While emerging technologies will impel innovation, enterprises will have to develop a comprehensive strategy around the manner in which they wish to organise their innovation as well as ways to achieve the best possible results, indicates a CII-PwC report on the need to run IT as a business.
Launched at the National CIO Forum held in Mumbai on 16 December 2013, the report—Running IT as a Business: Breaking boundaries with emerging technologies—is an attempt to look into the changing role of the chief information officer (CIO) as a strategist who helps drive innovation as well as business transformation, using IT as an enabler. This, in turn, leads to an analytical view on the “role emerging technologies can play in making organisations agile and adaptive within the current market scenario”, writes Debdas Sen, Regional Managing Partner (East) and Technology Consulting Leader, PwC India.
According to the report, with the advent of new mobile devices and platforms with advanced connectivity capabilities, accessing digital content has become convenient. The value drivers in business can now be achieved only by understanding the way in which a user needs data and the intended experience to be created for that user in that particular environment and device. Hence, social media, mobility, analytics and cloud (SMAC) along with the DevOps approach, and the advent of the internet of things (IoT) are providing solutions that are the need of the hour so as to connect better with customers and clients. Concepts such as big data can no longer be called a technology-driven change. Instead, it is now a business-driven approach facilitated by technology.