality,
social, mobility, cloud and DevOps are becoming one movement. These evolved
experiences will drive a need for the same level of agility from every
business. Meeting these customer demands for speed, innovation and quality can
only be accomplished by IT organizations that shift their thinking and culture
to the DevOps mindset.
5. Security Tops the IT and Business
Agenda: It should come as no surprise that mobility,
social and cloud adoption have effectively opened the enterprise and invited
new business risk. This reality diminishes IT control and requires the CIO and
CSO to find the delicate balance of enabling and protecting the business.
Ensuring that
security is convenient for users-simple, yet automated on the back end-is one
way to drive productivity and business enablement. Coupled with an approach to "predict,
prevent, and prepare" for a possible breach, and IT will have a good start on
balancing business enablement with business protection.
Runner
Up: Cloud is a Given. The buzz of "the cloud" dims significantly
in 2014 as people realize it's just the way of doing business. In fact, cloud
is now the key enabler for other disruptive technologies like social and
mobility. Though cloud computing has become mainstream, many businesses are
still in the early stages of adoption. These businesses will also be affected
by the mounting skills crisis, which could lead to wider adoption of
service-provider hosted public and private clouds.
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About the Author
John Michelsen,
chief technology officer at CA Technologies, is responsible for technical
leadership and innovation, further developing the company's technical
community, and aligning its software strategy, architecture and partner
relationships to deliver customer value. John is also responsible for
delivering the company's common technology services, ensuring architectural
compliance, and integrating products and solutions. John holds multiple patents
including market-leading inventions delivered in database, distributed
computing, virtual/cloud management, multi-channel web application portals and
Service Virtualization (LISA). In 1999, John founded ITKO and built LISA from
the ground up to optimize today's heterogeneous, distributed application
environments. The company was acquired by CA Technologies in 2011. Prior to ITKO,
John led SaaS and E-commerce transformations for global enterprises at Trilogy
and Agency.com. He also founded a boutique custom software firm that focused on
distributed, mission-critical application development projects for customers
like American Airlines, Citibank and Xerox. John earned degrees in business and
computer science from Trinity University and Columbus University. He has
authored a best practices book, "Service Virtualization: Reality is Overrated,"
and has contributed to dozens of leading technical journals and publications on
topics ranging from hierarchical database techniques and agile development to
virtualization.