Post written by Chris S., Project Manager at Ideaca. Read more about
project management on his blog: The Outspoken Data Guy.
If the lines have not already been
blurred, they will be…Over the next 10 years business and IS work will undergo
a major transformation, largely driven by the Cloud and Data Analytics.
In the next 10 years, internal IS
staff will act solely as advisers and managers of cloud services.
As more and more businesses embrace
cloud services, IS will be called upon to act as advisers to ensure that these services are managed as efficiently as possible. As a consequence, this will
push IS Governance further into the limelight. For years IS has had the notion
of charge-back to the business to help manage costs and allocate them to those
that use services. This approach has been mired in political push back and
logistical challenges around how this would be done in a fair and equitable
manner. As we move towards a “Pay for Usage” model in the cloud, these costs
will be far easier to allocate back to those that use and hence IS will get a
more accurate picture of costs of services and a far better allocation model.
This likely will not sit well with
legacy users but the notion of “pay for usage” is so common place with
Generation Z that this will be a virtual non issue. With this political hurdle
out of the way, the focus can shift to more efficient use of IS resources and
to ensure that businesses are getting value.
It is hard to argue with the value of
using cloud services. At present there are the usual security and performance
questions but over the next few years these concerns will be addresses and we
will all have our heads in the clouds.
The new beast - hybrid IS and Business
Person
Who is the future (IS) worker? And
what skills will they need to bring to the table?
In my opinion the niche where people
will have the most success will be with a hybrid of IS and business skills.
There is no real debate that the world is increasingly becoming more data
driven and the ability to turn data into actionable insights will become more
in demand. So what does that mean? It means that workers will need to have 2
very key kills:
a) A deep understanding of the business
and b) the ability to analyze data and derive insights.
This phenomenon, coupled with the
cloud will allow Business Intelligence services to move closer to the business
with IS once again acting as advisers, which is where BI needs to be currently
in organizations. Unfortunately it gets stuck into an unnecessary tug of war
between IS and the Business.
Bottom line: Business users will have
to become more technically savvy as is articulated in Thomas Davenports
“Keeping up with the Quants.”
Business Intelligence is weaving its
way into our daily lives - it is the age of data.
Building on the above, on a daily
basis we are increasingly faced with data that we use to guide our actions,
personal or otherwise. Real time traffic signs that tell us how long it takes
to get somewhere, integrated budgeting software in our banking site that
monitor our daily spending and alert us to certain conditions that we are
interested in and feedback about restaurants that we may want to have lunch at.
These are just a few examples of where data is used daily to guide our
decisions.
Bottom line: Data and analysis are becoming a
way of life and will continue to forge its way into the mainstream.
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