What a pivotal year in our industry! Let’s face it, IT has been attesting more evidences that its tectonic forces at work did let emerge new leaders and previous ones fade.
- Mobile: now at the core of IT, Apple and Samsung getting much of the coverage and dominating the smartphone market – surpassing now regular phones – pushing Nokia to be acquired by Microsoft and RIM Blackberry to look for a shelter. For software vendors and CIOs, applications have to be designed for smartphone devices first, tablet second and desktop third. As evidences, PC sales are declining, Dell to become private again, Steve Ballmer retiring, Intel also changed CEO to deal with innovator’s dilemma. Wintel once dominating this industry is fading.
- Cloud: depicted as a consumer or anecdotal phenomenon once, Cloud Computing is now center stage for the Enterprise and a key topic for CIOs strategic plans. CRM is paving the way with Salesforce.com becoming #1 CRM vendor all flavors combined (on premise, cloud), customer service and Marketing quickly following. Microsoft bending its Office model with Office 365 is trying to resist Google surge in cloud based productivity suites is another evidence of cloud computing importance.
- Social: with Twitter preparing its IPO, Facebook stock ticker finally getting traction thanks to its successful mobile strategy, Google acquiring Waze for $1B+, Yahoo acquiring Tumblr for $1.1B, Rondee for video conferencing and Xobni for Social Contact Management, Salesforce.com acquiring Buddy Media on top of previous Radian6, Social is another tectonic force at stake making or breaking new leaders.
Combining this to Big Data and associated analytics to get a modern business insight, let’s attest we’re already in a new world. Get ready if you’re not already! CIO, CMO, CDO or CEOs, don’t let your competition harness these revolutions before you get a chance to compete or lead: initiate change now.
Emmanuel Obadia & Partners 