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Which
IT trends will be the most popular after the first quarter of 2003,
in the post Iraq-war era? MOHAN BABU focuses on the predictions
made by Gartner analysts on the scene in America, and believes that
the same technology trends will be adopted in India
The
first quarter of 2003 is behind us and with the war in Iraq entering
its final stages, the focus of business leaders is slowly shifting
back to the fundamentals. Predictions from industry experts and
economists are as varied as the different aspects contributing to
the current slowdown (no surprises here). On one hand, analysts
from Gartner and other consultancies are predicting that the current
short-term focus on cost-cutting will lead to higher IT costs later.
These cost-cutting pressures are leading organisations to “mortgage”
their futures by “underfunding” IT infrastructure and
application upgrades today, which will cost more in the future when
the economy improves and demand for IT products and services increases.
On the other hand, analysts from the business press, including Business
Week, have adopted a more sobering tone, predicting that the end
of conflict in Iraq alone is not sufficient to give a thrust to
the global market. However, as an IT analyst and a columnist, I
think it is my job to try to make sense of the method in the madness
and throw my two cents out there.
In
this column, we will look at some of the recent predictions made
by Gartner analysts:
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Gartner: “The market for pure portal products will wither
away, particularly as functionality is delivered in broader software
categories such as application platform suites and collaborative
technologies.”
I
think this trend is already catching on in the industry, especially
since most large software vendors are already starting to bundle
their own “Web GUI” a.k.a. portal tools. Oracle, SAP,
Siebel and others already either have Web-based GUIs or provide
excellent “hooks” to Web enable the applications. Given
this scenario, what is the incentive for IT managers who would have
already spent a million dollars or more on the ERP or CRM application
to “invest” in an additional Web portal?
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Gartner: “Radio frequency identification (RFID) tag
use will sharply increase. RFID tags, the successor technology to
bar codes, can be embedded in products, scanned at a distance and
withstand high heat.”
Prices
for RFID technologies are dropping to the range of 5 to 10 cents
(per tag) Such tags can be used by retailers and manufacturers to
provide after-sales information about how, when and where products
are being used by consumers. As a matter of fact, companies like
Gillette and Procter and Gamble have already ordered hundreds of
thousands of RFID tags and are in the process of experimenting with
such “smart tags”.
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Gartner: “Public wireless LAN ‘hot spots’
will quadruple in 2003, creating widespread connectivity for people
in hotels, airports, public buildings and restaurants. This includes
a mix of free and commercial services. By 2007, the public
WLAN industry should grow to more than $9 billion in sales.”
True,
public wireless LANs are already in a growth trajectory and a number
of airports and café’s (including Starbucks) across
the country are already “enabling” their sites for customers.
However, this “build it and they will come” approach towards
adoption of nascent technologies needs to be tempered with some
reality, especially given the current economy and the focus on cost.
How many individuals would spend a few thousand dollars (more than
the normal cost) on a wireless device that they only occasionally
use during travel or a trip to the local café?
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Gartner: “IT as a utility will gain momentum. By 2006,
30 percent of IT work will be done through this model, where organisations
pay for storage, server and other requirements on an as-needed basis.”
Utility-based
computing is Bill Gate’s dream and IBM’s biggest bet in
recent years. Each of these giants is approaching this new paradigm
in their own way. Microsoft by re-hashing (pun on C#) windows with
the .NET architecture and IBM by bundling their entire software
solutions around a utility-based outsourcing model.
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Gartner: “Online bill payment with banks will continue
its sharp growth this year. Although only 12 percent of US bank
customers do any form of online banking today, Gartner is anticipating
50 percent growth in customer adoption by year’s end.”
Online
bill payment holds most promise for the near future. Most of us
hate standing in queues to pay bills or even licking stamps and
writing checks. Online bill-pay makes this process unobtrusive and
convenient. There is another incentive, in order to cut cost and
motivate usage, many banks and financial institutions are providing
this as a free service to customers.
The
trends mentioned in this article are global and given the pace of
technological adoption in India, it won’t surprise me if IT
managers in India too are thinking on the very same lines as their
American brethren. For instance, utility-based computing holds great
promise for India since most Indian companies (here I am alluding
to traditional users of IT, not IT companies) are starting with
a clean slate, not having to grapple with mammoth legacy systems.
For them, adoption of a utility model, if provided by IT vendors,
will be a natural next step.
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