News

Enterprise Technology Report Shows Disruptive Shift

• By David Ramel
• 06/02/2016

Enterprise systems in 2016 are starting to look a lot different than enterprise systems of yesteryear, according to a new report about the "enterprise technologies to watch in 2016" from the Enterprise Irregulars.

"This year’s round-up of enterprise technologies to watch in 2016 is more crowded than ever," states the new report. "This is partly due to the fact that there’s just more new tech this year, and partly because the consumer-focused side of the technology industry is creating ever more disruptive advances that enterprises are simply required to face more quickly to maintain their relevancy in the market."

New, potentially disruptive technologies such as new-age digital customer management -- instead of customer relationship management (CRM) -- and real-time stream processing were identified by Dion Hinchcliffe, a member of the Enterprise Irregulars, a "group of practitioners, consultants, investors, journalists, analysts and full-time bloggers who share a common passion -- enterprise technology and its application to business in the 21st century."

Hinchcliffe, chief strategy officer at 7Summits Inc., has compiled the list for the third straight year, noticing a number of disruptive changes in that time-frame.

"There are several new additions to the list this year that -- despite rampant overuse of the term these days -- hold the potential to be genuinely disruptive in the short term," Hinchcliffe said. "These include blockchain, digital/customer experience management, and real-time stream processing, or fast data."

In addition to those new technologies, the report examines many others, including: hybrid and public clouds; microservice architectures; machine learning and artificial intelligence; the Internet of Things (IoT); mobile business apps; containers, low-code development platforms and more.

"How will this much new technology be absorbed by our organizations?" Hinchcliffe rhetorically asked. "There are several ways, but in large organizations, innovation these days often happens outside the IT department, and 2016 will see a high water mark of experimentation by non-IT departments that use tech at the core of what they do, such as the purview of the chief digital officer as well as that of the chief marketing officer. So too lines of business will be looking at ways to more quickly deploy these technologies to assist customers and drive results."