As chief scientist for Accenture, a $19 billion global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing firm, Dr. Kishore Swaminathan tries to understand the major trends that will shape the technology landscape over a 3- to 5-year period. According to Swaminathan, CIOs can't afford to ignore three major trends: cloud computing, light systems, and analytics.
He defines cloud computing as the sourcing of some capability from somewhere out there, typically through the Internet, and you, as a user, neither know nor care where this capability is coming from. The four types of cloud computing include software clouds, such as software as a service; hardware clouds, such as data backup; desktop clouds, such as google applications, and business process clouds, such as PayPal. Swaminthan says he isn't sure where cloud computing is going because of the unresolved issues in areas such as data security and performance.
Swaminathan calls the second trend light systems because they allow the IT organization to use independent, but related technologies to push data from multiple streams so end users can manipulate it. Technologies such as the RESC protocol, mashups, and widgets free the IT organization of a lot of unnecessary work, especially having to build a new system or a new application.
In the last 18 months, major software companies such as IBM and Microsoft have acquired analytics companies. Swaminathan says that this third trend will take the drudgery of getting analytics out of backup systems, and build the analytics capability right into the technology platform, such as Oracle Enterprise suite or SAP. As a result, people won't have to depend on the IT organization or a small number of research gurus to get the analytics they need. They'll be able to access the analytics capability.
In this podcast, Swaminathan also talks about why CIOs have failed to contribute to the innovation process when it comes to pursuing new revenue sources.
Bio
Dr. Kishore Swaminathan is chief scientist at Accenture where he defines the company's technology vision and helps to set the company's research and development agenda. He also heads Accenture's Systems Integration research located in the United States, France, and India. Swaminathan joined Accenture in 1990, taking a position in Accenture's Center for Strategic Technology Research. He has a bachelor's degree in technology and aeronautical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras and holds a master's and Ph.D. degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was a Smithsonian Fellow. Media outlets ranging from the ABC Evening News to the The Wall Street Journal have featured his work.
Resources
Computerworld - The Grill: To Kishore Swaminathan, CIO means 'chief intelligence officer'
ZDNet - Accenture: Time is ripe to test cloud computing
Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Doug Marcis - Audio Editing
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