Enterprise 20/20

Introduction

Think about all the change that has occurred in the last 10 years – from the societal to the individual, from the economic to the technological. These changes have not just affected the enterprise, they’ve redefined it. And of course, the rate of change is only accelerating.

So, what will a successful enterprise look like in 15 years? Or 10? Or even 5? How will it interact with customers, engage partners and empower employees? How might its business models, operating principles and organizational structures differ from today’s enterprise?

To imagine the future of the enterprise, we must understand the forces that are transforming our world and the technological innovations that are shaping the future. How will our professional and personal lives be different? And in what new and unexpected ways will technology work for us?

If we gather thousands of thinkers from the enterprise community, provoke one another to discuss the global, social, business and technological trends that are beginning to emerge – and help each other arrive at some consensus – then each of us will not only be better prepared to bring the challenges of the future into focus, but also help our organizations do the same.

Chapter 1

CIO 20/20

IT: A key part of the business, or something we can get from the cloud?

Enterprise IT is at a crossroads.

The worst-case scenario is that cloud-based applications, or software as a service (SaaS), will mean that the business can choose to “get its IT” from someone else. Highly geared development environments using platform services in the cloud, or platform as a service (PaaS), will mean that business IT can orchestrate its own business processes.

The best-case scenario, however, is very different. SaaS will allow IT to offload non-core applications such as expenses and payroll. It can then focus on becoming an integral member of business teams, using highly geared, cloud-based development systems to create compelling, agile, multi-device “customer experiences.”

This chapter will debate the underlying trends that will affect enterprise IT in the coming eight years and their implications for the CIO. It will look at the impact of developments such as:

• The “internet of things” - arrays of sensors telling us what’s going on “out there”
• True real-time analysis and inference based on masses of sensor and unstructured data
• Compute power that will help us optimize our use of resources, be safe and protect our environment
• The continued growth of SMBs and groups of “free agents” linking together in mosaics to provide products and services, and the devices, content and collaboration tools they will need to succeed

Chapter 2

Dev Center 20/20

If it’s true that software is eating the worldE, then the people who design, write, test and manage software are looking at a busy future. And increasingly, these people are all of us.

How so? While today it is possible to find pockets of the world economy where software or, more specifically, apps are not yet the fabric for everything that happens, by 2020 the role of apps will be total. Already premium automobiles require tens of millions of lines of codeE - far more than even uber-apps such as Facebook. Samsung released a wifi-enabled fridge with built-in appsE nearly two years ago.

So what will life be like on the Planet of the Apps?

If today the typical application “supply chain” involves the business, the delivery teams and operations, what will the supply chain of 2020 look like? How will organizations keep up with the insatiable demand for better apps and features, delivered faster? Will app development become as core to the education curriculum as reading, writing and arithmetic? Will globalized skill-sets and the wide availability of public APIs truly advance this aim of better/faster/always? How will better/faster/always fare against such realities as bandwidth constraint, device proliferation and technical debt?

Chapter 3

Marketing 20/20

Gartner recently made an eye-opening prediction for CMOs and the C-suite:

• By 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs.¹

This prediction speaks to two megatrends taking place that we imagine will accelerate through 2020.

First, marketing is being redefined. Marketers have more clout than ever, and with that comes new levels of accountability. Increasingly, they are responsible for driving revenue growth, and are investing in a full spectrum of technologies to become more data-driven, measuring every aspect of their function. They are rapidly adopting software-as-a-service (SaaS) to speed time-to-value and avoid the hassles of long IT projects.

Second, unstructured “diverse data” represents more than 90 percent of the world’s data, and it is the fastest growing form of information. Just as important, this “human information”-in the form of social media, video, images, web content, click streams, phone calls, emails and texts-is where the interesting things happen. This is where customers share their experiences with a brand and indicate their buying preferences. It’s where marketers can glean new insights that impact everything from SEO and advertising spend to customer engagement to new product development.

Join us as we imagine marketing in 2020. Together we’ll explore questions that C-suite, marketing and IT leaders must jointly consider:

• How should marketing contribute to top-line growth today, and in 2020?
• How can we be better attuned to the preferences, not just of segments, but individual customers around the globe?
• How will we engage customers in 2020 and how will “human information” play a role?
• What new roles should we appoint?
• How will technology in 2020 shape what’s possible for marketers?

Chapter 4

IT Operations 20/20

Data centers are all going away. Your server room is going away, and everything is going to the cloud. All your employees will bring their own devices to work, and you will never have to purchase hardware again. Magically, all your IT needs will be taken care of effortlessly by relying on third-party providers that can do it better. All of this and more is coming with the data center of the future; at least this is what some people would have you believe.

The rise of cloud computing provides amazing possibilities to companies that can define their core competencies for building or consuming technology while redefining their IT processes, so they are positioned to best leverage external cloud services and people as part of their next-generation value chains.

Today, leading companies are dealing with issues such as sustainability and geographic proximity, which suddenly compete with cost control and profit maximization. By 2020, the operational capabilities of a data center must evolve to provide much more in order to support a rising marketplace for both IT and business services. When the market for elastic, public cloud capacity can be born as an offshoot of enterprises with excess data center capacity, anything is possible. Any IT or business service can, in theory, become a commodity to be exchanged seamlessly.

Today, the typical data center focuses the majority of its time and resources on the deployment and management of physical and virtual solutions that its company builds. What will it look like if a majority of solutions could be sourced externally by 2020? How will organizations keep up with the management needs for external services and applications? Will more employees be external contractors with the right skills and in the right locations for specific business value chains? How will companies make tradeoffs for managing a portfolio of more and more external services while maintaining core competencies and company culture?

Chapter 5

Employee 20/20

When we reach the final chapter (for now) of our Enterprise 20/20 endeavor, we will have put CIOs, the Development Center, Marketing and IT Operations under the microscope to imagine what the enterprise will be like in 2020. We decided to save the best for last: people. The same trends that are shaping the future of business are changing what it means to be an employee of the enterprise.

In recent years, globalization has brought greater diversity to the workplace. At the same time, collaboration tools are changing when and where we work, leaving ghost towns of cubicles in once-busy office complexes. These trends have prompted enterprises to rethink everything from how they attract and retain talent to how they build community - and even what they serve on the cafeteria menu.

In the future, virtual teams will transcend time zones and cultural differences, forming and disbanding as often as new challenges emerge. Employees will bring their own devices to work, and IT will have to find a way to secure and support the mess.

How far will these trends go?

• Will there even be employees by 2020, or will we all become work-for-hire contractors, answerable only to ourselves and the results we can deliver?
• How will enterprises keep their top performers engaged within and beyond the organization?
• And how will we measure performance?

Community member James McGovern foresees a radical shift in this area, from today’s time-based measurements to a new emphasis on outcomes in 2020. We’d like to find out what you think. Join us as we imagine the future for employees. Coming December 2012.

Volume 2 - Chapter 1

Security 20/20

Preparing today for tomorrow’s threats

In today’s enterprises, security touches all aspects of information, from the data center to the desktop and beyond the network edge. Cloud services and the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend have only accelerated the need for accurate, appropriate security across all points in the network. As the “Internet of things” takes shape and users expect to be connected everywhere all the time, this environment will create more opportunities for adversaries to exploit the weaknesses in our enterprise systems. Over the next decade, this reality will challenge our IT environments, our consumer lifestyle and the security industry.

Security 20/20 aims to shed some light on the threats enterprises will face in 2020 and steps they can take now to balance information security with business agility.

Join us as we consider these questions:

• What will be the biggest threats to enterprise security in 2020 and why?
• What roles will nation-states play in the evolving threat landscape?
• Which technologies will alter the security landscape by 2020?
• What role will government entities play in protecting citizens online?
• What can enterprises do today to prepare for the security threats of tomorrow?

Volume 2 - Chapter 2

Mobility 20/20

Depending on which prediction you believe, each person, worldwide, may be using as many as seven mobile devices by 2020. At the same time, IT is going to the cloud. Mobility must figure prominently on your short-list of priorities as you shape your enterprise roadmap. As more employees, partners, and customers use personal mobile devices for work, you’ll have to consider mobility’s implications on infrastructure, security, the dev center, and more. Integrating your approach to security and application development related to mobility requires attention to the “bring your own device” (BYOD) movement.

Smartphones outshipped PCs for the first time in 2011, according to Canalys¹. At the end of 2012, all predictions pointed to mobile devices—smartphones and tablets—outshipping PCs for good in 2013. But it’s not the devices that matter nearly as much as the applications. Once thought of as simply messaging platforms, mobile devices are becoming application platforms that—with the omnipresence of cloud-based infrastructure and high-speed wireless connectivity—get the job done. While only a small group of people today can say they’ve ditched their PCs in favor of a mobile device, we expect that group to swell in the coming years.

By 2020, the Internet of Things will be an everyday reality. The once-futuristic scenario in which you ping your refrigerator from your smartphone to find out what you need from the grocery store will become commonplace. The ubiquity of embedded sensors, smart devices and wireless connectivity stands to impact every industry, every aspect of life, and all businesses and governments.

Brace yourself as securing data, managing devices, and setting policies and expectations around BYOD gain momentum. We’ll offer a glimpse of a world in which enterprise IT is increasingly shaped by consumer trends and everything—people, companies, governments, and, of course, household objects—is connected.

Disclaimer

The views set forth in this publication are not necessarily those of Hewlett-Packard Company or its affiliates (HP), but are the collective views of contributors to this publication, some of which have been curated by HP. Because the content of this publication is future-looking, it, by definition, makes certain presuppositions and assumptions, some or all of which may or may not be realized.