Where would we be today without the Internet? It certainly has caused a global revolution in the way we live and work. You might say that it is the catalyst for global connectivity. Using a mobile device, you can do everything from connect to your office email to ordering a pizza. Emily Nagle Green, CEO of Yankee Group, a Boston-based global technology research firm, calls this phenomenon ANYWHERE, a world in which all people can connect to the things they care about from anywhere and at any time. In fact, Green has written a book called ANYWHERE: How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business. In the book, she examines the fast, unfolding changes in communications technology, and shows businesses how to harness the power of ANYWHERE to create new revenues streams and ignite dramatic business growth.
Enterpriseleadership.org recently sat down with Green to talk about the concepts she presents in her book. Here is what she had to say:
EL. What motivated you to write this book?
ENG: For the past 40 years, Yankee Group has focused on the changes in connectivity. During the past year or two, we have seen an expansion and acceleration in making the universally connected environment a reality. It is a natural follow on to the commercialization of the Internet. We have essentially computers in our pockets. Connecting all of the devices we care about will become the next big platform in computing technology. Events such as the explosion of business people relying on devices such as the Apple iPhone motivated me to write this book. I also wanted to give people some advice about how they could benefit from the rewards from an expanding network infrastructure.
EL. Can you give me your elevator pitch for the book?
ENG. ANYWHERE is the name for a time when all of us will be able to connect to all of the things we care about. It will become the largest technology revolution in our lifetime. Technology revolutions, like lots of other revolutions, bring risks and rewards. Much is at stake here. We will see trillions of dollars of new economic value created in aggregate from the maturation of this global ANYWHERE network. Businesses need some guidance in how to figure out to get ahead of that, such as how to identify the potential impacts of their business.
EL. How well-prepared are global CIOs for ANYWHERE? What two pieces of advice would you give to them?
ENG. Some CIOS are well prepared, but as I group, I do not think they are well prepared. The challenges of the recession, in particular, from disrupted them from thinking about how to anticipate the future. As for advice, I would tell them to first understand how quickly the unconnected world is becoming connected. The unconnected world includes the billions of people who have not been online in the last explosion of the Internet. About four billion of them will join the global network through adoption of digital mobile phones. The unconnected world also includes many assets in their own organizations. The organizations they partner with will add connectivity and transform the businesses world with those assets. In summary, they need to understand the pace of the unconnected world coming online and think about the diffusion of connectivity in their own businesses. They especially need to look at what activities have not yet benefitted from a pervasive network, and then think about how automating those activities could enhance the businesses' profitability.
EL. What changes in the enterprise architecture do they have to make in order to better prepared for ANYWHERE?
ENG. The two things one - they have to start the process of moving away from a proprietary IT infrastructure. We are moving to a world where businesses will not need to buy and manage their hardware and software. This transition will take some time for larges businesses to absorb. You need to start now. You need to plan your move away from your own investments and infrastructure. You also need to start looking at all of the employees' activities that mobile technologies do not support. Last, you need to think about how to put technology, such as mobile apps, in the hands of your employees all of the time. This way you can recapture the lost productivity when they walk away from their desks.
EL. What are some of the key disruptive technologies beyond cloud computing that are driving ANYWHERE?
ENG. The three core technologies include the adoption of IP as a standard digital networking language, explosion of the broadband technologies, and the great economics of wireless. Today, we are building things on top of these technologies. We are most interested in how we think about information display and consumption.
For example, with maps from Mapquest, we can expect to see mapping displays for all kinds of things layered on top of them. It might include augmented reality where a camera points to a real-world environment and collects information about that environment. We will never see maps as things just having street names and points of interest. We will expect maps to identify buildings, commercial resources, and distances. We will expect them to come embedded with recent images -- if not in real time. We expect real-time congestion information to show up. Our concept of a map will require anywhere from six to 10 dimensions of information. This will happen because a network appears wherever we need it, and that network has the capacity to move massive amounts of information. We do not have to reply on text.
EL. Will things such as semantic Web technology capabilities contribute to put value to ANYWHERE?
ENG. The ANYWHERE network brings us some challenges. For CIOs, it is real-time information. How do we digest information when it comes from censored networks that can tell us the status of very complex environments? The Web is not ready for that yet. How are people going to digest petabytes of information that comes in on a regular basis? Any innovation around the semantic Web yet is not ready to deal with the volume and complexity of information that is coming from equipping the world with communications technology.
EL. Has the economic downturn hampered an organization's ability to get to ANYWHERE?
ENG. Yes and no. It had a negative impact at an aggregate level. The economic downturn delayed network operator's investment in transforming their networks. The networks we have today are in transition to the networks of tomorrow. Today's networks have greater capacity and intelligence added to the network infrastructure. Billions of dollars of capital need to flow into existing networks to renovate them to meet our burgeoning appetites. That process slowed down quite a bit in 2009 as network operators carefully spent their capital. That delayed the maturation of the network infrastructure.
During 2009, everyone hunkered down and did not think about growth, but cost cutting and trying to keep their boat afloat. In that sense, it also had a negative impact. The phrase - necessity is the mother of invention - has much merit. People start turning to smaller solutions when they need to be resourceful. You see the explosion of mobile apps as one avenue where businesses could say to themselves: 'Gee, I want to create some capability. I have a workforce that carries iPhones or Blackberries in their pockets. How can I do this in a quick and simple way?' We do see some more inventive uses of technology emerging as people lower their technology spending level. They say, 'If I do not have the massive capital expense budget that I had in past and this will not change, then I have to get used to that idea and be more creative.' We have seen some emergence of creativity from that recession.
EL. Five years from now, will cloud computing be a pervasive utility we hear about?
ENG. I believe so. In five years, small- to medium-size businesses will depend on IT services from cloud computing. Small businesses starting now may never invest in much proprietary infrastructure because it is already so workable for them. We will see more widespread adopting of cloud computing in this space. For large companies, the move to cloud computing involves a long-term conversion process. These companies still have COBOL embedded in the guts of their IT organizations. It will take awhile for the current model for hardware and software computing to work its way out of the largest firms. Five years from now, cloud computing will be robust and widely deployed.
EL. Why did Yankee Group deliver a book now? Is this the first book written by a Yankee Group CEO in office?
ENG. This is the first book written by a Yankee Group CEO. I cannot speak for why Howard Anderson, the founder of Yankee Group, never wrote a book. He left the company in 1995 at the beginning of the Internet explosion. Perhaps, he was preoccupied with other things and changes in ownership. Because I was not with the company then, I can only speculate.
EL. What are some of the major changes in enterprise architecture in global companies that will need to occur to make ANYWHERE possible?
ENG. They will start by integrating information from many more assets in the business. For example, the RFID space had a vision for years about how more objects in our lives could participate in the global network. RFID proponents have struggled to get the RFID tag cost down and sort out some network issues. The explosion of WiFi in business environments has brought with it the cost of activating the network and supporting tagging device. As a result, it makes RFID more affordable.
Another big enterprise network change involves alerting business assets to their status. We will see much less focus on fixed assets, such as real estate, as employees become increasingly mobile. We already see that now with working from home and remote offices. Businesses have to think more carefully about why they need offices in multiple locations, and how can they, instead, use the network as an umbilical cord to interact with their employees.
We will think more generously about what resources we need to give those employees at the other end of that cord. They need to have quality access devices at the other end of the network so that they can have a first-rate experience. We are not equipping them with an office any longer. We are not buying them coffee and Danish in the mornings. As a result, we need to make sure they have a device and a connection speed that will allow them to have a productive virtual work experience.
EL. Do you think the down the road there are going to be problems with this type of a workforce?
ENG. It is a huge shift. It is definitely disrupting in markets such as the North American and Europe. We have seen a disconnect about how employers and employees view their relationship. For examples, we are seeing a piecework model where work-at-home employees answering calls from a virtual call center. They get paid for their time on the phone. The issues we are starting to see include the following: Should an employee have one employer? If they can take calls for one employer, why can't they take calls for other employers? If an employee has multiple employers, then who is responsible for the employee's benefits? This dilemma will cause some strange conversations for the next generation of workers. We will see different attitudes about employment within the office bound environment.
Elizabeth M. Ferrarini is a technology writer from Boston, MA. Reach her at elizabethferrarini@yahoo.com.
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