5 Technology differentiators for 2009
Since it is now obvious that every industry is going to be effected by slower consumer and business spending, there is nothing more or nothing new to add about uncertain future and economy, as we start to enter the new year...
While there is no panacea for the problems and the damages of 2008, every organization across the globe is eagerly looking at ways to control costs and reduce their expenses and risks. Leaders across the globe are looking at optimizing their resources, as they must be, and tightening the organizational seat belts to prepare themselves for 2009. Technology remains a key differentiator in these tough times and should be a place where leaders must focus on to handle short term challenges and to prepare for strategic growth.
Well, 2008 was a welcome year from technology perspective, where we have seen a new generation of technology solutions have come to being or have started to have good adoption across the industries and geographies. Some of these technologies provide a foundation for information systems that are both cost-effective and flexible.
Unified communications which uses a combination of Instant messaging, VoIP, Video conferencing and live meeting is a technology area which can provide significant wins for the organizations providing effective team collaborations, improved organizational productivity, rapid problem resolution and hence improved customer satisfaction. According to Forrester group organizations have seen significant savings in the travel and communication costs.
Collaboration tools and solutions can also help in improving employee productivity - another way to reduce costs. Many organizational leaders still do not understand the potential of tools such as Twitter, wikis, blogs and collaboration networks, as well as the cost involved in introducing similar technologies that can bring value to the business. There are many tools that can really help in effective collaboration and they are not necessarily costly.
Virtualization is a key technology solution which can significantly help optimize the computing resources and hence reduce the cost of ownership of these resources and also lower energy consumption.
Cloud computing, a combination of software on premise and software in the 'cloud', provides organizations, a way to invest in technology with predictable payment options, so that they could free up their budget for other efforts.
SAAS based hosted solutions will help organizations reduce the capital investments significantly; not to mention the deployment, training and other related costs of procurement and implementation of packaged software.
It is extremely important for organizations to invest and leverage the new technology trends as we move into next year. These provide cost effective solutions to various business problems and will help organizations to transform their businesses and become more competitive.
Wishing you all a great year ahead!!
Comments
What are your thoughts on Open Source development? Is Open Source a viable way to cut costs?
Posted by: Jason | January 7, 2009 08:18 PM
I accept going for Open source development, if the project is having enough time to do research in Open source and implement in the project.
To minimize the project cost in technology the best way is to create component blocks in research labs and build the project using the blocks. Investing more on component building using open source will reduce project cost.
Posted by: Saianand Natarajan | January 14, 2009 10:57 AM
Saianand/Jason:
Thanks for your post!
I agree with you.
Please do review my earlier post on Applicability of Open source technologies in the current market at the following link:
http://infosysblogs.com/finspeak/2008/11/build_vs_buy_vs_download.html#more
Thanks!
Your comments on the same will be very welcome.
Posted by: Srinivas Prabhala | January 15, 2009 07:15 AM