IT 2012

Serena Software

One of the questions we frequently ask ourselves is how large the IT Department will be in 2012. But the real question shouldn’t be how big the budget will be, but who will be spending it and on what?

“Business is demanding empowerment and we should be looking for technologies that enable them to become self-sufficient ”
-Kevin Parker, VP and Chief Evangelist at Serena Software

For further information please email ukinfo@serena.com or call 0800 328 0243.

The role of IT has evolved to be the sole provider of solutions to the business. We have developed the belief that only IT is capable of understanding the complexities of automated business systems and we have come to assume that our job includes being the custodian of corporate data and the only mechanism whereby information is provided to the business.

This world is being eroded every day. We are moving applications, and the critical business data that goes with them, into the cloud. Every business, no matter how large or small, has started to outsource tangential systems like payroll, travel, benefits and pensions. Even core systems like sales force automation, supply chain logistics and ecommerce are moving out of the data center.

As little as five years ago, IT was involved in every one of these corporate decisions. Today, the business feels empowered enough, and the technologies out there are reliable enough, for the business to go it alone without asking for permission from IT. This means that IT budget spend is shifting from IT’s control back to the business.

So if IT is not to be completely evaporated in the next five years, what do we need to do to remain relevant to the business? We need to empower businesses to be able to solve their own technology problems, largely without IT’s help and certainly without seeking its permission. IT needs to provide the technology and governance infrastructure that enables this approach and we need to do it without questioning or second-guessing.

Half a century ago, across the world, people demanded the right to free access to government maintained information held on the people’s behalf. They did it in the face of stiff opposition from their legislative, judicial and executive branches. Today business is demanding that same set of rights to the information stored in corporate computer systems on behalf of the business.

A thought experiment

Many spreadsheets in use today support business decisions right up to board level. When you open Microsoft Excel, the splash screen warns you that data is only ‘valid on day of issue’ because almost every spreadsheet contains data taken from a corporate business system elsewhere and is frequently days old. While not every spreadsheet needs to be up to the minute with the data it displays, innumerable decisions are made every day, in businesses across the world, based on out of date information.

Imagine the next generation of Excel is to be able to populate the spreadsheet directly from corporate data via web services. If it were possible to view line item and summary information from the corporate business systems live, and everyone looking at the sheet were seeing the same live data, a quantum improvement in decision support for executives would be achieved.

The trouble is, executives would want to update the data in the cells of the spreadsheet, and this is where the dilemma begins. We know we are responsible for making sure the data is updated validly, with integrity and with audit-ability, so allowing execs to ‘poke around’ in the data without the layers of our business system seems like a foolish suggestion. Therefore, when we build the service that exposes the data to Excel we must, of course, build in the self same rules that we have in the existing IT system and the system should be using this service with all of its check and balances. We must also build in the authentication layers necessary so that only those people permitted to use the spreadsheet can see the data they are entitled to see. This feature is not available in Excel today.

If this is the next advance in Excel, how long will it be before business is beating a path to IT’s doors demanding access to this capability and functionality? It seems likely that Microsoft will do something in this area, so it makes sense to be ready. But even if the good folk at Microsoft don’t go in this direction, what do we learn from this thought exercise?

First we are reminded that the average business user is far above average when it comes to the use of Microsoft Excel. They frequently do things with spreadsheets that include programming macros, having links to URL’s and have multi-spreadsheet file dependencies.

Second we see that such a simple extension of a common business tool would have us scrabbling to make our existing IT-centric services business-centric. We should have been doing that from the outset. For example using common names for tags, using business functions to define the service boundaries and making the services easy to access across the IT infrastructure with all the security issues foremost.

And thirdly it becomes clear that this changes the relationship between IT and the business. In this scenario, IT develops the access methods and the business uses commonly available tools to consume them.

In the blink of a thought experiment IT is changed forever.

Tomorrow is here

We are already seeing technologies that go some way towards this imaginary next generation Excel arriving in the market. Many Web 2.0 technologies rely upon the use of services for their popularity and effectiveness. We see corporate Wikis, internal IMs and mash-ups starting to appear as replacements for, or adjuncts to, existing business systems. Business users see what happens in the world of consumer technologies and demand that IT make the same thing available to them.

The latest generation of recruits is used to building applications for the web and bringing together multiple sources of data live from the web in an easy to use and fun way. They don’t care about corporate branding or about what was done last time. If they can build it quickly and it does the job they’re happy with it and if someone comes along and improves it they’re happy with that too. All they demand is access to the data in a simple to consume format.

IT’s new mission

The mission for IT has to become the creation of access methods into corporate data that can be consumed by the business.

The business is demanding empowerment and we should be looking for technologies that enable them to become self-sufficient in developing some of their own applications. In 2012, many of today’s developers will be embedded in the business units. They will be consuming services provided by their former developer colleagues who remain in IT whose job now is the creation of business-consumable services.

The data center is already shrinking as applications move to the cloud. This will continue until it is not clear to the business where their data is coming from – and they won’t care as long as it is available and current.

The business user of 2012 will be combining data from internal and external sources along with business process in innovative visual experiences and creating applications that will be the new core corporate systems. They will do this without thinking about security, backup, workload balancing, disaster recovery, performance or any other infrastructure concern. IT will continue to care about them and will be responsible for making sure they do not affect the creativity of the business developer.

Our business developer of 2012 will create applications with the sophistication of the Amazon web site and will develop them with tools that bear more resemblance to Excel than Visual Studio.

Kevin Parker is VP and Chief Evangelist at Serena Software where he develops technology strategy and direction. A much sought after speaker; recognized around the world for his provocative and entertaining style. Parker is a 30-year industry veteran, educated in the UK and now living and working in California.

For further information please email ukinfo@serena.com or call 0800 328 0243.