The nexus is the next age of computing and will create risks and challenges, but can also be used as a tool for growth.
Gartner defines the nexus as the point at which the cloud, social collaboration, mobility and information connect. The parts of the nexus force innovation and disruption on their own, together they revolutionise business society, says Peter Sondergaard, senior VP of research.
Sondergaard delivered the keynote address today at the Gartner Symposium, in Cape Town.
Twenty years ago, people did not sit in conferences and check their phones, or type on laptops and, if someone left the room, it was to send an urgent fax, said Sondergaard.
Currently, there are 800 million smartphones, 1.5 billion PCs, 3.6 billion mobile phones and five billion Internet-connected devices, he added. “That is incredible change in just two decades.”
Cloud is industrialisation of IT, while mobility is pervasive access to everything, and the next stage of social collaboration is mass customer, citizen and employee involvement with enterprises, he noted.
Sondergaard said a sixth of the world's population is on a social network and companies need to understand the “extreme” behaviour. He predicted the next wave of cloud-based systems will include social aspects from concept and then create the platform.
Information is the oil of the 21st Century and analysis will become a combustion engine. The impact of these forces will make the architecture of the last 20 years obsolete, commented Sondergaard.
New opportunities
He added that the market is heading for digitisation of revenue and services. By 2017, the marketing executive may have a larger IT budget than the CIO, and by 2014, CIOs will have lost 25% of control over organisational IT spend.
Companies need to react to changes and evaluate how they embrace the nexus. “IT is changing the world. IT professionals are changing the world; you can't say that about accountants.”
* Nicola Mawson is hosted at the symposium courtesy of Gartner.
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