A “nexus of converging forces” first identified by research firm Gartner late last year is changing the way companies do business, restructuring how enterprise-wide IT service is created, delivered and managed.
This nexus of social media, mobility, cloud computing and information is expected to reshape the technology ecosystem for delivery and distribution, says Mark McDonald, a Group Vice-President and Head of Research in Gartner Executive Programs, and co-author of The Social Organization with Anthony Bradley. Adobe’s recent announcement that it is moving its creative suite to the cloud completely is only one such example. And as many such services move to the cloud, the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) public cloud services market is expected to grow by 24.5 per cent this year over 2012 to $462.3 million (about Dh1.69 billion) in revenue, according to Gartner.
As companies increasingly leverage social media to drive brand engagement with audiences and drive direct channels into sales, organisational spend on social media is expected to hit $136 billion in 2020, up from $57 billion in 2010.
As a result of this and other factors, the projected amount of data that would need to be stored and managed will increase by 40 per cent or more every year, driving the need for new processes such as tagging, metadata and logical data warehouses in order to make sense of all the data for it to be used efficiently by organisations. Deniz Kilyar, Head of Line of Business & Mobility Solutions, SAP Mena, says, “More data was generated in the past five years than in the entire history of mankind. There are now more mobile devices than people on the planet. Everywhere you look, enterprise mobility is undergoing an unprecedented boom, making it an unavoidable imperative for businesses that want to lead. Increasingly, those that cannot operate with nimble and efficient ubiquity will face competitive stagnation.”
The UAE-based Easa Saleh Al Gurg is a good example. A wide-scale automation exercise saw the process of approvals reduced significantly from a period of two days to a few hours. A contributing factor was enabling senior management to access their newly paperless office via mobile computing devices such as smartphones. The 50-year-old family-owned business has automated 26 workflows across various departments since August 2011. “While workflow automation is not a revolutionary practice, its adaptation across the board, within such a large business conglomerate, could be one of the first such instances in the UAE,” says Abdulla Al Gurg, Group General Manager, Easa Saleh Al Gurg Group.
By 2020, however, big data will be just data. And until that happens, CEOs will need help navigating new technology. One company that is showing the way forward is Xerox — its intensive Middle East Customer Innovation Tour this month is part marketing and part educational. It has launched a series of free Drive for Digital workshops to help make sense of changing technology and to provide insights into lucrative opportunities for growing business as well as adding value for customers.
By 2017, Gartner expects half of all employers will require employees to supply their own devices for work purposes. Its global survey of chief information officers (CIO) found 38 per cent of companies expect to stop providing devices by 2016.
It also forecasts the Middle Eastern spend on devices to reach $29.6 billion in 2013, up 7.7 per cent on 2012. Worldwide, this figure is likely to reach $718 billion this year, driven largely by demand for mobile phones. By 2017, Gartner predicts, mobile connections will exceed fixed connections by 7:1 globally.
“2013 will be the biggest year yet for enterprise mobility, and Mena needs to be ready and able to embrace an unwired anytime, anywhere mentality. Businesses need to tackle explosions of big data and act in real time. This cannot be achieved without mobility,” Kilyar says.
For some context, the Middle East IT spend is pegged at $192.9 billion in 2013, up 5.5 per cent on 2012. Worldwide, it could be $3.8 trillion, up 4.1 per cent.
