CIO Review: Co-Director at Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work Says Knowing Where the Cloud is Going Next is Key to Making Smart IT and Business Decisions

“Given that “the cloud” has completely upended the IT industry during its adolescence, knowing where it’s going in the next 18 months—let alone another 18 years—is key to making smart IT and business decisions,” writes Ben Pring. He outlines four dynamics that should shape investment, sourcing, and management strategies for the next stage of technology evolution. Excerpts:

“The Cloud is becoming the Platform

Cloud vendors provide “platforms” that learn, grow, and develop through analyzing transactional metadata that customers or users provide with every click, like, browse, swipe, and buy. Platforms pre-integrate “below the app” components and facilitate “easy above the app” extensions. With that—and the ability to constantly improve the user experience through API-generated feedback—Metcalfe’s Law kicks in: the value of the platform is proportional to the square of number of users. Platforms are becoming way more important and valuable than any single piece of technology.

The Platform is Powering the Internet of Things

The platform is central to the great digital build-out that is ramping up. As “things” become “smart,” the big commercial opportunity will be to orchestrate interdependencies; a smart refrigerator that “auto-magically” orders a delivery of milk when you run low will only become reality if a complex set of integrations occur. The platform solves this challenge by supplying the mechanism that pre-integrates components and facilitates extensions, learning along the way. As the cloud has evolved into the platform, it becomes more obvious that seeing the technology as simply a means of reducing cost in your business today is to miss its role in shaping your business in the future. The platform generates and harvests data, the understanding and leveraging of which is central to the digital era.

When it comes to the Platform, will your Organization be a Developer or a Consumer?

The cost of developing modern platforms that can support business users to compete and win in the commercial market is prohibitive for many organizations. For those enterprises, the better course of action is to decommission existing in-house applications and supporting infrastructure, and to re-direct spending toward investing in commercial platforms. The sophistication of the modern cloud, and now the platform, and the fact that platforms produce “winner take all” results, means that only those organizations with strong constitutions (and deep pockets) can continue to operate as developers. The better, more logical route is to be a savvy platform consumer.

Everything Rests on the Platform being Secure

With the future of your business resting on a digital platform, security failures are not an option. The platform is core to the future of your work. Mastering it is the great task ahead.”

Click here to read more (page 37).