Deloitte's Tech Trends 2012

Deloitte South Africa has released its annual Technology Trends Report, which identifies what the major technology influences on business will be for the next 18 to 24 months.

The report was released at an event in Rosebank this week, and was presented by Deloitte's principal US consulting chief technology officer, Mark White.

1. Social business

Social business is about reimagining business with a social mindset and creating “net-new connections” among people, information and assets to drive better business decisions.

White says enterprise should not be merely aspirational with its use of social platforms, but also intentional; based on the specific enterprise's needs and the value it can derive from it. Use cases can be found for instances of collaboration and drawing on the wisdom of the crowd.

White cited a recent study, which found one in three college students and young employees under 30 prioritise social media freedom, device flexibility and work mobility over their salary. “It's a global phenomenon that is not just about the consumer and commercial aspects, but also seeping into our culture,” says White. Speaking of the various enterprise applications, White says: “Social is an adjective that needs a noun. Think of social business, social HR, social finance.”

In the South African context, Deloitte senior manager, Greg Comline, says two of the major stumbling blocks for local organisations are bandwidth and security when it comes to rolling out cloud solutions for social business.

“These issues are, however, becoming less critical as more cloud security is rolled out and organisations begin to balance the risk with the opportunity, and access to acceptable levels of bandwidth continues to improve on a daily basis,” says Comline.

2. Gamification

Of all the tech trends, White says gamification is probably the most talked about. Gamification involves the embedding of game attributes into day-to-day business activities - interacting with the next generation in their native language and tapping into the older generation that has embraced gaming.

According to Deloitte, the average gamer age is 37, and 42% of the global gaming population is female. White says by 2015 more than 50% of organisations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes.

Comline says: “The root of gamification is in the fact that human beings like to compete; we like to have fun and come together as a group. Gamification plays on those three qualities and brings them together with a sharp business focus with achievement levels, points tracking, bonuses and leaderboards.”

“Gamification is struggling to gain momentum within SA at the moment, as many business executives are still unsure as to how and where gamification can assist their business in becoming more competitive through staff performance and whether or not it will resonate with their audience.”

Comline adds that gamification can be an effective tool when used to engage younger audiences - where gaming is already entrenched in their everyday lives.

3. Enterprise mobility unleashed

Following the rapid evolution of mobile technology came the “apps renaissance”, and now the mobile revolution has reached business. “While we predicted the importance of apps, we didn't quite anticipate the need to manage app technology at such scale,” says White, adding that in 2011, 1.2 billion apps were downloaded in one week alone.

“Mobile potential moves beyond apps for consumers; but, as companies look to disrupt operating and business models, new concerns around security management delivery models and deployment need to be addressed.”

Ken Jarvis, of Grey Hair Consulting, says the adoption of social media and mobile application development is still too slow in the corporate environment in SA. “Companies need to start building thinking capabilities and become the beacons of big picture thinking they once were”

“In SA, there is a lot of talk taking place, but too little action. We need companies to start implementing on mobile to reap the rewards that will create a knock-on effect for the entire country.”

According to Deloitte, mobility is quickly becoming one of the most important battlegrounds for business innovation. “There's no excuse for not pursuing mobile. The revolution is well under way. Every business should be exploring how it will operate when location constraints are obliterated.”

4. User empowerment

User empowerment reflects both the consumerisation and democratisation of IT. Users will not hesitate to bypass IT departments to get the functionality they are accustomed to. Oracle leader at Deloitte, Shamalan Soobiah, says CIOs should consider adopting a design-led, user-centric approach to new application development.

“CIOs also need to accept the inevitability of business users sourcing their applications directly. The BYOA (bring your own application) culture will likely become part of many organisations' solution footprints moving forward.”

Soobiah adds: “With user empowerment, organisations must adapt or run the risk of irrelevance in the business user and IT relationship.”

Deloitte advises enterprises to aspire to deliver innovative, intuitive, usable and simple solutions - and harness the power of empowered users for higher business performance.

5. Hyper-hybrid cloud

As cloud adoption becomes more widespread, businesses are becoming increasingly willing to deploy multiple applications and infrastructure services on cloud platforms.

Soobiah says: “While hyper-hybrid clouds are still in the early stages of adoption, this advanced form of cloud services is rapidly becoming the norm. Organisations of all shapes and sizes are moving towards the hyper-hybrid cloud. This is especially true of start-ups.

“Benefits accrue as the cloud computing paradigm forces one to rethink the key aspects of IT as an enabler... Instead of waiting, organisations should start preparing for the inevitable move towards the cloud.”

White says core in-house systems can form the foundation upon which emerging technologies can be deployed, without sacrificing business compliance and controls. “Organisations that can bridge hyper-hybrid clouds with their core systems will be at the forefront to elevate business performance with the next wave of digital innovation.”

6. Big data goes to work

“The potential of big data is immense. Remove constraints on the size, type, source and complexity of useful data and businesses can ask bolder questions,” says the report.

Deloitte technology leader, Kamal Ramasingh, says: “Our readiness as a country to capitalise on big data is not quite on the level of other parts of the world. The number of people technically skilled to analyse data is not where it should be in SA. Similarly, there is no immediate value to be had from this analysis, which, at least initially, will be prohibitively expensive to implement.”

Ramasingh says the way forward for big data in SA will be led by high-volume data industries, such as banking and telecommunications. “The public sector is another industry that can draw benefit from big data, especially in healthcare.”

“Powerful new insights can be gleaned, with the most value realised by those who learn to detect signals from the noise, derive meaning from the signals and turn meaning into action,” says White. “Focus on specific 'crunchy' questions tied to well-defined business problems and attributable results. Organisations that put big data to work may pursue a huge competitive edge in 2012 - and beyond.”

7. Geospatial visualisation

Geospatial visualisation marries the broad insights available through visualisation with specific types of analysis that can be performed on location-related data. “The human brain is naturally wired to process visual images by recognising patterns, inferring relationships and discerning features,” says the report.

An estimated 80% of all data contains geographic references, and as a result the visual representation of data could significantly improve the ability to distil valuable information.

Risk advisory for Deloitte, Etienne Ward, says: “Using geospatial techniques, it is now easier to visually understand the positioning of organisational data as it relates to a myriad of external elements.

“It covers much more than just the geography or topography of the land or GPS coordinates, it includes the correlation of known organisational information with new geospatial datasets,” says Ward. He adds that the possibilities for creating a visual understanding of organisational datasets, as it relates and correlates to new, geospatial datasets, are limited only by imagination.

8. Digital identities

While an employee's entire digital persona used to almost solely belong to their employer, enterprise technology has expanded to include new tools and platforms, and digital identities have grown. Today, most workers manage a dozen or more different online profiles across different systems.

The report notes: “It's easy to envision a true mobile wallet delivering a single unique and trusted identity that is accepted across all interactions. One that understands and manages the context of the transaction. One that serves up different layers of a person's identity with different controls and assurances, depending on who you are, where you are and what you have been doing.

“In the end, whoever understands employee, customer and prospect identity data will likely control the currency upon which digital innovation is traded - and on which new business models are likely to be defined,” says White.

9. Measured innovation

Emerging technology is a continuing source of potential for innovation in business, and the CIO is the executive to deliver on that opportunity, says Deloitte.

“The CIO is in a rare position to guide innovation investments given technology's prominence across the business. And, because emerging technologies are important components of many innovative ideas, CIOs are likely to be in a better spot to help focus and drive resulting initiatives. CIOs can lead this digitally-fuelled ascent, realising their potential as business revolutionaries and not just technology visionaries or 'mind the store' stewards.”

Executive lead for AMS at Deloitte, Nivendra Roy, says South Africans are entrepreneurial by nature and lend themselves naturally to disruptive innovation. “The formation of 'out of the box' and radical innovations often involve uncharted markets and strategic business initiatives. A successful innovation strategy would involve a balanced mix of sustained and disruptive innovation internally and externally. The external dimension would look at both existing and emerging markets.”

10. Outside-in architecture

Outside-in architecture is about finding the balance between “need to share” and “need to own”. “Most organisations that adopt outside-in thinking are in a strong position to share information and outcomes with business partners - and even with the public - to foster trust, gain insights and spur economic investment,” says the report.

“As outside-in becomes the new normal, standards will emerge and platforms will likely evolve to decrease the cost of provisioning, managing and controlling each step in long-running processes. In the short-term, however, this architectural transition requires new skills from the CIO and the IT organisation.”

Deloitte SA director, Gys Hyman, says one of the big impacts of outside-in will be on systems integration. “Most organisations have large legacy systems that are not integrated. But once outside-in is embraced then the disparate systems will have to start talking to one another.”