But new developments, which rapidly succeed each other, naturally have their downsides. The implications with regard to complying with the laws and regulations, and the demands that companies or government organizations make for privacy and security, are some examples. But according to Daugherty that is no reason not to get into it: the challenge, in his eyes, is to guarantee sufficient accessibility but to do so in such a way as to ensure that everything is secure.
"But the greatest risk may well be ignoring all the possibilities,” Daugherty continues. “I know of businesses where the employees have been forbidden to use Facebook, wikis and instant messaging because the employers think that it takes place at the expense of productivity. But we already had that discussion with the emergence of e-mail and mobile telephones. Once again, the challenge for the CIO is to embrace new possibilities but meanwhile maintain sufficient control.”
"We try to integrate Web2.0 within Business Processes” SOA wasn’t so much a trend in itself, but it made new trends possible.”
Out in Front
Paul Daugherty must provide his clients with the latest and best technology. That implies that he undoubtedly will have an intense and major impact on IT. An open door or not; as far as he is concerned, for the time being the so-called ‘consumerization’ of IT will continue to be one of the most important drivers of innovation within the IT business. However, the consumer as a booster of new technologies within organizations is a very remarkable shift in his eyes. “Since the ‘80s the greatest innovations have invariably been driven by providers like IBM, ICL, EMC and Hitachi. That’s where the money was made – the risk capital went there, IPOs took place there, companies wanted to invest in that.”
"If you follow the venture capitalists, flotations and investments a bit nowadays, then you come to the domain of consumer-oriented websites such as Facebook, Google and YouTube. That’s where the innovation is coming from right now. And then we’re back to the challenge for the CIO, who has to find a place for these possibilities within the organization.”
Power Shift
"Simultaneous with consumerization, what I call a ‘power shift’ is taking place: big businesses are no longer running the show with their mainframes, servers and web applications; by now, the end-user has the power. A shift therefore, imposed by the powers that be, to a client-oriented model. Thanks to SOA and cloud computing, among other things, end users are able to make their own mash-ups of services and figure out their own means for social networking.”
Until recently, SOA was still spoken of as the big trend. Meanwhile, in Daugherty’s opinion it’s very clear that SOA wasn’t so much a trend in itself, but rather the technology that made new trends possible, such as consumerization and the power shift that accompanied it.
Daugherty: “I’ve been in this industry for 25 years now; I’ve worked for several other ICT firms and also have research experience. Over the course of the years I witnessed three major developments: the host-centric approach in the 1980s, then clientserver technology and the web-centric approach within clients and software on the network. But the biggest trend of them all is the ability to use new technologies to combine different computing resources.”