Business change is driving shift in information management

EDS corporate futurist Jeff Wacker says companies need to prepare for their changing relationship with IT

The role of technology in the business has changed dramatically in the past few years.

Technology is now at the core of the organisation; a strategic tool that provides competitive advantage and facilitates change.

But another significant shift is on the way, predicts Jeff Wacker, corporate futurist at IT services giant EDS.

‘Work will still be rewarding but it will be different,’ he says.

While the basics of business will still be buying and selling, Wacker predicts an information explosion, with an exponential rise in the amount of data stored on computers around the world.

‘At the beginning of this year there were 12 exabytes (12 billion gigabytes) of uniquely digitised information available to the human race,’ he says.

‘By the end of this year, that will have doubled to 24 exabytes, or 4GB for every man, woman and child on earth. The management of it is the biggest challenge that IT faces.

‘Information technology has long been a handmaiden to business, but it is becoming the primary driver because we can do something different.

‘We can interact with customers differently, or get much deeper into the supply chain net than before.’

Business change is also approaching unprecedented levels – a consequence of our ability to communicate quickly, cheaply, in large volumes and across great distances, says Wacker.

‘Ideas pass so rapidly around the world that everyone knows about them and builds everyone else’s change into their own. Companies are finding new cycles of business for their products. Items that used to last for 15 years will last for two.

‘Pharmaceuticals, toys and cosmetics are in a business cycle rush that says: “I have to re-invent myself – not once every five or 10 years, but I have to think about a continuous reinvention process”.’

In line with the growth in innovation, businesses will be forced to re-evaluate their infrastructure and processes to cope with the increase in spee d, says Wacker.

‘Change drives complexity and people strive for simplification. Humans are relatively limited in what we can do at any one time because we can only do three to seven things.

‘We are being asked to do 10 things on a daily basis, and we need to be able to use computing to fill that gap. As a result, we are moving from a time when man initiates interactions with machines to a time when the opposite will be true.’

That is not to suggest that humans are becoming superfluous, he says, although in many areas it makes sense for computers to be given as much of the workload as possible, because they can perform tasks so much more quickly.

‘There are many areas where human reflexes are no longer up to the task,’ he says. ‘The best example of this is trading programs, where the record speed for a programmed stock trade is two nanoseconds.

‘To put that in perspective, you and I blink in 350,000 nanoseconds. But in just those two nanoseconds, the program recognised an event, rationalised that within its models, understood the impact on certain stocks, placed the buy and sell orders accordingly, and, finally, did all the necessary accounting.’

The role of human intervention changes here as well.

‘Our role will be almost as curators rather than as operators. That changes our job rather than diminishing it,’ says Wacker.

‘In fact, it magnifies it, because while computers are good at being quick, they are bad at adapting. We are good at adapting, but not so quick.’

But the change in the nature of business can bring its own set of problems, particularly where security is concerned, says Wacker.

It is important to identify these issues early and take action to prevent them before they become a problem,’ he adds.

‘Pericles, an Athenian who lived in the fifth century BC, said no god enters but that he drags his new demons with him,’ he says.

‘In other words, as we develop new capabilities, we bring in opportunities for computer crime. So we must also come up with the remedies to offset them.’

As automation improves, so the possibility increases that someone will subvert it.

‘So while we give over a lot of our business to the automated environment, we then have to put in the safeguards that say this is the right thing to do at a million miles an hour, because anything that is automated goes to hell in an automated manner as well,’ he says.

This is where simulation will come into its own. ‘Businesses must make models of their infrastructure and test disaster scenarios to prepare for such events,’ says Wacker.

Preparing for the next generation of computing is going to take a significant effort and force a mind shift among organisations, he predicts.

Most companies think only about what is going on now and in the immediate future, rather than about the long-term changes that are likely to occur, he says. Early planning will make for a smoother transition to changing processes.

‘People do think about the future, but the reality is that they do not think far enough into the future,’ says Wacker.

‘There are some fundamental trends that people are missing, which will have a major impact on their business.

‘If you can achieve a fundamental view of the future rather than just a cursory one, you can respond to the future in a strategic manner.’