20 Innovative Ways IT Can Impact the Business in 2015 - … Innovative Ways IT Can Impact the Bus… · 20 Innovative Ways IT Can Impact the Business in 2015 Posted on April 16, 2015

20 Innovative Ways IT CanImpact the Business in 2015Posted on April 16, 2015 by David Spark

The business perceptions of the overall “need” of the ITdepartment have shifted. In the face of shadow IT, theIT department can no longer survive solely as anecessary cost center.

“Internal IT needs to step up and lead the corporatedigital transformation,” said Marc Malizia(@MarcM0313), CTO of RKON Technologies.

“Business solutions – not technical constraints – shoulddrive technology decisions so that data andapplications can best serve the business,” concurredGinna Raahauge (@GinnaRaahauge), CIO at Riverbed.

For the past four years we’ve been hearing the mantra“IT must serve the business.” Although how IT supports

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the business has changed year over year. Tounderstand what to expect we reached out to industryexperts for their New Year recommendations.

1: Start thinking like a software companyeven if you’re not

“Everyone’s customers today are leading increasinglydigital lifestyles. If it hasn’t happened already, it won’tbe long before you’re forced to deliver your offerings assome kind of digital product or experience. Whetheryou call it ‘digital transformation’ or the ‘applicationeconomy,’ your customers’ rising expectations aregoing to stretch your IT group in entirely new ways,”said Michael Klynstra (@mjkmjkmjk), vice president ofmarketing for Geneca. “IT needs to step up and take aleadership role in working with the business team tounderstand how to industrialize their ability to createsoftware-driven products and services.”

2: Get your data house in order

“All businesses want a 360-degree view of theirstakeholders, which are their suppliers, customers andemployees. The challenge is gaining access to all of thisaccumulated information, which is often stored inmultiple locations in different formats and hard toaccess,” said Fred Kirwin, business systems analyst forEliassen Group.

“Despite the promise of (infatuation with?) businessanalytics, it’s still the case of ‘garbage in, garbage out,’”warned Don MacLennan (@DonMacLennan), CEO ofBluenose. “Datastewardship remains something the line of businessbuyers cannot solve for themselves.”

“As data grows, companies are realizing that supportinglarger amounts of data by deploying a larger server isno longer sustainable,” said Chris Gladwin


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(@Cleversafe), founder and vice chairman of Cleversafe.

“One emerging technology, data virtualization, is solvingthis data hurdle problem. Data virtualization eliminatesthe enormous infrastructure, bureaucracy and time dragthat it takes to provision data for developmentenvironments,” said Kyle Hailey (@kylehhailey),performance architect at Delphix, who notes that theirdata virtualization solution is already being used by 100of the Fortune 500 and they’ve seen applicationdevelopment productivity increase from 20 to 50percent.

“IT needs to solve data management issues so thatbusinesses can ensure adoption and satisfaction ofinnovations such as Internet of Things, wearables,M2M, and other real-time apps,” said Sean Bowen(@seanatpush), CEO and co-founder of PushTechnology.

3: Create some actionable use of Big Data

“The value of any business today resides in its data.We’re constantly producing it, exchanging it withcustomers and partners, and then we often store under-utilized information in a data warehouse, never to beseen again,” noted Matt Miszewski (@mattmiszewski),senior vice president of sales and marketing for DigitalRealty.

For example, “process improvement still happensmanually, which is unbelievable given that so muchdata is collected through the IT systems that supportthese processes,” said Anne Rozinat (@arozinat),co-founder of Fluxicon.

“There is tremendous value hidden within free-formcontent. From survey responses to call center recordsand every tweet in between, extracting insight from thiscontent is like panning for gold. Harness the power ofthese nuggets to track vital market trends, provide early


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signs of product or service issues, and respondquickly,” advised Dave King (@daveking123), presidentof Confirmit Americas. “Ignoring such insights is not anoption.”

4: Empower end users with access toreal-time business analytics

“IT can enable the democratization of analytics as theyhold the technology needed to optimize both the time ittakes to provision data to business users and thegovernance of data they’re accessing,” said DrewRockwell (@Lavastorm_CEO), CEO for LavastormAnalytics.

“Organizations will begin to rethink permission systemsand put technologies and practices in place that willallow employees ubiquitous access to a broader set ofdata housed in the cloud,” projected NathanielBorenstein (@drmime), chief scientist for Mimecast.

“Business intelligence and business analytics are beingplaced in the hands of everyone in a ‘self-service’model for operationalizing data,” noted Jake Freivald(@infobldrs), vice president of marketing for InformationBuilders. “Let non-technical end-users make informedbusiness decisions quickly with accurate information.”

“When you do that at scale across an organization,you’ve not only identified hundreds of potentialimprovements, you’ve also started to foster a culture ofownership,” explained Ellie Fields (@eleanorpd), vicepresident of product marketing for Tableau.

5: Digitize and track all transactions forbetter targeted actions

“We’re going to see a rise in analytics aroundcollaboration services as organizations call for morecontrol, intelligence, and visibility around the


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information they’re distributing and the contentemployees are creating and consuming,” said StuartCochran (@stuartjcochran), CTO for Huddle.

Analytics-enabled digital document distributionempowers your staff with all types of interaction insight.For example, as Cochran notes, salespeople can seewhen and where a document is opened and read,giving them the opportunity to respond in real time. Or ifthere’s a long forgotten proposal that all of a suddenhas a lot of opens it shows a customer’s renewedinterest, alerting the salesperson that now would be thetime to follow up.

6: Analytics-based security responseprogram

“Corporations will be better protected if their securityinfrastructure is programmable allowing them to quicklyadapt, respond, and move forward seamlessly as thesetypes of widespread hacks and vulnerabilitiesunfortunately become the norm,” explained Karl Triebes(@Triebes), CTO of F5 Networks.

“We will see analytics-enabled SOCs (securityoperations centers) driving cybersecurity strategy andshaping today’s incident response,” said HaiyanSong, senior vice president of security market atSplunk. “Security teams will move away from a rules-based-SIEM (security information and eventmanagement) view, and link together all kinds ofauto-processing information.”

7: Drive customer service

“Today, CIOs need to be part of every customer touchpoint,” said Mark Cattini (@Autotask), president andCEO of Autotask.

“Unfortunately, the overall enthusiasm to go digital


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results in web, social, and mobile channels that arepoorly integrated or difficult to use,” noted AndrewHome, managing director for CEB.

“IT needs to help ensure coherent customerexperiences across channels supported by processesthat deliver a seamless journey from promise tofulfillment,” said Don Schuerman (@donpega), CTO forPegasystems.

“Specifically, IT can positively impact a business byinvesting in solutions that provide greater visibility intoexisting customers,” said Praful Saklani (@pramatacorp)co-founder and CEO of Pramata, who notes thataccording to a Bain & Company study, a five percentgain in retention can increase a company’sprofitability between 25 and 95 percent.

“IT teams can use data visualization technologies todiscover patterns and relationships in unstructuredinformation flows, such as hidden connections betweenpeople, documents, messages and timelines,”explained Alexis Clark, data scientist for Recommind.

8: IT spending and transparency for thebusiness

“In 2015, IT buying power will disperse more and moreto business unit leads (i.e., CMOs, HR directors, generalcounselors), moving away from sole CIO ownership,”said Chris Ortbals (@SungardAS), vice president,services product management at Sungard AvailabilityServices.

In addition, “IT outsourcing contracts have slowlyshifted from effort based models to outcome andconsumption based models. This shift is enabling IT tobetter align capabilities and assets to businessoutcomes and providing business the ability to managetheir IT spend,” said Steve Hall (@StevenHALL_ISG),partner, global strategy lead with Information Services


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Group (ISG). “Transparency provides significant value toorganizations that fully embrace it by enabling businessexecs to make clear technology business investmentsthat are directly aligned with the key growth areas andstrategies.”

9: Empower business to develop their ownmobile apps

“The demand for mobile apps is growing exponentiallyand putting tremendous pressure on IT,” said BurleyKawasaki, senior vice president of products at Kony.

If you’re not already there, demand for appdevelopment will soon outstrip supply. To save yourselffrom the inevitable, Kawasaki suggests using“codeless” model-driven mobile app developmentwhich will empower non-coders to rapidly assembleand configure enterprise mobile apps themselves.

“IT can now teach their business how to fish vs. justgiving them a fish,” said Kawasaki.

10: Uncover the business value of the helpdesk

“With the exception of ‘maybe’ finance, no departmentwithin any organization has as much cross-departmental visibility as IT,” noted Chris Poe(@ChrisPoe), CIO of Atrion Networking Corporation.

“IT service data is often considered the most mundane,overlooked source of insight. The truth is that it’s likethe central nervous system of the enterprise, extendingto every part of the business and to every connecteddevice,” noted Gaurav Rewari (@grewari), CEO andco-founder for Numerify.

Using this data you can easily increase efficiency,


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decrease the cost of service delivery, and uncover newareas of growth, noted Rewari.

11: Use crowdsourcing to build userexperience prototypes

“Crowdsourcing is a secret weapon. Use your ownemployees, or tap into a public crowdsourcing platform,to build user experience prototypes,” suggested GlennWeinstein (@GlennWeinstein), CIO at Appirio. “Do thisbefore you start picking specific technologies for theproject.”

Appirio recently challenged their community to design aprofile page for an internal gamification system. Theaudience participated and they got tons of ideas, andultimately picked a winner.

“The winning design was incorporated directly into ourfinal product,” said Weinstein. “All the internal softwareteam had to do was wire up the page to back-endservices and data.”

12: Deploy smart technologies for moreefficient marketing communications

There’s a growing need “to build adaptable digitalengagement solutions that encompass the entirecustomer journey across all consumer touch points,”said Jonathan Brassington (@LiquidHub), CEO andco-founder of LiquidHub. “Forward-thinking CIOs willutilize technology with high-end marketing capabilitiesto help facilitate better customer engagement, creatingunrealized opportunities to build loyalty and attract newcustomers.”

“Smart technologies will not only create a consumerprofile that enables targeted messaging in real-time, butby providing predictive future analysis, smarttechnologies also allow business to pre-target future


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behavior,” said Shekhar Deo, co-founder and CTO ofEngageClick. “An example of this would be a seamlesstransition from marketing maternity clothes to a femaleconsumer to marketing baby clothes.”

13: Let employees use the tools they wantto use

“Historically IT departments lacked choice in the toolsthey enabled because only cumbersome tools likeSharePoint and legacy filers satisfied internalcompliance and security needs,” said Yuri Sagalov(@Yuris), CEO of AeroFS.

“No matter how well-provisioned IT mandates may be,employees ignore them in favor of easier ways to getwork done,” noted Matthew Dornquast (@dornquast),co-founder and CEO at Code42.

“IT would benefit by understanding not only how theiremployees communicate in the workplace but also howemployees communicate in their personal lives,” saidZaw Thet (@zawthet), partner with Signia VenturePartners.

“In 2015, IT can (and will) directly improve productivityand innovation by embracing how employees choose tointeract with data,” said Code42’s Dornquast, “Andadopting policies and technology in support of a betteremployee experience.”

“By minimizing constraint, giving employees choice,and being able to analyze their activity, IT will have thepotential to increase productivity and workflowexponentially,” said Rajesh Ram (@ramrajesh),co-founder and vice president of product at Egnyte.

14: Develop a cloud first strategy


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“Stop buying equipment that becomes obsolete beforeit’s barely beyond the break-in period. Eliminateover/under purchasing of gear and licensing. Pay forcompute capacity only as needed,” advised AdamStern, founder and CEO of Infinitely Virtual.

“2014 will go down as the year we turned the cornerand accelerated the growth to standard cloud adoptionat the enterprise level,” projected ISG’s Steve Hall.

“Organizations need to pivot from a cloud potentialmindset to a cloud first strategy,” said TrevorHellebuyck (@thellebuyck), CTO for Metalogix. “With afully-enacted cloud first strategy to solving businessproblems CIOs can shift focus as IT transforms from acost center that manages infrastructure to anorganization that develops innovative and cost-effectivebusiness solutions.”

“If a public cloud is not an option, deploy anorchestration platform that can turn both virtual andphysical infrastructure into an IaaS cloud for easy reuse,modeling, and sharing of whole environments,” saidAlex Henthorn-Iwane (@heniwa), vice president,marketing at QualiSystems.

15: Embrace SaaS solutions

“The ‘build first’ mentality that dominated corporate ITfor decades is on its way out, thanks to most vendorsoffering subscription cloud services for end userapplications,” said Leo Reiter (@VirtualLeo), CTO ofNimbix, who also noted that most of these SaaSproducts are also mobile-enabled.

Mike Butts (@MikeButts), director of product marketingat KnoahSoft, suggests you “work side-by-side withvendors to tailor a solution that meets your uniquebusiness requirements and take full responsibility forensuring that you get full ROI from the solution.”


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“Look for collaboration solutions that help enforceexisting policies and processes and that imposeencryption, IRM, and other approaches to protectingvaluable IP,” said Daren Glenister (@DarenGlenister),field CTO for Intralinks.

“Convince other executives to make investments nowin modern, more agile, cloud-based solutions for backoffice systems such as billing, BI, HR, etc.,” saidBrendan O’Brien (@brendan0606), chief evangelist andco-founder for Aria Systems. “Modern back officesolutions put the burden of ‘customization’ in the handsof business users via configuration mechanisms andtake engineers out of the equation.”

16: Leverage a private cloud for growth

“Develop a strategy to build a private, on premisecloud, that allows for automated provisioning and rapidscaling,” advised RKON Technologies’ Malizia. “A cloudmanagement tool, such as OpenStack, should beleveraged to enable management of the on-site cloud,as well as foster the integration to public cloudproviders. This platform will allow quick and agileprovisioning of systems on the internal private cloud,while providing the ability to burst to the public cloud toaddress the overflow demands of the business quicklyand economically.”

17: Know what to turn off

“IT activities that ‘keep the lights on’ consume preciousresources. Some IT organizations allocate more than 80percent of their budgets and talent to simplymaintaining the status quo. Eliminating valueless assetsgives IT newfound time and capital to keep pace oreven lead business innovation. Business owes it to IT toidentify what is no longer needed or valuable,” said BobDvorak (@bobdvorak), president and founder of KillerIT,a division of Forsythe Technology.


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“On average, 28 percent of all deployed software isunused while $224 in wasted licenses sits completelyunused on every PC. A conservative estimate of thetotal cost of the deployed yet unused software withincompanies of 500+ desktops is $6.6B in the US,” saidSumir Karayi (@1E_Global), CEO of 1E, the firm thatconducted the study. “By gaining complete visibility intotheir software estate, organizations can effectivelymanage their software assets on an ongoing basis toaccurately measure application usage, reclaim unusedor prohibited software, and redeploy licenses asneeded, while ensuring full software vendorcompliance.”

18: Where there is less value, dare to beadequate

“To free up resources and mindshare to devote to areaswhere IT can have maximum impact, CIOs shouldsystematically reduce the time and investment in lessimpactful IT activities,” suggested CEB’s Home. “Thisrequires a clear-sighted view of IT’s sources ofcomparative advantages, and frank conversations withleaders elsewhere in the business about where IT needto be leading-edge and where ‘good enough IT is goodenough.’”

19: Don’t let improvement become theenemy of innovation

“It may seem heretical to suggest, but our bias towardscontinuous improvement may actually impedeinnovation,” said Bask Iyer (@baskiyer), CIOat VMware. “IT professionals need to look at everysituation and ask why we should be content withcontinuous improvement. Why not push forgame-changing innovation instead? If you set theexpectation to a 5 percent or 10 percent improvement,that’s all you are likely to get. But if you set theexpectation for transformational innovation – and foster


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the process – you might just get it.”

20: Build an app-centric IT environment

“By driving this app-centric ethos, organizations areputting performance first and employees can performtheir job duties faster and more effectively to generateprofit,” said Joel Dolisy (@solarwinds), CIO forSolarWinds. “Organizations can excel in an app-centricIT environment by enabling IT to build deeptroubleshooting capabilities to identify issues with latentapplications and proactively break down traditional ITsilos that prevent full visibility into the applicationstack.”

Intermedia president Michael Gold (@Intermedia_net)fears that the explosion in application use will causeproductivity to dwindle as it will take significant time todeploy and manage numerous applications.

“IT needs to look into services that streamline theprocess of administering and managing applications toboost overall productivity,” said Gold.

All this does not come without risk as JonathanDambrot (@PrevalentNet), CEO and co-founder ofPrevalent notes you must manage third-party riskthrough the entire vendor lifecycle. He advises astandardization process for automating 3rd partycybersecurity monitoring and evidence collection.

Conclusion – IT positioned to be theprimary driver of innovation

“IT must recognize that it is now the primary driver forinnovation throughout the business and must beprepared to support that via accelerated rollout offunctionality in every domain — cloud, mobile, social,and IoT,” said Bernard Golden (@bernardgolden), vicepresident of strategy at ActiveState.


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“By demonstrating the ability to rapidly meet thedemands of the business, the CIO will move upstreamto driving innovation, not simply implementing it afterthe decisions have been made by other organizationalleaders,” said RKON Technologies’ Malizia.

DISCLOSURE: David Spark and his company SparkMedia Solutions worked with Riverbed, ActiveState,and Juniper Networks.

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20 Innovative Ways IT Can Impact the Business in 2015 - … Innovative Ways IT Can Impact the Bus… · 20 Innovative Ways IT Can Impact the Business in 2015 Posted on April 16, 2015