What does IBM’s Tech Trends Report mean for managed print services?
The results of the 2011 IBM Tech Trends Report were released yesterday, offering a glimpse of where the future of technology is headed over the next few years. More than 4,000 IT professionals from 93 countries and 25 industries took part in the survey, which focused on business analytics, mobile, cloud and social business.
Findings (Executive Summary, IBM 2011 Tech Trends Report):
Business analytics is the most adopted technology in the survey, showing the least adoption resistance as businesses struggle to automate processes and make sense of ever-increasing amounts of data.
Implication for MPS: The evolution of the ‘Hybrid Dealer’ and ability to move beyond Stages 1 & 2 to Stages 3 & 4 of MPS is going to become more and more critical. Enhancing document management, workflow, archiving, business process and the controlling the amount of data, unstructured and structured coming into the organization is going to be key in the next two years.
Mobile computing is here to stay, and offers room for IT professional growth as more and more organizations build mobile applications. Globally, Android emerged as the top platform or mobile application development; 70% of respondents are expected to develop for the Android platform over the next 24 months, while 49% plan to develop for iOS.
Implications for MPS: Developing iOS-based asset management planning and deployment tools is not good enough. IT is showing a strong preference for the Android platform–indicating a need for Android-based applications.
Significant opportunity with vertical-specific apps, 33 percent of respondents indicated their focus area would be on industry-specific applications, almost the same amount for cross-industry, Enterprise apps (34 percent).
Cloud computing offers new opportunities for technical professionals as businesses are moving beyond savings costs with infrastructure beginning to build applications to innovate in the cloud. The top activity for cloud computing will be developing new applications (25% of respondents) over the next 24 months.
Implication for MPS: Organizations are moving to the cloud and developing custom applications. Cloud enablement of your applications will be key due to concerns about reducing operating expense, increasing flexibility and increasing scalability.
Top 4 motivators (in order) for adopting the cloud technology: flexibility & scalability, reduce operating expenses, efficiency and reduce capital costs
IT is the key influencer and implementer in most large enterprise and global MPS engagements. Understanding the concerns and motivations of this group are going to be key aspects to being successful in marketing and deploying MPS with these organizations. Studies such as this provide key insights into the concerns facing critical decision makers.
View full report here.
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