The Need for a Platform
The UNIX® operating system provided a standard platform for applications on a single computer.
Servers, PCs, and the Internet provided a second platform for web applications and services. We need a third platform to support applications and services that use cloud, social, and mobile computing, big data, and the Internet of things.
We need a standard third platform, rather than a mish-mash of products that are intended for
specific situations and do not work together. Innovation adds value. Unnecessary differentiation blocks take-up and kills growth. With any new technology, a point is reached where the innovation is done. At that point, standardization is needed to allow full exploitation. That point will be reached in the next few years for the new technologies that are driving business innovation. A standard platform will enable users to use the combination of these technologies effectively and at low cost, and will give vendors a worthwhile market.
It is, however, not clear what form that platform should take. The world has moved on since the days of the UNIX system, and even since the more recent days when the Internet and the World-Wide Web became established. It is the purpose of this Business Scenario to develop an understanding of today's business and technical environment, and describe the fundamental requirements of the new platform.
The platform – whatever form it may take – is referred to here as Open Platform 3.0.
Platform 3.0 need not provide new digitization capabilities in and by itself. It should make
strategic digitization capabilities like big data analysis, social networking, mobility, the Internet of things, and Cloud Computing more integrated and especially much more accessible by firms, their clients, and their customers. The Open Group Platform 3.0 standardization effort should promote interoperability standards that protect the investments made by firms and consumers in the technologies and therefore be a vital cornerstone in the uptake of and sustained benefit realization from them.
The final sections of this Business Scenario describe a set of requirements for Open Platform 3.0 and identify the next steps towards its development. As a starting point, we look in this section at the problems that end users, IT departments, solution creators, and product and service suppliers are encountering with the new, disruptive technologies.
Business Scenario Problem Description
Technical developments such as mobile computing, social computing, big data analytics, the
Internet of things, and cognitive computing give enterprises opportunities for business
innovation, and a combination of two or more of these technologies offers powerful capabilities that can potentially transform or disrupt the business operating model.
Enterprise business departments want to be able to use these technologies, together with
information processing, storage, and communication technologies, easily, as and when needed, but they do not want to devote substantial time and effort to understanding and operating the technologies.
Specialist technology providers and integrators, and enterprise IT departments, want to support the business departments by providing solutions. The cloud service paradigm is now accepted as the best way to do this, but there are many different ways in which it can be used.
Business departments want solutions that follow common practice and conform to standards.
Common practice and standards for the new technical developments are still emerging, and there is no standard platform on which they can be deployed and used.
Lack of common practice and standards, and of a standard platform, is limiting the ability of enterprises to gain business advantage from the technical developments.
This is restricting take-up of the technologies, giving product and service suppliers, and integrators, a small market.
What the Analysts Say
Industry analysts agree on the importance of the new technical phenomena. Gartner uses the term "Nexus of Forces" to describe the convergence and mutual reinforcement of social, mobility, cloud, and information patterns that drive new business scenarios [Gartner].
Gartner says that, although these forces are innovative and disruptive on their own, together they are revolutionizing business and society, disrupting old business models and creating new leaders. Gartner sees the Nexus as the basis of the technology platform of the future.
IDC predicts that worldwide IT spending will exceed $2.1 trillion in 2013, up 5.7% from 2012.
Smart mobile devices will generate more than 50% of this growth. From 2013 through 2020, a combination of social cloud, mobile, and big data technologies will drive around 90% of all the growth in the IT market. IDC uses the term "third platform" to describe this combination [IDC].
IDC predicts that:
- In 2013, there will be much greater urgency as the market moves way past the "exploration" stage to full-blown large-stakes competition.
No comments:
Post a Comment