Tech trends 2011

Tech Trends 2011
The natural
convergence
of business and IT

2011 Technology Trends

Preface

Deloitte’s annual Technology Trends report examines the ever-evolving landscape of technology put to business use.
Topics are chosen based on their potential business impact over the next 18 months, with input from clients,
analysts, alliances and our network of academic leaders. This year we identified 10 important trends, clustered in
two categories: (Re)Emerging Enablers and Disruptive Deployments.

(Re)Emerging Enablers are trends that many CIOs have spent time, thought, and resources on in the past – perhaps
multiple times. This year these familiar topics deserve another look due to specific factors in the technology or
business environment.

Disruptive Deployments are trends that present significant new opportunities – offering new business models or
transformative ways to operate. The technologies themselves are not necessarily disruptive, but when deployed as
discussed, they could disrupt the cost, capabilities, or even the core operating model of IT and the business.

Our 2011 trends list plays significantly to the convergence of Social and Mobile computing – a convergence that is
fundamentally changing how information is accessed and used in business operations and decision-making. ”There’s
an app for that” captures the essence of this change, engaging users wherever and whenever they choose, and
taking full advantage of the next generation of Cloud Computing. These finished business capabilities within the
cloud, for both structured and unstructured information analytics, are changing the role of the CIO and the shape
and size of apps. But what isn’t changing is the importance of information security and privacy practices that can
stand up to today’s hyper-evolving cyber threat landscape.

All of these trends are relevant today. Each has demonstrated significant momentum and potential to have an impact
– and each is important enough to support immediate consideration. Forward-thinking organizations should consider
developing an explicit strategy in each area, even if that strategy is to wait and see. But whatever you do, stay ahead.
Use the convergence to your advantage. Don’t get caught by surprise.

Mark E. White
Principal and CTO
Deloitte Consulting LLP

Contents

(Re)Emerging Enablers

Visualization .................................................................................... 1

“Almost-Enterprise” Applications ...................................................... 7

Cyber Intelligence .......................................................................... 13

CIOs as Revolutionaries .................................................................. 19

The End of the “Death of ERP” ...................................................... 25

Disruptive Deployments

Real Analytics ................................................................................. 32

Social Computing........................................................................... 38

User Engagement .......................................................................... 44

Applied Mobility............................................................................. 50

Capability Clouds ........................................................................... 56

Conclusion .................................................................................... 62

Authors ......................................................................................... 63

1 Visualization

See, discover and explore deeper insights within ﬂow and evolution of information. Intuitive touch or
large, complex data sets gesture-based drill-downs and on-the-ﬂy relationship
Enterprises move into 2011 with information at the mapping add immediacy to the analysis, encouraging
forefront of their agendas. According to a recent Gartner manipulation and higher-order understanding instead of
survey, increasing the use of information and analytics is static or passive views.
one of the top three business priorities1. Data volumes
continue to explode, as unstructured content proliferates Though a long-established discipline, visualization deserves
via collaboration, productivity and social channels. And a fresh look in 2011, partly due to the evolution of the
while organizations are making headway on enterprise underlying tools. In-memory databases and distributed
information management and broad analytics solutions, MapReduce processing now allow trillions of records and
much potential insight is buried within static reports that petabytes of data to be sorted, joined and queried.
are accessible only by a small fraction of the organization2. Visualization suites complement business intelligence and
analytics platforms, offering rich graphics, 3-D perspectives,
This static, tabular approach runs counter to fundamental interactivity and usability on par with leading consumer
patterns of human thinking; our brains have been tuned to experiences – often with deployment channels on
recognize shapes, detect movement and use touch to smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.
explore surroundings and make connections. Thus, the true
value of business intelligence is often lost as companies
Another difference in 2011 is the rich potential represented
struggle to communicate complicated concepts and
by unstructured data, whereby organizations can tap into
empower more stakeholders.
millions of internal emails, instant messages and
documents, as well as trillions of Facebook objects (100
Visualization refers to the innovative use of images and billion page views per day3), Twitter tweets (90 million per
interactive technology to explore large, high-density day4), text messages, blogs and other content of potential
datasets. Through multi-touch interfaces, mobile device concern to the enterprise. In the face of so many loose
views and social network communities, organizations are connections and non-intuitive correlations, visualization is
enabling users to see, explore and share relationships and proving to be an excellent mechanism to make sense of
insights in new ways. Spatial and temporal context add unstructured data and feed it into decision making and
physical location and sequencing to the analysis over time, process improvement activities.
allowing patterns to be uncovered based on the source,

2011 Technology Trends - (Re)Emerging Enablers 1

Visualization

History repeating itself?
Visualization has deep roots going back to society’s earliest maps, scientific charts and instructional illustrations – many
designed to convey complex information in ways that simplify, communicate and foster understanding. In computer
science, visualization has been attempted for decades, but has been limited by graphical horsepower, CPU, memory and
storage constraints.

What were the challenges? What’s different in 2011?

Spreadsheet/database • Restricted to essentially four variables: x and y • Three dimensional visual and interactive
chart builders axis, size and coloring of plotted points. elements allow for many variables to be
considered for any given analysis.
• Viewpoints typically restricted to static, siloed
data – leaving little room for alternatives. • Visualization tools have continued to add
features and toolkits – from stand-alone
• Limited ability to interact with the data – some packages (e.g., SAS, ILOG) to productivity tool
drill-down, but queries and views were generally plug-ins (e.g., Excel) to cloud services (e.g.,
fixed. ManyEyes, Google, Tableau Public).

• Tools allow information acquisition (with
requisite cleansing and correlation) or real-time
integration to connect relevant data, inside and
outside of organizational boundaries.

• High degrees of interactivity, both for drilling
down and on-the-fly editing of core dimensions
of the analysis.

Business intelligence/ • Tools required power users to perform self- • Business intelligence solutions are often part of
reporting guided queries and explore the data universe rich analytics suites – which include visualiza-
– demanding detailed knowledge of underlying tion tools designed with business analysts and
data structures and SQL. end-users in mind. Data structures are abstracted
based on enterprise objects and metrics; 4GL
• Primary focus on historical reporting – with languages allow drag and drop exploration.
tabular text or chart/histogram output. Without
spatial and temporal context, many patterns • The last few years have seen consolidation in
were impossible to recognize. the ERP/BI space (e.g., SAP and Business Objects,
Oracle and Hyperion, IBM and Cognos, SPSS).
• Computational and storage bottlenecks either As product lines are becoming integrated,
restricted the complexity of analysis or the size organizations have easier access to, and an
of data sets (or both). easier time feeding into, tools capable of driving
visualization.

• Natural links to performance management and
predictive modeling tools, allowing not just
confirmation of intuition, but discovery and
insight.

• High-performance appliances, in-memory
analytics solutions, cloud-based infrastructure
as a service and distributed data processing
solutions have introduced cost-effective means
to remove technology constraints.


Visualization

Technology implications
Tools for rendering and displaying complex visuals are a natural part of this trend. Beyond the presentation layer,
visualization requires foundational Enterprise Information Management and Information Automation disciplines – as well
as means to integrate data silos within and beyond the organization5.

Topic Discussion

Master data management Insights from sophisticated visualization solutions will only be as good as the underlying data. If entity-
level relationships are not understood at the structural level, nuanced correlations and associations will
be almost impossible to achieve at the business level. Even worse: the analysis will yield ﬂat-out wrong
conclusions based on faulty data.

Data quality Any derived understanding will be compromised if the source data is dirty, inconsistent or of unknown
quality. That’s why leading organizations are adopting tiers of trust zones for data. Acknowledging a
lack of control over external and unstructured data, different puzzle pieces are allowed to be included
as a part of the analysis, but stakeholders are made aware of potential issues with the integrity of the
data sources.

Integration Ability to link multiple internal – and increasingly external – data sources to feed into the palette of
information to be visualized. On-premise solutions typically feature batch and transaction-level movement
of information between physical repositories driven by data, service or event based interfaces. If one or
more cloud solutions are also potential sources, an external “integration-as-a-service” platform will likely
become part of the technology landscape (e.g., CastIron, Boomi, Pervasive).

In-memory, distributed and Infrastructure is needed to support processing of large data volumes – using either column-based
cloud-based infrastructure compression optimizations, map reduce or elastic scale of the operating environment. These allow
for high-performance computing characteristics at a relatively low cost, enabling complex visualizations
and analysis.

Visualization rendering Either as extensions to broader information suites or as stand-alone niches addressing the presentation
and interaction tools and manipulation of complex analyses, visualization tools must be a part of the strategic information
landscape. Many of these tools feature mobile application access – ranging from viewing pre-deﬁned
outputs to actively exploring the data universe.


Visualization

Lessons from the frontlines Living, breathing (digestible) almanac
Matter of life and death IBM created a tool to showcase the power of visualization
The University of Maryland launched the Similan effort based on publically available data from the CIA’s World
to “enable discovery and exploration of similar records Factbook, providing analysis comparing Gross Domestic
in temporal categorical dataset.”6 In other words, Product (GDP) and population growth across the globe7. It
they wanted to enable searches based on a sequence compares the effectiveness of online analytical processing
of events – specifically, to be able to look through (OLAP)-based bar charts with integrated, spatial interfaces
patients’ electronic health records and find incidents of the same data. A tree map shows GDP per country
of a specific pattern of treatments and symptoms that via rectangles of varying sizes, with color coding to
might be representative of an overarching disease represent varying population growth velocities. The view
or condition. For example, patients that predispose effectively communicates thousands of data points.
themselves to contrast-induced nephropathy would By allowing the same analysis to be mapped spatially
start with normal creatinine levels, then undergo to the globe, new patterns can be detected based on
radiation therapy and then have low creatinine levels regional activities, patterns that would not be apparent
within five days. Unfortunately, patient histories and in the continental view. While each perspective has its
charts were not easily searchable by event sequences. strong points, the ability to switch from one to another
allows for a wider range of analysis, and more potential
Enter Similan. By allowing visual representations of for insight. Finally, drill-down is possible for any given
events mapped against time, backed with effective country – providing end-user access to low-level detail.
search tools and animated event flows, the desired
pattern is easier to recognize. Beyond healthcare Metering the Internet
applications, there are wide-ranging possibilities for Akamai’s Internet visualization tools provide a view
commercial use of this technology, including events into multiple dimensions of online performance: overall
such as product line launches, M&A transactions, web traffic, net usage indices based on transaction and
retail store openings, or corporate downsizings. content type and individual site visitation, response and
application performance8. By providing real-time visibility
into traffic, correlation to past performance for trending
analysis and the ability to use touch-based gestures to
investigate regions and activity over time, the complexity
of two billion Internet users’ habits is made simple
and actionable. Organizations are taking advantage of
specialized views describing retail Web site visits and
e-commerce transactions by geography to improve their
advertisement strategies and tailor consumer offers.


Visualization

Where do you start? • Know your audience. Choosing the right visualization
Visualization is a largely untapped source of value, technique has everything to do with what you are trying
with current efforts typically focused on historical to do. Is the intent to clearly convey findings? Or to
reporting, dash-boarding or predictive modeling. enable others to discover their own insights? Will it be
Establishing tools to improve consumption, increase leisurely consumed from a desktop in a corner office
exploration and better understanding of these activities or by someone in the field to help resolve immediate,
is frequently an afterthought for organizations. It is pressing issues? Clearly understand your audience –
often assumed that the analytics tools themselves will and their intended usage – to guide scope and design.
provide visualization capabilities out of the box, an
assumption that does not generally hold up. Similar • Information management mandate. Worse than
to the 2011 Technology Trend on User Engagement, not having the answer to a question, is to have false
consumerization and generational forces are driving confidence in an answer that is compromised. That’s
radical new expectations for information access. The good why master data management and data quality are
news: these new developments can yield tremendous crucial parts of the visualization story. Luckily, it is
value for the organization, particularly when applied to feasible to address information management in phases
the largely green-field terrain of unstructured data. aligned with the scope of the business problems ahead.
Just think through enterprise implications from the
• Business purpose first. The types of tools and start so the journey can be accretive, not a series of
disciplines needed for visualization will be determined redundant or divergent efforts.
by the business problems to be addressed. That is critical
to informing stakeholders and determining the degree • Explore. There are many open source options for
of focus on communication clarity, how much to invest exploring the potential benefits of visualization:
in exploration and manipulation, how mobile scenarios ManyEyes, Tableau Public, Google Public Data
fit in and which visualization techniques are applicable. Explorer and other services allow either exploration
The range of possibilities is enormous – from simple Tree of public information or importing of private data for
Maps and Bézier curves to advanced solutions like the visualization and manipulation. Just keep in mind that
University of California at Santa Clara’s AlloSphere9, a normal security and privacy considerations apply for
self-enclosed research center with two five meter radius any sensitive intellectual property. Dedicated players
hemispheres allowing fully immersive visual and auditory like Qlikview, Spotfire, Roambi and offerings from
exploration of complex data sets (e.g., electron spin/ IBM, SAP, Oracle and others, provide tools for rapid
bonding, brain activity, etc). prototyping. Tool decisions should be based on existing
technology footprints and expected use cases. By
experimenting with several platforms, the business
can be better educated on the art of the possible –
driving an informed vision and investment roadmap.


Visualization

Bottom line
The promise of visualization has been a long time coming, but the results often fall short of the business’
imagination. With the mix of rich new tools, the rising quality of enterprise information and analytics, the
untapped potential of unstructured data and the incentive of mobile use – the deck is finally stacked to make
good on that promise. However, the richest visual presentation is of no use if the content is flawed.

Organizations with solid information foundations can use visualization to leap-frog competitors. Laggards can
use the allure of visualization as strong reason to finally shore up data management concerns. Regardless of
which category your organization falls into, your employees, customers and partners will soon expect access
and transparency to information that can be explored, manipulated and acted upon. Leading companies will be
in a position to profit from getting it right.

Endnotes
1
Mike Vizard, Gartner 2010 CIO Survey: A Time of Great IT Transition, http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/vizard/gartner-2010-cio-survey-a-
time-of-great-it-transition/?cs=38795 (January 19, 2010).

2
Additional information is available in Deloitte Consulting LLP (2011), “Tech Trends 2011: The natural convergence of business and IT”, http://
www.deloitte.com/us/2011techtrends, Chapter 6.

3
Chris Crum, Facebook Gets 100 Billion Hits Per Day, http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/07/21/facebook-gets-100-billion-hits-per-day
(July 21, 2010).

4
Leena Rao, Twitter Seeing 90 Million Tweets Per Day, 25 Percent Contain Links, http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/twitter-seeing-90-million-
tweets-per-day/ (September 14, 2010).

5
Additional information is available in Deloitte Consulting LLP (2010), “Depth Perception: A dozen technology trends shaping business and IT in
2010”, http://www.deloitte.com/us/2010technologytrends, Chapter 1.

6
Visit http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/similan/

7
Visit http://visunetdemos.demos.ibm.com/blogsamples/factbook2/FactBookSE.html

8
Visit http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/nui/retail/index.html

9
Visit http://www.allosphere.ucsb.edu/


“Almost-Enterprise”
2 Applications

Quick and agile solutions appeal to the business, applications have been institutionalized over the years for
but are they “enterprise enough” for IT? good reason. ERP providers have invested decades and
Business units have historically had a love-hate relationship billions of dollars in creating solid platforms worthy of
with IT. In the early days, IT was an esoteric specialty, businesses entrusting their critical operations. Hundreds
far removed from core business competencies yet of thousands of top developers have helped fortify and
consuming a big piece of the budget. IT was often extend development frameworks like .NET and Java
seen as unresponsive, expensive or flat-out ineffective, EE, with just as many proof points of their readiness
but business leaders saw no other choice for essential for enterprise-class solutions. Many of these almost-
process and information automation. IT was left to enterprise solutions, on the contrary, are as short on
balance these harsh perceptions with the practical formal reliability, transactional integrity, security and
reality of providing secure, reliable and scalable interoperability standards as they are long on anticipated
solutions with zero tolerance for fault or failure. functionality. In addition, while entire industries
have matured to support development, governance,
Individuals and departments have taken on this maintenance and monitoring of traditional enterprise
re-emerging self-service approach before. In the 1990s, applications, these capabilities are still in infancy for much
the client/server trend gave almost anyone the ability of the SaaS and PaaS market. That said, the potential
to put a small server under their desk and build a Visual value of the next generation of self-service approaches
Basic application to help perform their job. This eventually to the business is real, with providers continuously
resulted in a sprawl of apps that were outside the control improving to close the maturity and discipline gaps.
of, and not subject to the disciplines of, professional
IT. Some of these apps were eventually determined to Because these almost-enterprise solutions are easily
be central to the business, and the lack of formality shared (internet-based) and inherently scalable
in their pedigrees created risk for the business. The (a function of the cloud backbone), the potential
CIO often had to adopt or rationalize these efforts. business risk exposure is significant. Threats include
the possibility for business disruption, security and
As a result of the cloud revolution, Software- and privacy risks and intellectual property leakage. And
Platform-as-a-Service (SaaS, PaaS) capabilities are there is often the danger of additional vendor lock-in
being eagerly embraced by many business leaders for and the introduction of yet-another platform or (even
reasons including predictable results, easy and rapid worse) proprietary development language. CIOs need
availability and a demystification of IT. Put simply, to anticipate this wave with sourcing guidelines,
the resulting almost-enterprise applications can offer implementation standards and an upgraded delivery
transparency in the value and cost for services, in terms model designed around executing smaller, faster
understandable by the business, without the overhead projects. At a minimum, they need to prepare for the
too often perceived with central IT departments. inevitable: just like before, some of these applications
However, the CIO has good reason to tread skeptically will reach the scale, complexity or business criticality that
towards these new solution patterns – and with motives necessitates centralized IT management and support.
much nobler than self-preservation. Capital “E” enterprise

“Almost-Enterprise” Applications

Almost-enterprise applications represent the most recent iteration of a long-running cycle: the democratization of IT in
search of better, faster, cheaper enablement of the business. While technology advances and entrepreneurial energy
surrounding cloud make 2011’s rendition particularly compelling, there is high potential for today’s almost-enterprise
applications to follow a similar evolution.


Desktop-ware (e.g., • Difficult to distribute and scale; required either • A broad and growing catalog of finished services
Access, Excel, Visual Basic) a locally-installed program or access to a available for purchase. Instead of buying building
physical file. blocks, businesses are able to subscribe to cloud
• Version control and redundancy challenges, capabilities (e.g., sales lead tracking).
especially as the business became more • Easy access across the internet and rapid
dependent on one-off solutions. scale based on cloud backbone reduce
• Core IT was typically not involved in the deployment issues, but also raise risks of
development or maintenance of solutions – uncontrolled proliferation.
leading to exposure in the areas of security, • Utility-based model (pay-per-use), infrastructure
reliability and maintainability. “hidden” in the cloud, and improving enterprise
• Inefficiencies in both workload (e.g., time- development and maintenance tools mitigate the
consuming manual extracts of data to feed cost argument – if pricing and contract terms are
rogue applications) and operational costs (e.g., favorably managed.
hundreds/thousands of underutilized servers • Highly extensible tools and platforms that make it
sitting under desks). easier to operate off a common/shared data set.
• Fragmentation of processes and data leading
to additional inefficiencies and need for
complex reconciliation when attempting to
“roll-up” results.

Document flow and task • Similar to desktop-ware, widespread proliferation • Ability to establish standards and foundational
management (e.g., Lotus led to significant redundancy – which resulted services (e.g., data management, integration,
Notes, SharePoint) in consistency and data integrity issues: Which security) that can decrease redundancy and address
version of the truth should be trusted? concerns of the overall stability and maturity of
• Advanced security, fault tolerance and scalability almost-enterprise solutions.
features were sporadically implemented by the • SaaS and PaaS platforms are rapidly adding features
non-IT development community. to provide reliability, security and transactional
• Applications could be extremely idiosyncratic. Any integrity capabilities that can be consistently
given document could be handled by multiple applied (e.g., Google two-stage authentication
applications, introducing new complexities. for Enterprise App Engine platform).
• Started to deliver more collaboration and • Increasingly the cloud, social, mobile and
associated processes automation capabilities collaboration worlds are combining to allow
but remained incomplete, overly static multi-faceted collaboration between people,
and fragmented. data and documents.

Application service • Rigid implementations with minimal ability to • Solutions built specifically to support multi-tenancy
provider (e.g., FatCow, customize for business-specific needs. provide additional configuration flexibility.
subscription Websites) • Applications were extended from on-premise, • App Stores encourage specialized capabilities and
licensed platform models. Without multi-tenancy, cross-enterprise reuse and sharing even in relatively
they required dedicated operating environments, specialized business domains.
which impacted cost-saving potential. • In-cloud integration can allow cross line-of-
• Bandwidth impacted performance and availability. business or external collaboration.
Offline access – if it existed – was sub-optimal. • Proliferation of broadband and mobile solutions
has made the solutions viable. Incorporation of
elegant offline solutions is closing the remaining
gaps (e.g., Adobe Air).



Almost-enterprise applications require many of the same foundational disciplines that have been leading practices in
traditional IT organizations for years, if not decades. But rather than representing optional approaches, they are becoming
required to realize the full potential of the new hybrid landscape.

Topic Discussion

Enterprise Whether almost-enterprise applications are focused on information analytics, financial transaction processing, sales,
information HR, collaboration, or support of other processes, a significant factor will be the accuracy and reliability of underlying
management data. The tenants of EIM are required here – from master data management to correlation of business entities and
(EIM) promoting matching based on imperfect information… to data archiving and managing retention and storage of
cloud-based bits… to data cleansing which must expand its reach to the extended solution environment. Specific
implementation approaches should be guided by the level of access to SaaS and PaaS data (either directly or via
administrative tools), as well as the capabilities of data, application, and service-level APIs.

Integration The ability to coordinate long-running end-to-end business processes across legacy and almost-enterprise
(notably applications is essential, especially as transactions increasingly require navigation of the “cloud of clouds” –
orchestration and hybrid footprints traversing multiple cloud providers, coupled with manual tasks and automated workflows. In
event processing) addition to support service-oriented software architecture standards, almost-enterprise applications should include
foundational event handlers for realization of asynchronous, unpredictable processes. While most of the new class
of solution providers have open, extensible, SOA-compliant architecture, they are in the midst of building out mature
integration frameworks.

Security and Data security and privacy are legal mandates for many industries, with restrictions on where data can be physically
privacy located and required controls for access to sensitive information – including internal intellectual property, private
customer/employee data or business partner trade secrets. Identity, authentication, and entitlement services should be
implemented enterprise-wide to manage who has access to assets, whether internally or externally sourced. Seamlessly
passing credentials across clouds is technically challenging, but progress is underway. More likely, third-party solution
providers will allow ICAM (identity, credential, access management)-related activities to be exposed and remotely
invoked – ICAM-as-a-Service tying into core enterprise services.

Maintenance and IT encounters a familiar pattern for new technology adoption with the initial immaturity of tools and leading practices
monitoring tools for monitoring and maintaining the solution. These include native services for capacity, performance and health
tracking across the stack (network, server, OS, DB, app server, application, UI); tools for deploying, managing and
tracking code; and configuration changes and support activities (such as incident, problem and release management).
In addition, many solutions still have minimal hooks to external monitoring and management standards or industry
tools (e.g., HP OpenView, IBM Tivoli, etc). Leading solutions are getting more transparent about performance and
uptime but there remains a reluctance to commit to concrete SLAs, maintenance windows are generally inflexible, and
detailed visibility is often lacking. Due diligence is critical to guide contracting – and properly set internal expectations.

SDLC skills and The tools and methods that allow configuration or development and deployment of almost-enterprise solutions
methods continue to evolve and emerge very rapidly. They may or may not already be in the toolbox of the enterprise IT shop.
For example, Ruby on Rails or Objective C may not be in the current enterprise architecture but CIOs are encouraged
to establish a formal process for evaluating and on-boarding new tools and technologies in a given area. This may be
a formal center of excellence or an informal stealth activity, but the effort will be attractive to many high-performing IT
professionals who value staying ahead of the curve, and could be of value to the business overall.
Furthermore, this generation of almost-enterprise solutions has largely been developed since the advent of Agile
methodologies and as a result are ideally suited to them. In fact, employing a traditional waterfall approach with a
sharp delineation between “build” and “run” functions can dilute the power of these new architectures. Often the
embrace of cloud solutions is an effective trigger to drive the modernization of IT delivery approaches.

Cloud pricing As services are increasingly sourced via the cloud, vendor, usage, and contract management become essential
and contract functions. Given the potential scale of almost-enterprise solutions, attempting to control these factors manually could
agreements create disaster, most likely in the form of runaway usage that leads to business disruptions or exorbitant fees due to
unnegotiated ceiling clauses.
In addition, many of these solutions introduce additional topics that must be taken into consideration such as SLAs,
exit clauses, data usage rights and backup and recovery outcomes.



Lessons from the frontlines Apps on demand
CRM coup A chemical products manufacturer had been an early
A leading consumer products company with a significant adopter of Google Enterprise Apps engine – focusing
ERP footprint endured a coup from one of its North on building almost-enterprise applications anchored in
American business units. Tired of waiting for an overdue the productivity and collaboration suites. One example
second wave of a global roll-out that would finally was a series of Gmail plug-ins that read the subject of
deliver CRM functionality, the VP decided to launch emails and automatically retrieve CRM and HR workflow
a stealth Salesforce.com (SFDC) initiative for service documents from SAP, with embedded controls for taking
management – self-funded and independent of IT. action that, in turn, execute back-office transactions.
The CIO and head architect attempted to cancel the Another was the ability to automatically update call
project, but the board intervened. The business was notes in their CRM system with chat or voice transcripts,
given a cautionary green-light, with caveats to include removing what was historically 90 seconds of low-value
IT for design and integration to legacy data stores. activity at the end of each customer service call.

The project proved more complex that originally scoped, This approach represents a clear difference from the
mostly because of unforeseen data cleansing needed to company’s historical application focus, which was
seed the SaaS environment and the desire to integrate into based on enterprise solutions extended from their
the business unit’s existing HP OpenView business systems supply chain or financial systems. Average project
management tools. Native app-specific administration duration has been reduced to approximately four
and maintenance tools were easy to use, but outsourced weeks. Average business case capture and customer
application management services and help-desk satisfaction levels have increased tenfold.
capabilities required adoption of standard enterprise
services used by the rest of the company. Even with these Swimming against the tide
challenges, the project was completed in less than four The CIO of a leading insurance company had made the
months – by far the fastest implementation of an almost- organization’s “anti-cloud” stance very clear. Burned
enterprise solution the company had ever experienced. in a previous career role by a substantial investment in
The central IT group came to appreciate the simplicity Active Server Pages (ASP), he issued a mandate that
of development and configuration of the platform, the prohibited funding, support and tolerance for cloud-
robustness of the underlying design, configure, test based services in the organization. Six months later the
and run capabilities, and the built-in governors to deter board came close to issuing a call of “no confidence”
sloppy code. The decision was made to include SFDC against the CIO because the cloud-free IT strategy was
as the standard for an interim CRM solution, and to deemed a poor decision. The CIO decided to investigate
extend the enterprise’s existing TIBCO integration and his current IT spend across the infrastructure, platform
Websphere identity and access management solutions and software stacks, and to his surprise he discovered
to expose consumable services from the cloud. that – in spite of his edict – 15 of his VPs and business
unit leaders had already started the cloud journey. How
did he find out? He queried their corporate credit cards.



Where do you start? • Stake a claim for information, integration, and
CIOs who think this trend is “not happening on my security. Forward-build or contract for capability
watch” should ask HR to poll their business unit centers to support flexible delivery of these skills and
leaders’ corporate credit card accounts for charges services – creating a pool of resources to be shared
from Amazon EC2, IBM, Google or Salesforce.com. across projects, across the lifecycle of solutions, and
Many Fortune 500 organizations will find at least dynamically applied to multiple projects of short
initial dabbling, if not significant investing. CIOs durations. There is a growing need to offer shared IT
need to take a number of steps today to take control services around security, integration, maintenance and
– and advantage – of this re-emerging trend. reliability as “tax-free” enablers for as many solutions
as feasible. Ideally, these will involve incrementally
• Take a hard look in the mirror. Look at the building out capabilities in support of real business
effectiveness of IT. There is little motivation for an initiatives, instead of investing in standalone, lengthy,
organization to seek change if it feels its needs isolated or pre-emptive framework efforts.
are being met by the status quo. That said, rogue
investments should not be looked at as an indictment. • Provide information for your people to
The cloud hype machine is in overdrive, and it is natural understand tomorrow. Finally, remember that
for business leaders to experiment. parts of this transition will be highly personal. The
skill sets of your people must evolve. Decision rights
• Up central IT’s game. Take time to understand the will almost certainly shift. Methodologies will look
root cause of rogue projects. If delivery reliability markedly different. Simply “keeping the lights on”
is in question, think about ramping up a portfolio will be less valued. Transparency is key. Treat your
and project management (PPM) effort. If the issue customers with respect and stay open-minded
is transparency, consider adopting an IT service in decision-making, while building excitement
management mentality to crisply define the catalog about the possibilities of tomorrow’s world.
of offerings you provide – along with cost, value and
delivery metrics (SLAs) described in business terms.
Being open-minded regarding areas for improvement
will go a long way in the next stage.

• Gain trust and credibility as an unbiased
“conductor”. Position IT as an advisor for solution
shaping and design. Take responsibility for creating
the standards for when solutions like PaaS and SaaS
are appropriate. Describe the design standards and
patterns that should be considered when implementing
the prescribed solution, even if IT is not involved.
Enterprise architecture is a huge component of this,
requiring domain (e.g., data, integration, security)
experience and solution architects (typically tied to
business and/or functional areas) to earn the trust
of business executives and process advisors. And
remember, trust will require compromise,
with some recommendations including almost-
enterprise applications.


Bottom line
With the advent of everything-as-a-service in the capability cloud, social computing inside and outside the
enterprise and increasing investment in outside-in architecture, the traditional role of the IT department is at an
inﬂection point. IT’s importance and value potential have not changed, but it is now at the mercy of market
arbitrage. The change imperative is clear: CIOs need to get in front of this democratization and self-service trend,
notably since many of rogue investments will come back into IT’s fold once they reach a breaking point in complexity
or scale. When that happens, lines of business will once again be reminded that the initial app stand-up is the easy
part compared to ongoing care, feeding and improvement. The CIO must consider taking action to be seen as the
trusted caretaker and source of information innovation for the enterprise, not a naive landlord who is determined to
maintain a status quo.

Almost-enterprise services are seductive. They’re quickly growing in number and can be bought with the swipe of
a corporate card. In today’s operating environment, they simply can’t be avoided nor ignored. CIOs must recognize
the upside to their business customers while preparing to mitigate risk. Instead of creating “thou shall not” barriers,
guide and govern the decision process while educating the business as to why some standards, disciplines and
frameworks are worth the time and effort at almost any scale.


3 Cyber Intelligence

Protecting vital information assets demands a Cyber intelligence represents a vastly more sophisticated
full-spectrum cyber approach and full set of threat management tactics, providing
In 2010, security and privacy graduated from IT tools to move to a more proactive “over the horizon”
department concerns. C-suites and boardrooms took threat awareness posture. Cyber analytics looks to detect
notice of highly visible incidents, ranging from malware- patterns across systems, networks, physical security logs
infected motherboards from top-tier PC manufacturers1, and external cyber-threat intelligence analysis to predict
to information theft from a leading cloud provider2, to future attacks. Cyber forensics is moving beyond root-
the manipulation of the underlying routing tables of cause analysis to include tracking of where attacks came
the internet, redirecting traffic to Chinese networks3. from, and detailed tracing of what they were doing
At the same time, the regulatory environment around after the infiltration. Cyber logistics adopts an outside-in
sensitive data protection has become more rigorous, view of security, protecting against compromises in
diverse and complex. Organizations are aware of the the value chain – from upstream suppliers to personnel
shifting threat profile and are working to deal with sourcing. Powerful tools can allow advanced incident
technical barriers as well as sophisticated criminal response, triaging “how” and “from where” attacks
elements. Incidents are increasingly originating in the originated. And cyber security remains a key component
trust vector – due to inadvertent employee behavior – creating identity, access and control frameworks
via the sites they visit, the posts they access on social to safeguard assets, while embedding enforcement
media sites or even the devices they bring with them to policies and procedures throughout the organization.
the workplace. A “protect-the-perimeter and respond-
when-attacked” mentality is no longer sufficient. In 2011, security incidents remain nearly unavoidable.
By building cyber intelligence capabilities, the impact
Yet the vast majority of businesses in 2011 have only of incidents can be contained, the source of threats
limited capabilities to detect and react to point-in- understood, and learnings codified into controls that can
time breaches. Vulnerabilities are understood based help prevent future incidents. But beyond developing
on past events – not based on emerging cyber threats broader disciplines, organizations must embrace security
or on the actual risk profile of the organization. and privacy as foundational to their business. Cyber
intelligence efforts need to be championed by the C-suite,
funded as a strategic priority, and empowered to become
part of the operational genome of the company.


Cyber Intelligence

Individual cyber intelligence capabilities have been in play for decades, some since the earliest days of IT system design.
Beyond the inflection point of a unified, holistic approach, there have been significant advancements in overall discipline:


Cyber security • Many cyber security efforts were geared toward • Cyber security is increasingly framed as a combina-
perimeter intrusion protection and detection. tion of architecture, practices and processes – with
As threats shifted inside the trust zone, new equal focus on internal and external threats.
tools and techniques were needed. • Highly integrated tool sets and investments in
• Identity and access management solutions cyber analytics have helped connect dots and
were subject to systems silos – with isolated identify previously undetectable exposures.
entitlements, activity logging and controls. • Automated identity management tools are
Limited context of surrounding events made incorporated into day-to-day tasks, including
pattern detection of higher-order threats smart cards, biometrics, fingerprint and
extremely difficult. handprint scanners.
• Technology solutions were manual, • CSO role has become common-place, possessing
perceived as nuisances to the business and a mix of technology and leadership skills and a
often circumvented. seat at the executive table.
• The Chief Security Officer (CSO) or CISO, if
they existed at all, were typically technologists
with deep domain knowledge, but without a
seat in the boardroom.

Cyber forensics • Incident investigations would conclude • Cyber forensics is now looking beyond the host to
once root-cause analysis was determined the network layer, determining the source (inside
and cleaned. or outside the organization) of the malware. This
• Self-contained analysis was rarely used to is correlated with other internal and known
augment existing controls or update policies. external threats using cyber analytics in an
At best, a script was created to improve attempt to inform of future vulnerabilities.
response in case of breach recurrence. • Forensics results are part of a closed-loop cycle in
cyber intelligence, improving directly-affected and
associated controls.

Cyber analytics • An understanding of the value of business • An established tradecraft of analytics, reinforced
analytics, without the models to apply by the realization that threats and opportunities
the patterns. are often hidden in plain sight.
• Reactive approach to analytics based on • Cyber Analytics is predictive, prescriptive and a part
situational awareness and descriptive analysis. of a closed-loop cycle of continuous refinement
based on other cyber Intelligence activities.

Cyber logistics • Supplier security reviews were typically limited • Cyber logistics includes extensive analysis to identify,
to deal signings and cursory annual audits. assess and mitigate risk posed by vendors subject
• Notable in manufacturing, reliance on several to foreign ownership, control or influence (FOCI),
ever-changing sub-contractors and small or other significant concerns prior to purchase or
hardware providers – each with their own contract award.
risk profile – created potential weaknesses • Continuous audit of suppliers, including organi-
upstream in the supply chain. zation structures, corporate activity (e.g., M&A
• Personnel checks occurred during hiring or transactions) and ongoing verification of integrity
contracting process – with clearance processing of goods.
handled by largely unknown third parties. • Cyber intelligence strategies include provisions
for personnel security such as verifying legitimacy
of background investigation agencies, proactive
foreign travel risk advisory, and automated
reinvestigations of executives and privileged roles.


Cyber Intelligence

Cyber intelligence is as dependent on governance and organizational change as it is on underlying technology. The tools
themselves are an important part of an increasingly automated foundation for prevention, detection, and response.

Topic Description

Identity, credential and Identity, credential and access management solutions continue to be the foundation for enterprise
access management risk management – integrated with physical security systems and automated tools for user, asset and
(ICAM) system authentication.

Forensics Cyber-criminal attacks have increasingly targeted computer memory – avoiding disc scan detection
and circumventing many wireless and disc encryption techniques with in-memory key management.
Traditional network scanning tools must be used to survey the full landscape and identify devices of
interest, which are then treated to a full memory extract to determine any breaches – followed by
code deconstruction, malware analysis and containment.

Analytics Effectively studying associations between people, organizations and other security-relevant data
elements across systems and organizational boundaries requires broad capabilities, including
data management, performance optimization and advanced analytics - integrated with system
log files, storage, physical security systems and mobile profiles 4. Predictive modeling outputs are
used to automate control updates, complemented by visualization to allow manual exploration of
information. Additional value can be derived by providing insight to line-of-business decision making
– ranging from fraud prevention to vendor management contracting.

Infrastructure A combination of change, device and asset management – reflecting the need to maintain inventory,
management monitor usage and promote firmware and operating environment updates to servers, desktops,
mobile devices and physical equipment5.

Secure software Securing the technology value chain by introducing safeguards and controls across design,
development lifecycle development, testing and deployment of IT solutions. With so many organizations dependent on
(SDLC) external consultants, contractors and outsourcing providers, there is a need to control the entire
upstream channel – including data and code being deployed across the enterprise and to customers.


Cyber Intelligence

Lessons from the frontlines Digital footprint in the sand
Be careful who you onboard A financial services institution with greater than 85% of
A government agency had historically performed security revenue from on-line services subscribed to a third-party
background investigations and adjudicative services using for anti-phishing services. What they didn’t realize at
a labor-intensive, paper-based process supported by the time was that a high-quality source of intelligence is
multiple software systems. A cyber logistics effort was often inside the data of the company itself: policies, logs
launched to improve screening processes and controls and the rest of the data in their information ecosystem.
for personnel employed, assigned or contracted to the Despite longstanding access to this information, and
agency – as well as to meet the Intelligence Reform and ongoing review of webserver logs, they had never pieced
Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) requirements that 90% together the parts to recognize their threat vulnerability.
of security clearance cases be processed within 60 days. By looking at the data differently, considering which
other sites were referring users to their web site and
By developing a clearance case management system as cross-referencing those to sites not on their accepted
part of their cyber intelligence initiative, the agency was list, they began to treat those visitors with more
able to expedite clearance handling, reducing processing caution. As a result, they can now analyze patterns,
time by 30%. And by integrating with its document peel back the onion with regard to unknown sites, and
imaging system and risk analysis tools, analysts were able subsequently prevent phishing and other attacks.
to search and explore personnel history without violating
personal identifiable information requirements, thereby There are so many directive and prescriptive
allowing at-risk employees to be flagged and investigated. efforts, and many times organizations don’t even
get the basic data from logs – either because
Hidden in plain sight logging isn’t turned on, it’s outsourced or it isn’t
A large national bank embarked on a cyber study to archived appropriately. There is a gold mine of
become more cyber-aware and bolder with their fraud cyber data scattered throughout the enterprise.
capability. By looking at the exploits targeting peers
they were able to establish linkages between who was Unfortunately, anti-phishing services companies
targeting them and what applications they were after. typically don’t see the threat campaigns as early as
The effort provided them with the understanding of an enterprise can (or does) since attackers make dry
how a string of 1s and 0s, resolved into clear indicators runs on the organization before actually launching the
in application logs, can not only detect fraud but can exploit. Previously considered insignificant, this data
also predict it. Tradecraft was used to understand and its patterns provide powerful insight – and can
what activities criminals were undertaking to bypass show the power of understanding the potential impact
perceived security measures and harm applications. of the digital footprints you’re leaving in the sand.

The reality is that criminals have a staggering number of
potential exploits, upwards of 40,000 highly customized
threats for any specific campaign. By understanding what
was unique about their organization and creating a cyber
threat profile, they can now determine when there is
something about their software, supply chain, network
etc. that makes them a more attractive target. As a result,
exploits are now proactively curtailed and the entire
organization can be more predictive and prescriptive.


Cyber Intelligence

Where do you start? • Risk management 101. Many cyber security roads
Awareness of cyber threats is no longer an issue. As lead to and from an automated identity, credentials
governmental agencies brief CEOs and presidents on the and access management solution. This becomes
emerging landscape, and headlines paint vivid pictures the baseline for authentication, entitlements and
of the impact of penetration, exfiltration and extortion, information controls. Integrate across internal
security should no longer be disregarded as a cost center transactional and security systems – then expand this
buried within the IT organization. But with visibility comes footprint into business partners and any potentially
accountability. Given the immature starting point at customer-facing systems according to risk profiles.
which many companies find themselves with regard to
their security posture, their general sense of urgency is • Bring the CSO to the table. CSOs should be both
met with uncertainty about what specific steps to take. board-room advisors and general business leaders,
Here are four suggestions to help you get started: with security domain knowledge but not necessarily
tool-level experience. Many organizations have CSOs
• Threat assessment. Start by understanding the value reporting into the Chief Operating Officer (COO) or
of your organization’s assets and current vulnerabilities. Chief Risk Officer (CRO), a noticeable shift from their
This will guide your entire cyber intelligence strategy, so legacy in the IT organization.
take your time to get it right. Specific attention should
be placed on operations in foreign countries, where • Business connection. Use Cyber Intelligence
the security of the underlying network and physical to enable the reduction of risk and loss to the
infrastructure cannot be assumed. business. Determine three to five use cases and
show how it enables the business – saving money
• Intelligence network. Use industry, government from incident prevention, preventing data leakage
or third party relationships to establish ongoing for brand protection etc. – beyond a typical threat
intelligence partnerships to share leading practices, assessment. Know what you have, get access to
breach post-mortems and live dynamic intelligent it and use it! Like business continuity, it can be an
feeds to drive policy and control refinement. insurance policy that you’ll hopefully never use.


Bottom line
Cyber intelligence gives organizations a framework of capabilities commensurate with the dynamic threats they’re
facing. While it’s still necessary to build a rapid detect-and-respond cyber security function, organizations must go
beyond this by adding tools to learn and adapt, protect against upstream threats and connect internal and external
dots to predict future risks. This is critical for organizations that want to take a proactive stance against cyber threats.

Advanced capabilities in cyber intelligence will be essential in 2011 and beyond. Because of the pervasiveness of
cloud, social computing and mobility technologies, organizations will have even less control over systems, infrastruc-
ture and data – many of which are being used more and more at the edge of the enterprise. Establishing a trusted,
secure backbone and set of core services for these disruptive deployments will be a significant factor in their pace
of adoption and their effectiveness. Get it right and you’ll enhance your organization’s competitive posture. Get it
wrong and you may find yourself looking for another job.

Endnotes
1
Jeremy Kirk, Dell Warns of Malware on Server Motherboards, http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/201562/dell_warns_of_malware_on_
server_motherboards.html (July 21, 2010).
2
John Markoff, Cyberattack on Google Said to Hit Password System, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/technology/20google.html?_r=2&hp
(April 19, 2010).
3
John Leyden, China routing snafu briefly mangles interweb, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/09/china_bgp_interweb_snafu/ (April 9, 2010).
4
Additional information is available in Deloitte Consulting LLP (2011), “Tech Trends 2011: The natural convergence of business and IT”, http://www.
deloitte.com/us/2011techtrends, Chapter 6.
5
Description of the exponential growth in assets with embedded sensors, signals, and actuators is available in Deloitte Consulting LLP (2010), “Depth
Perception: A dozen technology trends shaping business and IT in 2010”, http://www.deloitte.com/us/2010technologytrends, Chapter 11.

4 CIOs as Revolutionaries

CIOs shift from stewards of, to catalysts for, In addition, the next-generation workforce has
business revolution radically different abilities and expectations regarding
For years, technology advocates have called for CIOs to information. They demand and deserve the tools
take a seat at the executive table. But the subtext has to work effectively, usually in collaboration and not
typically been as a steward of the business. This played normally at a desk or in an office. These factors have
well in the paradigm of IT as a support function and broad implications for what an organization sells, how
cost center, working downstream from the business it engages with stakeholders, how it allows them to
strategy. This model also made sense for technology interact with each other and how work is performed.
investments focused on automating core business
processes. CIOs helped usher in waves of technology But CIOs as revolutionaries? That may seem over
advancements, using ERP, client-server and the internet the top, but think of what revolutionaries actually
to drive efficiencies. It was about automating what the do. They challenge old rules, break up established
business needed to do – doing what the business had institutions and overthrow business as usual – in the
normally done, but doing it better, faster and cheaper. name of the greater good. As business innovation
shifts to the edge of the enterprise, with more finished
More recently, companies have invested in services delivered from somebody else’s cloud, the
automating what the business needs to know – old way of doing things is poised for a shake-up.
information automation – increasing the visibility
of information as a critical strategic asset for That said, CIOs can’t rise to these new roles without
decision, action and even direct monetization1. demonstrating their ability to “mind the store” – improving
efficiency, maintaining existing service levels and delivering
In 2011, CIOs need to be more than business stewards, on traditional business needs. And even then, yesterday’s
and potentially more than strategists as well. That’s pressures won’t go away. CIOs are still expected to control
because cloud, social computing and mobility are costs in traditional IT service areas. But those who can
fundamentally disruptive capabilities, shaking up business help the business to channel disruptive technologies can
models and transforming how business is done2. Indeed, move beyond business strategist, translating innovations
the technology agenda is the business agenda, and CIOs into meaningful contributions to the bottom line, creating
are the executives positioned to pull them into alignment. aggressive plans to the future and leading the charge.


CIOs as Revolutionaries

CIOs have long struggled with the balance between supporting the business and driving innovation, with their roles
dependent in many ways on industry, geography and their relationships with other executives. In 2011, their push for a
more strategic position appears to be shifting from aspiration to necessity.


“War-time” CIOs (during • CIOs were often tasked to play a key role in • The potential of cloud, mobile and social
technology-enabled business driving transformation initiatives supported by computing is transformational and unpredict-
transformation) technology (large-scale global ERP implementa- able. This dynamism is what can make a lasting
tions being a common example). However, the change to the CIO’s role so important – posi-
efforts were sponsored, led and in many cases tioning the organization to have the required
originated by the business. agility to take advantage of market shifts.

• While moving IT to the forefront for specific • Technology-enabled business transformation has
periods, CIO roles returned to maintenance and left organizations with more complex depend-
support upon completion of projects, and the encies on IT support, compounding the CIO’s
proportion of budgets matched stewardship responsibilities. New disruptions shift
that trend. the burden from directly managing operations to
providing end-to-end capabilities, dependent on
third-party services and infrastructure.

“Mind the store” CIOs • A steady state was reached around the potential • The next generation of employees and the
of IT in the business with mature back-office current generation of consumers expect new
systems, sales and servicing solutions, e-com- ways to interact with business. They demand
merce offerings and productivity suites. End-users usable, intuitive, empowering solutions, delivered
were restricted to their corporate tools – and IT’s at the edge, that provide a view of relationships,
function was primarily to control and maintain. information and transactions tailored to the
individual. Meeting these needs requires more
• Many technology-led innovations were internally- than new tools; it also requires new skills and a
facing improvements to the “business of IT,” from new approach to enterprise market engagement.
IT service management to adoption of enter-
prise architecture to SOA-enablement of legacy • Most of the innovations in 2011 will be inher-
systems. While important to the efficiency of the ently visible and valuable to the business,
IT function, the business saw ongoing cost with including mobility, information platforms for
little tangible return. better answering “what do I need to know”
and rapidly-delivered, functionality-rich cloud
solutions.



The role of the CIO has evolved as enterprises have become increasingly dependent on IT – traversing business units,
geographies and business processes. Beyond responsibilities for development, infrastructure and application support,
CIOs must establish capabilities to support the changing business landscape – managing programs and projects,
monitoring supported business services and allowing the hybrid portfolio of solutions to securely, sensibly and
reliably integrate together.

Topic Description

Business systems Visibility into the emerging IT operating environment must accommodate not only on-premise
management (BSM) monitoring of servers, networks and applications, but also availability and responsiveness of the
growing ecosystem of public cloud, partner solution, mobile carrier and other services. CIOs need
BSM solutions to solidify the linkage between business context and system performance.

Project and portfolio Tools to track investment priorities and project performance against objectives. Cloud and mobile
management opportunities may lead to short-cycle projects initiated throughout the year, with less focus on
formal, annual investment cycles. CIOs will need to manage dependencies and track the health of
even more concurrent activities, many executed outside of their direct sphere of control either by
third parties or sourced directly within a line of business.

Vendor management The CIO must own vendor management with technology and service providers – supporting
on-premise, contracting, outsourcing and cloud models. Contracting, measuring service-level
agreements, resolving disputes, market positioning analysis and contingency planning must become
disciplines, and automated where possible.

Integration Revolutionary CIOs will discover that the ability to integrate and orchestrate events across the
ecosystem of services and systems is essential. It will likely become the fabric of their technology
responsibility, requiring multiple interaction styles, real-time and batch, guaranteed or simply reliable,
stateful and stateless, multiple performance/response SLAs and more. Integration frameworks must
provide a mechanism for orchestrating events between cloud sources, originated across multiple
internal and external channels.

Information Master data management, analytics and visualization will become even more important capabilities
for the IT shop3.

Security On the assumed priorities list, protecting IT assets is right behind “keeping the lights on.” CIOs are
downstream enablers of the vision of CSOs and CISOs, but are still held accountable if and when
incidents occur4.



Lessons from the frontlines to customers. One area is in its paperless invoice system
Revolutionizing the “third place” which improved operations by reducing the number of
Since being appointed as Starbucks’ CIO in 2008, physical copies of invoice and customs documents, while
Stephen Gillett has revolutionized the in-store also advancing their broader sustainability initiatives.
experience by embracing social computing, ubiquitous Another area is in its mobile solutions. Already an early
connectivity and the growing importance of mobile adopter of these solutions, UPS continues to advance
devices. In the midst of the recession and cost-cutting its capabilities with the fifth generation of the Delivery
pressures, Gillett launched the ‘My Starbucks Idea’ viral Information Acquisition Device (DIAD). The DIAD arms
campaign on cloud technology to solicit improvement drivers worldwide with hyper-roaming across networks
ideas directly from customers. One result was free and carriers, on-board cameras, extended battery life to
in-store Wi-Fi devoid of what were once confusing cover a full day’s shift, and the compute and memory
login screens, and the establishment of the Starbucks horse-power to handle increasing uses of multimedia files
Digital Network which delivers content from The in daily operations6. At UPS, technology is the enabler
Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Yahoo and others. that drives the ability of the business to meet its vision.
As the company moves into enterprise software and
Starbucks is also now investing in mobile payment business process consulting, IT’s positioning will be key
processing technology. Though refillable Starbucks cards to UPS’ ability to meet tomorrow’s customers’ needs.
were already used for one in five in-store transactions,
the company invested in expanding their potential Revolution: thy name is regulation
uses. A mobile payment platform was launched to Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have
U.S. stores in early 2011, allowing mobile devices to greatness thrust upon them. In the case of a leading
serve as proxies for the refillable Starbucks cards, with insurance company, growing regulatory pressures in
links to account balances and loyalty programs. the wake of the great recession took choice out of the
matter. IT would be a crucial element in their ability
Recognizing the increasing importance of information, to meet new compliance and control objectives, and
the programs allow Starbucks to capture meaningful would provide visibility into the information required to
customer information – feeding everything from product navigate the organization’s new strategy. The CIO first
and experience improvements to knowledge of specific looked to “mind the store,” creating enterprise-wide
customer demographics and behaviors. Stephen Gillett’s investment, architecture and governance strategies,
and Starbucks’ approaches highlight both the growing driving efficiency and shoring up their ability to handle
relevance of connected consumers and the potential tactical business needs. The new operating model also
of the CIO to serve as an organizational compass. targeted being able to identify, prioritize and execute
on business transformation opportunities, moving IT
What can IT do for you? into not only a more agile and responsive unit, but also
For many years, UPS has viewed technology as a critical one seen as helping guide business innovation. Cloud,
enabler of their logistics and transportation business. mobility, social and analytics solutions are strategic
But IT has expanded in recent years to become a driver pillars of the vision – with the CIO and the supporting
of broader business innovation. Part of their success was IT organization together leading the charge.
spawned by CIO Dave Barnes’ refreshing articulation of
his technology strategy: “It’s the business strategy. There’s
no difference.”5 A clear focus was placed on customer-
centric innovation, often extending UPS’ own initiatives



Where do you start? • Evolutionary CIOs. The IT department becomes the
Few companies consider innovation and early adoption preferred storefront for a wide range of services;
as core competencies, and still fewer look at their CIO as some of which are developed in-house on packaged
an advisor for how to capitalize on industry trends and and custom software, others procured via the
market shifts. But it is because of these factors that the open-market based on degree of fit, functionality
need for CIO leadership is so pressing. Depending on and cost dimensions. Central IT owns integration,
what position they find themselves in today, the paths master data management, security and end-to-end
forward for CIOs will likely follow one of three scenarios: systems management. Potential next steps include:
– Business services: Push for broader adoption of IT
• Devolutionary CIOs. Because of cloud and other Service Management disciplines, including developing
forces, lines of business have become direct acquirers, a services catalog of emerging and disruptive
managers and owners of information services. capabilities understandable by the business.
Core legacy systems are contained, with new – Mobile and social veneers: Look to improve
spend directed at the edge. Central IT has become existing businesses and processes via mobility
a custodial function focused on general care and and social computing – opening new channels
feeding, with the occasional emergency response or allowing faster and cheaper operations.
when things go wrong. Potential next steps include: – Information focus: Foster the shift from
– Legacy renewal: Use a platform of improving descriptive to predictive to prescriptive
data quality, consistency and information analytics and information automation.
access to promote a new perception of
the types of services IT can provide. • Revolutionary CIOs. IT makes the market for
– Become an accelerator: Look to create rapid business services, introducing technology-driven
deployment tools to assist businesses as they disruptions to existing businesses or opportunities
investigate cloud and niche investments. Redirect for entering net-new markets. The CIO is actively
criticisms of being a bottleneck by instead helping incubating potential new business solutions based
businesses understand downstream implications on technology innovation. Advanced information
to decisions. Look for ways to help connect and analytics capabilities are built to complement
speed-to-value with big-picture integration, traditional systems, with the CIO becoming the trusted
security and information considerations. source of hindsight, insight and foresight for the
– Introduce CIO operational excellence disciplines organization. Continued advances include:
to improve “keep the lights on” efficiency, setting – Agility: Make rapid deployment the de-facto
the stage for a potential move up-stream. organizational standard, influencing everything
from investment and portfolio processes
and portfolio management, through
conventional SDLCs and support functions.
– Social and mobile transformation: Use of social
computing and mobility technologies to enter new
business models or to radically change operations
– internally as well as within the marketplace.
– Develop centers of excellence for analytics and
innovation: Include ideagoras and crowd sourcing
for ways to create and leverage information assets.



Bottom line
The journey to revolution begins with a solid trust of the IT organization. Innovation is impossible if the
basic blocking and tackling activities aren’t locked down. If the foundation of trust is there, CIOs can begin
to stretch into strategist and catalyst roles. And as information fast becomes the most important strategic
asset for many organizations, revolutionary CIOs will not only own the safeguarding of and access to
this information, but also its quality, usage and potential for business innovation. Viva le revolution.

Endnotes
1
2
Additional information is available in Deloitte Consulting LLP (2011), “Tech Trends 2011: The natural convergence of business and IT”,
http://www.deloitte.com/us/2011techtrends, Chapters 7, 9, 10.
3
http://www.deloitte.com/us/2011techtrends, Chapter 1.
4
5
Bob Evans, Global CIO: UPS CIO Barnes Shatters Dangerous IT Stereotypes, http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showAr-
ticle.jhtml?articleID=224200299 (March 25, 2010).
6
Chris Murphy, Global CIO: UPS Provides Peek Into Future Of Wireless, http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/security/showArticle.
jhtml?articleID=222500027 (January 25, 2010).


The End of the
5 “Death of ERP”

Rumors of ERP’s death have been greatly concern, recent moves to provide real-time, high-quality
exaggerated data acquisition, analytics of large data sets and sense-
Every few years we see headlines with proclamations making of unstructured data have become essential2.
of ERP’s imminent demise. Similar to the long-rumored
“death of COBOL,” the noise could continue for decades. Even with this massive increase in scope, organizations
Part of the problem starts with the name ERP itself. are still able to tap ERP applications to transform
In the current world, the more proper description is processes with reduced risk – at a lower cost and at a
probably Enterprise Applications. Enterprise resource quicker pace. Configuration has become simpler through
planning harkens to a time when integrated financials tool and method improvements from service providers.
and payroll were first being linked to production planning Functionality that once required customization is now
and inventory controls. Over the years, however, the built into core products. Labor arbitrage has driven
impact of enterprise application players like SAP and down rates for implementation skills and commoditized
Oracle has grown substantially, well beyond automating them. And projects can now involve more concurrent
core back-office processes. This growth was achieved activity. In fact, the traditional ERP players continue
first by tackling the front-office functions like customer to expand the boundaries of the problems they help
service, sales and procurement; then by adding workflow businesses solve – moving into information automation,
and reporting; and finally by refactoring platforms mobility and collaboration arenas. Nearly half of all
for better integration. Throughout this evolution, the organizations with ERP implementations plan to make
underlying problem has remained the same: allowing investments to expand their capabilities in the next year3.
large, complicated organizations to profit from Beyond all that, the fact remains that legacy ERP
standardized business processes and standardized data. investments are trusted by executives, and for good
reason. These systems serve at the “heart of business”
Today’s enterprise applications have reached a point operations. While future IT investments may ultimately
where an end-to-end business process can take advantage move to the edge of the enterprise, for the foreseeable
of any number of native package, custom, third party future they will continue to exist on the ERP core.
or even external (e.g., business partner or cloud-based)
solutions, integrated as required to meet the needs Looking ahead, many mobile, social and analytics
of the business. At the same time, underlying ERP strategies involve extending existing enterprise
services can be encapsulated and invoked by a variety applications, revitalizing their business cases and enhancing
of channels, moving out of the back-office or even the value of original investments. For organizations that
out of the enterprise. Users can conduct transactions have invested tens (or hundreds) of millions in automating
and access trusted enterprise data via intuitive desktop their core businesses – and for executives who have
front-ends, mobile devices, social computing platforms made their careers on these projects’ successes – the
or analytics tools1. And with information automation future is clear: ERP can be an enabler of tomorrow’s
replacing process automation as the key enterprise innovations, not a fading footnote of yesterday’s legacy.

The End of the “Death of ERP”

The “death of ERP” story is in many ways a rerun – something predicted and discussed for the past 25 years. As the
repeating cycle between stand-alone software offerings, integrated bundles and alternative landscapes has played out,
the end of ERP was consistently rumored. Cloud computing is only the latest false alarm that the ERP sky is falling.


Cloud (software-as-a-service) • Several cloud-enabled options emerged, • Leading ERP players are rapidly developing their
attempting to usurp traditional on-premise, own multi-tenant, off-premise, subscription-
licensed ERP options. Large enterprise adoption based offerings – leveraging their process and
had been mostly limited to “edge” workloads functional experience as a part of green-field
such as email, collaboration, CRM and HR. development. For new investments, this will bring
stiff competition to SaaS solutions. For current
• Security, reliability and compliance concerns customers, it will provide light-weight offerings
prevailed. Though a mix of reality and percep- for emerging geographies and small business
tion, they were prevalent enough to caution units, integrated to the full-fledged existing
executives in large-scale enterprises from moving solution. However, the self-cannibalization
too aggressively into cloud. implications are not lost on these independent
software vendors (ISVs). They must address and
• Many ERP implementations were tightly inte- overcome this hurdle.
grated to legacy systems and data stores, greatly
complicating migrations from existing solutions. • Enterprise application players are investing
heavily in analytics, mobility, social and other
“edge” capabilities – looking to grow by enabling
customers to extend existing investments, not
replace current functionality via new platforms
and delivery channels.

Leading enterprise • Investment in middleware and application server • ERP platforms now have business process
applications layers by ERP players to ease integration of management, business rules engines and master
disparate end-to-end solutions was steady. data management embedded in their platform
engines, including architectural hooks for exter-
• Open extensible architecture was meant nally sourced events.
to enable a marketplace of third-party, ISV
developed apps – further enriching the • Viability of the app marketplace has been
platform’s extended value. Limited catalog, illustrated by Salesforce.com’s App Exchange,
lack of supporting ecosystem and difficulties increased adoption of platform-as-a-service and
incorporating into solution landscapes led to the renewed investments by SAP and Oracle to
minimal adoption. curate a lasting commitment to externally-devel-
oped applications and partner ecosystems.



While there are many strategic enablers for ERP’s ongoing importance, there are several underlying technology concerns
that must be addressed.

Topic Description

Instance rationalization Many legacy ERP efforts were forced to implement several instances – either due to technical
performance constraints such as limits around data volumes, memory and CPU capacity, or network
latency for global transaction processing; language barriers (before Unicode); or risk-themed strategic
hedges such as unwillingness to entrust company operations on technology’s promises for recovery
point/time objectives. Instance consolidation will not only lower total cost of ownership (TCO), but it
will also simplify ensuing analytics, social and mobile computing efforts.

Cloud-based Oracle and SAP have established their enterprise applications to run on virtualized, location-
infrastructure-as-a- independent public cloud IaaS services. While organizations may limit initial experimentation to
service (IaaS) non-production instances, this can be an excellent approach for cost reduction and agility, notably
when combined with instance rationalization. As usual, a business case is required to estimate cost
savings potential, notably in large enterprises that have invested in IT operational efﬁciency.

Technical upgrades Leading ERP packages have seen many integration and extensibility features added in recent releases.
Organizations running older versions will be adding unnecessary complexity in integrating their
legacy enterprise applications with other internal and external services – building interfaces, controls
and management tools via custom code that have been added to the out-of-the-box capabilities of
the latest platforms.

Integration A broad services layer is necessary to coordinate access into and out of ERP and the extended
solution architecture. This is essential for handling real-time translation, correlation and enrichment
services, channel-tailored message delivery (crucial for mobile, social, Web) and event handling with
internal and external services, including cloud-based solutions.



Lessons from the frontlines Trojan horse: thy name is ERP
Unexpected value A leading foodservice supplier required standardized
A global materials manufacturer was enjoying the business processes across its operating companies
benefits of its ERP implementation – reducing its number and more than 100 distribution centers. With goals
of days of sales outstanding by 12.9%; reducing SG&A of boosting efficiency, improving sales and marketing
as a percentage of sales by 1.9%; steadily reducing execution, and increasing visibility based on better
operational costs (IT spend dropped from 3% to 1.3% data management and automated operations, it
of revenue); and improving executive dashboards. sounded like a standard ERP business case.
With many operating units, they chose strategic
standardization on ERP, opting for a single process But, along with the process transformation, the company
template and a common data hierarchy. Even with is also overhauling order processing – introducing a rich-
organizational factions pushing for a more leading- internet-application front-end based on Adobe Flex to
edge model, executives insisted on operating stability. integrate customer and order management services into a
single, intuitive view. From there, sales representatives can
This choice proved prescient when the company was automatically post transactions to the ERP – even when
acquired years later. Because of the existing ERP footprint, disconnected from it. Similarly, a mobile solution is being
they were able to quickly identify opportunities to improve introduced to allow real-time inventory and order manage-
tax and commission structures – adding approximately ment from warehouses, extending the value of the core
an additional $50 million per year of benefit that would ERP through channels that can greatly enhance productivity
not have been possible without standardized processes and customer satisfaction levels. These capabilities are
and data. As a bonus, the integrated entity has credited being delivered along with the core ERP transformation –
its enterprise backbone as a critical enabler of its post- incremental investment for greatly enhanced return.
merger success – one whose role is increasing once
again with investments in analytics and mobility.



Where do you start? For small business and companies in emerging
An organization’s response to the end of the “death of geographies, it might make sense to consider relatively
ERP” can depend on where they find themselves today. green-field ERP investments. These types of organizations
Many global 500 companies already have a sizable are well-positioned to take advantage of the best
investment in one or more of the leading platforms. of the old and the most compelling of the new.

For companies with existing ERP, consider starting by • Evaluate cloud-based options. Evaluate the Software-
identifying which processes are “need to play” vs. “play as-a-Service (SaaS) landscape, including cloud-based
to win” – and establish a clearly defined corporate products from the traditional ERP players. For example,
strategy for how each will be enabled for the business. If SAP Business OnDemand and Business By Design both
you make it clear that core integrated ERP will continue offer a mix of core functionality delivered with cloud-
to play a critical role, you’ll curtail some alternative like elasticity, flexibility and scale – but with the future
technology or cloud rumblings from the business, and potential to integrate with the full suite of offerings
you’ll reinforce your commitment to crucial staff. of the flagship products. These should be considered
alongside emerging SaaS products, balancing features
It also makes sense to explore “edge” investments. As (how much is “just enough”?) with cost, time-to-value
discussed in the 2011 Technology Trends on Applied and operational concerns.
Mobility, User Engagement and Social Computing,
there are significant innovation opportunities outside • Selectively innovate. Determine which areas of the
of core operations. Look to take advantage of the ERP business provide important competitive differentiation
platform’s capabilities in these spaces. Or implement and innovate there. Accept strategic standardization
low-cost, smaller-footprint solutions – even if on an for the remaining operational disciplines, taking
exploratory basis. If they are fully adopted later, you advantage of multi-tenant solutions or out-of-
can integrate them into the ERP backbone and expose the-box, standard options wherever possible.
standardized data and processes to the edge.


Bottom line
Far from being displaced, ERP is seeing a resurgence. SAP recently reported a 34% surge in licensing revenue at
the end of 2010 to a new record, while Oracle projects license sales will increase between 10% and 20% in their
current ﬁscal quarter4. And the reasons might seem conﬂicting. On one hand, ERP’s role in enabling core transactional
processes has been reinforced by the lack of disruption from cloud challengers in this space. Even the most outspoken
cloud zealots predict a hybrid future with continued dependency on licensed, on-premise, enterprise applications for
a sub-set of operations. Basically, they are adopting a surround strategy, with ERP remaining at the core.

On the other hand, enterprise application players continue to move up the stack and to the edge, creating comple-
mentary strategic platforms for information analytics, mobility and social. Ever-increasing scope combined with
control of the building blocks for standardized processes and data will enhance their continued resiliency.
Either way, ERP is here to stay. That said, the way these enterprise applications will be used is undergoing a rapid
change. Now is the time to consider revitalization of these IT investment pillars – with a focus on innovation at the
point of business impact. It’s about what you need to know, delivered where you need to know it, when you need it.
Long live ERP.

Endnotes
1
2
3
Don E. Sears, IT Is Heavily Invested in ERP, Application Consolidation Rising, http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/IT-Is-Heavily-Invested-in-
ERP-Application-Consolidation-Rising-244711/ (July 29, 2010).
4
Ragnhild Kjetland, SAP Software Sales Reach Record, Beat Oracle’s Growth Outlook, http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-13/sap-soft-
ware-sales-reach-record-beat-oracle-s-growth-outlook.html (January 13, 2011).

6 Real Analytics

Shifting from business hindsight to insight to The crunchy questions haunting the business require
foresight a combination of hindsight, foresight and insight. By
In 2010, many organizations began to see information investing in a balance of information management,
automation outweigh business process automation as performance management and advanced analytics,
their highest priority area1. In the reset economy, analytics organizations can make small steps, smartly made
offered improved visibility to drive operational efficiencies, to capture measurable results. These can span from
as well as a platform for growth by addressing heart-of- improving fragmented customer relationships by analyzing
the-business questions that could guide decisions, yield omni-channel interactions, to providing an integrated
new insights and help predict what’s next. It seemed enterprise view of risk and finance. This is the essence
like a no-brainer. But companies quickly discovered of real analytics: delivering business value through the
that the journey is complicated – requiring a clear continuous build-out of core information disciplines.
analytics vision aligned to the business strategy, several
layers of supporting capabilities and the fortitude to While getting the right answers is critical, many
embed analytical thinking across multiple facets of the organizations don’t normally know the right questions
organization. In 2011, leading organizations are launching to ask to get there. Powerful new tools and supporting
broad initiatives with executive-level sponsorship, ready infrastructure have removed most technical constraints,
and eager to achieve their vision via real analytics. but analytics initiatives continue to suffer from the lack of
a clear vision and commitment to embed analytics-based
Data volumes continue to explode, doubling every 14 approaches into how work is performed. Real analytics
months2. Regulators are demanding deeper insight into can add knowledge, fact-based predictions and business
risk, exposure and public responsiveness. Public and prescriptions – but only if applied to the right problems,
private organizations alike are feeling increased pressure to and only if the resulting insight is pushed into action.
achieve profitable growth. New signals are evolving that
contain crucial information about companies and markets You can’t drive your car with only the rear view mirror –
– including sensor-laden assets, unstructured internal data equivalent to historical reporting. You use the view out
and external sentiments shared via social computing3. of the windshield and the dashboard gauges – Enterprise
Cisco estimates that the amount of data flowing over the Performance Management (EPM) and performance
internet each year will reach 667 exabytes by 20134. The dashboards. In fact, many drivers take advantage of
magnitude and complexity of global businesses have made navigation systems fed by GPS to see the road ahead and
it even more difficult for leaders to uncover hidden insight. direct the next turns. That’s like going from descriptive
analytics to predictive and prescriptive. That’s moving
from hindsight to insight to foresight for the business.

2011 Technology Trends - Disruptive Deloyments 32

Real Analytics

Over the past two decades, companies have invested heavily in back-office systems to automate their business processes.
Information investments were typically siloed, static, historical and focused only on operational reporting for pockets of
the business. Real analytics is focused on a more holistic, forward-looking approach, positioning information as an asset to
support effective business decision and action.


ERP-based information • Large-scale packaged technologies form the • ERP providers have invested in adding information
repositories foundation of many organizations’ system platforms to their solution sets, including perform-
footprints. Embedded reporting and performance management and some advanced analytics
ance management tools were leveraged to tools. These are largely integrated into the core
try to meet information needs. However, process automation solutions.
solutions were mostly backwards-looking,
with minimal real-time dashboarding and • Integration between internal and external systems
limited advanced analytics. has been eased by adoption of open architecture
standards and advancements in transactional and
• Most organizations have a hybrid applica- view-based integration tools.
tion landscape, with multiple ERP instances
and tens or hundreds of ancillary systems
that execute end-to-end business processes.
Visibility confined to the ERP transactional
store was insufficient for true business insight,
but integration to other systems was costly
and complex.

Business intelligence/ • Performance improvement has been a critical • Leading organizations have adopted a combination
reporting/data warehousing part of the real analytics journey, but it is not of performance improvement, information manage-
sufficient because it lacks vehicles to guide ment and advanced analytics to meet the needs of
insight and foresight. the business.

• Organizations often faced multiple isolated, • Enterprise-wide governance is a critical dimension
competing initiatives buried within business of real analytics, allowing for visibility across and
units, functions and geographies – creating beyond organizational boundaries.
confusion and multiple versions of the truth.
• Real analytics efforts are embedded in business
• Results of information efforts were only loosely processes with executive and management
linked to operations and decision making, support, with continuous feedback loops so
limiting the amount of value realized. that actual performance can guide the next
iteration of analysis.
• Technical constraints forced the segmenta-
tion of information repositories into discrete, • A combination of improvement in storage,
federated views. Complex operations, inte- processing and network performance, as well as
grated views or even traversing of data advanced new options for dealing with complex
sets were compromised. calculations on large data sets (e.g., high-per-
formance information appliances, column-based
• Analysis was characterized by small datasets in-memory databases, distributed computing
with variables between 10-20 and limited cases tailored for data processing). For example, a
(<100), driven by unrealistic assumptions that large consumer credit card issuer recently
datasets were linear, normal and independent. analyzed two years of data (73 billion transactions
Data universes were restricted to static data across 36 terabytes of data) in 13 minutes. In the
snapshots interred by a handful of tools (e.g., past this transaction would have taken more than
SQL, SAS). one month5.

• Analysis now routinely handles massive datasets with
millions of variables and billions of cases, increasingly
in real time. Tools such as PMML, DMQL, SPSS and
DMX allow the focus to be on exploratory analysis to
discover relevant patterns, trends and anomalies in
data, without having an explicit goal in mind.


Real Analytics

Real analytics represents a combination of information management, performance improvement and advanced
analytics. Each of these capabilities has a number of critical underlying technical implications, with interdependencies
requiring an enterprise information architecture spanning the entire stack.

Topic Description

Information Tools for establishing trusted foundational data are essential. These include master data
management management for maintaining data correlation, consistency of semantic meaning, providing matching
services to identify and link identical entities and enabling bidirectional updates across systems of
record. Data quality is also a concern, requiring tools to monitor, analyze, report and scrub. Finally,
tools to manage data governance are needed, and should be tightly linked with master data and
data quality solutions.

Performance This drives to the heart of monitoring, reporting and recommending action by combining historical
improvement reporting, business intelligence and dashboards. Technical implications include report design,
business rule development, business process integration and the development of dashboards and
scorecards. Increasingly, performance management solutions also include mobile delivery channels,
either through Web-based outputs or dedicated applications6.

Advanced analytics Advanced analytic tools enable predictive modeling, embedding analytics into business processes,
discovery and information visualization7. This work typically involves advanced statistical modeling
and correlation of widely disparate data sets, requiring access to internal and external data.

Infrastructure Complex analysis on large data sets requires a high performance computing environment. Options in
2011 include on-premise appliances, in-memory column-based databases and cloud-based options
for elasticity and distributed processing.


Real Analytics

Lessons from the frontlines They first analyzed over 16 million claims and merged
Shining a light on addressable markets data from multiple sources which had never been
While a specialty insurer’s sales were growing 20 percent harmonized – both within the company and from
annually with 80 percent customer retention, the external business credit and “firmographic” sources.
company had captured only six percent of the annual Then, using advanced modeling techniques such as
potential in its market. In order to grow the business, decision trees, association rules, logistic regression and
the company wanted to better understand its customer Benford’s analysis, the company developed five sets
base with the goals to improve retention among current of new rules capable of identifying potentially false or
policyholders using targeted communication and cross- inappropriate claims. The organization added the new
selling, as well as identify potential new customer rules to their existing process in order to improve both
segments that were more likely to purchase its policies. the accuracy of its warranty claim reviews and the return
on investment from the operation. The post-analysis
To supplement what the insurer already knew about predictive benefits were more than three times larger
its customers, third-party market segment information than initial expectations. Also, as an unexpected benefit,
(biographic, demographic, psychographic), enhanced the company was able to create a list of pre-approved
census and other external data were used to append labor operations and parts for a given repair according
nearly 300,000 policies and 150,000 customers. to specific make, model and year – drastically reducing
Cluster analysis was used to identify primary customer the need for reviewing and interpreting every claim.
groupings and segments, and, finally, decision tree
analysis was completed to differentiate those segments Delivering on the premium
that produced the highest value for the company. A leading insurance provider saw its core business being
They added a market penetration study to compare pushed to deliver more personalized services at lower
existing and potential market share by segment. costs – while facing increased transparency for demands,
growing commoditization of its product offerings and
For the first time, the insurer had a unified view of its overall slowing industry growth. Their response? A multi-
customer bases as well as insights on customer behavior, year analytics program to increase sales effectiveness
preferences and lifestyles – all useful in creating new and operational efficiency, increase customer retention
up-sell, cross-sell and retention strategies and focusing and better support executive decision making. Predictive
growth on specific consumer segments and regions. modeling driven by online, agent and customer
As a result, the company was able to increase product feedback was the cornerstone of the effort – with a
purchase loyalty and growth among key customer core analytics competency center built to support needs
segments and attained measurable improvements, across business units. The results speak for themselves:
including migrating core segments to higher profitability. improved policy retention by 300 basis points, increased
acquisition rates on abandoned quotes by 200 basis
Advanced auto(motive) analytics points and advances in customer satisfaction rates.
By replacing manual, rule-based warranty claim reviews
with scientific, automated methods, an automaker
significantly improved its warranty claims adjudication
process with the ability to preemptively identify
potentially false or inappropriate (improper, exaggerated,
embellished) claims. The legacy warranty claims
adjudication process relied heavily on manual reviews,
exception reports and static rules. The automaker needed
a more scientific approach to adjudication that could
help it identify potentially fraudulent or false activity in a
more efficient, automated manner and also enhance its
rule set with more sophisticated statistically grounded
rules that are too complex for manual processes.


Real Analytics

Where do you start? • Right fit analytics. Match statistical models and
Few organizations are starting from scratch when it comes analytics techniques to the job at hand. Overpowered
to real analytics. Many organizations have decades of solutions waste time and money. Underpowered
experience with information-related initiatives in various solutions can miss important insights. Buy what you
forms. Because of its wide scope, however, real analytics need and use what you buy – across tools and services.
initiatives require special attention to dependencies
on in-flight efforts. While specific steps vary company • Accelerate insights. Automate delivery of the
by company, some fundamental principles apply: information people need to do their work and
automate responses whenever possible, so that
• Crunchy questions. Start by laying out specific, action is taken with more certainty and at the
heart-of-the-business questions. Prime your business lowest possible cost.
leaders with ideas from other industries showcasing
how unstructured and external data can be applied in • Behavior change. Recognize that a big part of
practical terms. Then prioritize according to what drives the impact of real analytics will be creating a fact-
value, where returns will likely be higher and the degree based culture that embraces its repercussions,
to which results can be made actionable. allowing analytics capabilities and outputs to be
embedded into operational processes across the
• Start where you are. Assess your current capabilities enterprise and up and down the organization.
and get a clear picture of the gap between what your
organization can do and what it needs to do. Think in • New talent. Institutionalizing real analytics will require
terms of both technical capabilities and organizational new skills, including pockets of creative design, deep
depth. Grade yourself, prioritize projects aligned to mathematics, statistics and behavioral change skills.
crunchy questions and fill the cracks – both with Develop a strategy for how to locate it, develop it and
small, focused efforts and with some cross-functional retain it.
investments (e.g., enterprise data management).


Real Analytics

Bottom line
Complexity is growing, providing organizations with more data to manage, more decisions to make and less overall
certainty. Some business problems are like puzzles, with pieces dispersed across internal and external players,
captured in structured and unstructured forms. Competitive advantage will come from winning the race for clarity
and precision, and from building the institutional skills to quickly solve the next puzzle that crosses your executives’
desks. Other business problems are mysteries, where the clues may or may not be within your grasp. These require
empowered leaders who understand the business issue, who can work with specialized resources to model the
problem and who have the analysis tools to recognize and act on patterns that might lead to the solution.

Puzzles and mysteries are the purview of real analytics. Both start with a clear understanding of the business problem
and a commitment to make the answer actionable once it is clear. Though the magic that happens in between is
anything but simple, these two steps are the biggest factors to achieve effective results. Look in the mirror, state your
intent for making analytics real, and start digging up your crunchiest questions.

Endnotes
1
2
InfoNIAC.com. 487 Billion Gigabytes of Digital Content Today to Double Every 18 Months. Retrieved February 3, 2011, from http://www.infoniac.
com/hi-tech/digital-content-today-to-double-every-18-months.html
3
4
The Economist. ”Data, Data Everywhere.” Economist [Online]. February 25, 2011. http://www.economist.com/node/15557443
5
The Economist. “A Different Game.” Economist [Online]. February 25, 2011. http://www.economist.com/node/15557465
6
7

7 Social Computing

Social computing – not just media, collaboration As more of our personal and professional lives are
or social networking – it’s a new fundamental for conducted via technology, we are leaving rich trails of
enterprise IT our preferences, opinions and behaviors. Beyond the
The rise of social computing in the enterprise is in immediate benefits of empowering stake-holders, this
some ways a return to the business landscape of “digital exhaust” left in the wake of social computing
Frank Capra’s and Norman Rockwell’s time – where today can and should be mined, providing a rich source
business was local, corporations lived within a single of insight on market positioning, consumer sentiment
office, and market value could be pegged by the and employee productivity. By applying search, pattern
sentiments on Main Street or at the water cooler. But matching and sophisticated analytics to these structured
as global business continues to accelerate, determining and unstructured reservoirs of social data, organizations
“who knows what” is becoming a challenge. can position themselves to better understand their
customers’ perceptions, their employees’ experiences
Today, the voice of the Internet masses is emerging and the problems that should be demanding corporate
as a source of consumer sentiment, often trumping attention. In 2011, enterprises are taking notice.
corporate-controlled messaging delivered through
stores, sales personnel and other traditional channels. Many early social computing experiments were
Employees are finding better ways to get their jobs either tool-based (“We need to be on Facebook and
done – including tapping experienced people not on the Twitter”) or broad, generic investments (”We need a
payroll, often through consumer-focused technologies. corporate blog”). Now, leading companies are taking
While this may be alarming for many executives, the a results-centric and business-led approach, focusing
new world of transparency, knowledge flows and on specific issues and tribes, soliciting membership
democratized opinion-making is rife with opportunities. and creating platforms for content, collaboration and
transactional support. Public social channels are being
Social computing is the embodiment of these concepts, mined in parallel, establishing visibility into external
built on platforms that enable “tribes” to communicate, sentiment, even as internally-focused social computing
collaborate and conduct business. Tribes are collections initiatives are pursued. The supporting governance
of interested or affected stakeholders, formed around and underlying technologies are important enablers.
shared passions, pains or common traits1. The ability
to monitor and even participate in their discussions To avoid being left behind, purposeful investments are
is now common for businesses large and small. becoming commonplace, with existing processes and
hierarchies being mindfully shaped to accommodate
the dynamic pace of change and the importance of
individual voices in our modern, hyper-social landscape.


Social Computing

While the social computing moniker is a relatively recent development, sociological and psychological studies on
relationships between individuals, group behavior and their impacts on business have been around for nearly a century.
Decades of IT advances have been rooted in improved productivity and collaboration – enabling communications,
automating interactions and allowing discovery and sharing. The difference today is in the near-universal connectedness
of the potential tribal population, vastly improved access to tools2, and the usability of the platforms3 .

Collaboration suites • Productivity and collaboration suites were often • New social computing platforms are either built on public
segmented according to internal trust zones, offerings or have been designed with an “outside-in”
hampering internal sharing and discouraging mindset, recognizing upfront that external contributors are
(or intentionally preventing) the inclusion of an important aspect of strategy.
external parties • Initiatives are being launched with focused intent, and
• Tool-centric approaches to discussion boards, adoption is often driven by the business.
wikis, blogs etc. were typically spearheaded by • Integrated tool sets like Microsoft’s SharePoint 2010, IBM’s
IT. Once built, the business often didn’t know Social Me and Salesforce.com’s Chatter are designed to
what to do with the platforms. provide the necessary connections between disciplines.
• Siloed solutions were created, with separate
tools for messaging, email, document sharing,
content management, etc. Users who
adopted early were rarely able to connect the
individual pieces.

Social networking • Historically, isolated, data-constrained studies • Social network analysis is the formal science of individual and
focused on anecdotal behavioral details and organizational nodes, relationships, and their applications to
intelligent sampling of the community. society, politics and economics.
• Understanding how network ties affect • Improvements in computing resources and analytical tools
organizational norms was useful to many allows for real-time modeling of behavior across the entire
companies, but the lack of tools to leverage network – leading to better understanding and the ability to
existing networks or shape new ones limited explore and manipulate data.
subsequent actions. • Advances in mobile technology and services from the cloud
• Fragmented communities and supporting allow networks to communicate and collaborate, enable
online tools resulted in niche networks with transactions, and quickly form, scale and evolve.
diluted market share. • Leading social networking sites have seen continued growth
– in both number of users and frequency of usage. By the end
of 2010, Facebook is estimated at well over 500 million users,
with users spending more than 700 billion minutes on the
site each month4. LinkedIn claims 90 million registered users,
with 65 million unique visitors to its site each month5. Twitter
has over 200 million registered accounts, with over 110
million tweets a day6. And enterprise-focused platforms are
seeing rapid growth – from Yammer’s presence in 80% of the
Fortune 5007 or Chatter’s presence in over 77% of Salesforce.
com customers8.

Social media • Social computing has often been relegated • Video, pictures, and electronic documents have emerged
to social media, with YouTube, Flickr, and as essential corporate communication tools, such as
SecondLife as examples. The consumer- advertisements, training manuals, product catalogs, or
heavy nature of these early sites limited vehicles for collaboration.
corporate interest beyond marketing and • The shift to digital content created via disintermediated
recruiting activities. channels represents a crucial element of social computing
• By focusing on the “media” of the delivery today. Most platforms include “social media” support
channel, companies found it difﬁcult to (sharing pictures, videos, etc.) as only one dimension
support business transactions or to of the community.
disseminate information that was either
non-consumer facing, or consumer-facing
without entertainment value.


Social Computing

Social computing requires tools to help identify and discover knowledge, facilitate cross-boundary communication,
harness distributed knowledge and discover patterns of emerging opportunities. Choices between public cloud-based
options, extending internal collaboration environments or standing up new dedicated social computing solutions
are driven by overall vision, intended usage and the trade-off of cost, time and control among the options.

Topic Description

Security, privacy and Beyond identity and access management, controls are required to protect high-value intellectual
compliance property or other sensitive data. In addition, entitlements to underlying transactions, information
stores and private proﬁle data must be enforced. Finally, implications of aggregating, processing and
holding publically available information must be understood so legal and regulatory guidelines are
not inadvertently violated.

Blogs, micro-blogs, Most companies have marginal knowledge and content management capabilities. Those that exist
wikis and discussion are typically asset repositories – connecting interested parties to deliverables, not to insights or
board platforms sources of experience. Blogs, wikis and discussion boards promote dialogue and interaction in
ways that are persistent, searchable and able to be sustained via crowd-sourcing and moderators.
Instances can be established via dedicated hosted in-house tools, through virtual private instances of
public tools, or even over the public internet.

Legacy integration Social computing solutions will likely require integration to existing email, instant messaging,
knowledge management and content management solutions – and potentially require access to
transactional applications and information systems. A combination of data, service and event-based
integration capabilities are often needed, including mechanisms for interacting with externally-
hosted platforms (especially cloud-based integration).

Analytics Mining and reporting on large transaction volumes of internal and external social activity
require broad data and performance management layers. Many organizations will invest in
higher-order analytics to perform sentiment analysis and sophisticated predictive or prescriptive
behavioral models.

Mobile solutions Extending the reach of social computing to phones, tablets and other devices (like car entertainment
systems, living room televisions and appliances) aids in adoption and usability – and allows location-
based services to be added to social capabilities. Device management, mobile development
platforms and mobile data management capabilities are required to support mobile channels9.


Social Computing

Lessons from the frontlines Drinking our own Kool-Aid
Developers unite As a part of a global network of member firms with
The SAP Developer Network (SDN) has grown from a access to over 169,000 practitioners in 140 countries,
modest experiment to a frequently-cited example of Deloitte thrives on the quality of its people and their
social computing in an enterprise setting. SAP created experiences. To improve our responsiveness to market
an ecosystem of discussion forums, wikis, videos and opportunities and customer requests, nurture cross-
blogs which empower customers, systems integrators, functional innovation and foster communities across
employees and third-party vendors to access a broad geographies and business units, Deloitte launched a
network of passionate, knowledgeable, experienced series of internal social computing initiatives11. Building
people. While originally launched to support a new from existing social networking, collaboration and
product suite, SDN was extended to many facets of knowledge management tools, the effort established
the SAP solution portfolio. Today, SDN has more than support for multiple tiers of communities, content and
1.3 million participants contributing to more than channels, including mobile devices. With 100 thriving
one million separate conversations10. Responders are communities, this investment has enabled dozens of
rated and rewarded for their activities, with points project teams to better serve their clients and has
awarded to acknowledge frequent contributors and increased employee engagement to record levels.
established contributors for specific topics. Since
its launch in 2003, SDN has grown steadily. It now Brewery buzz
features Twitter feeds, a Facebook page, LinkedIn A global food and beverage company had a strategic
connections and ties to Foursquare in conjunction imperative to shift its culture toward nurturing
with user conferences and other events. collaboration, engaging talent and driving adoption of
leading practices across their federated organization. They
In addition to promoting customer satisfaction levels launched a multi-pronged social computing effort, with
and engaging with its ecosystem of developers and an internal ideagora launched for product and service
implementers, SAP has used this platform to understand innovation. A fully-integrated platform followed to allow
product issues, identify features for future releases and for collaborative project and portfolio management,
gain a clearer view of adoption patterns than traditional video, voice, team sites, wikis and blogs – with links
research could ever provide. SDN has become the primary across, and to relevant external profiles (public Facebook,
channel for user queries, allowing customer services Twitter, LinkedIn accounts). Executives were shocked at
and sales support channels to off-load simple, routine the adoption path and the sizable reduction in email,
questions and focus on the really complex problems. number of innovation ideas submitted (100+) and the
marked increase in online community activities.


Social Computing

Where do you start? • Don’t forget Human 1.0 factors12. The social
First and foremost, social computing requires a purposeful computing relationship must be compelling for the
scope and good old-fashioned business objectives. If individuals participating, with company objectives
externally targeted, are you looking to reward loyalty? put in the background. If your initiatives are seen
To find potential customers? Your goals should be as vehicles for corporate communications or as an
very specific, defining which geographies, products overt sales or productivity channel, the community
or customer groups are of interest, and which metrics will quickly be abandoned. This is especially true
will be most useful to gauge success. If your efforts when interacting with tribal leaders. Direct attempts
are internally focused, is the goal to improve product to influence or manipulate are not recommended.
innovation and commercialization? To tap experienced By genuinely forging relationships and finding
resources and share knowledge across boundaries? ways to interact with these leaders, you’ll be more
Again, it’s important to be specific and align your efforts likely to advance the organization’s cause.
with tangible, measurable and attributable goals.
• Social guidelines and policies.
• Discover your network. Recognize that social Risk-intelligent governance is an important part of
networks can actively influence the direction an evolving social computing strategy. That said,
of the company, both inside and outside of the don’t over-engineer from the start. Start small. Keep
organization. Some influences are by desire and policies simple. Align with the existing organization
by design. Many have likely emerged organically. structure. Use what is feasible within the tools to
Understand these networks and identify the guide requirements. Learn from early, controlled
tribes well-positioned to help solve the articulated successes and tailor your approach based on user
problem or to address the defined opportunity. feedback while also continually evolving with growing
capabilities. But don’t forget training. Many users have
• Identify social values. Organizations need to separate developed habits through their personal forays into
the tribe concept from market segmentations and the social computing. Defining policies and governance
company, product and service orientation of traditional is important, but just as importantly, build these
sales and marketing. Depending on a tribe’s focus guidelines into your employees’ muscle memories.
and intent, members may go beyond employees to
include customers, vendors, the general public and • Solution roadmap. Tools will play a meaningful role in
even competitors. Meaningful content, eased methods realizing the social computing vision. Decisions on social
for undertaking transactions and a vehicle for open, software platforms and consumption models (public,
transparent interactions based on the tribe’s interests private, virtual private) should be balanced between the
are key ways to engage the community. desire to increase the social network’s critical mass, and
the trade-offs as privacy and trust zones are crossed.


Social Computing

Bottom Line
Social computing is not a fad. And it’s not something to be dismissed as a youthful or consumer oriented hobby.
Organizations are increasingly dependent on dynamic ecosystems and rapid innovation – the former being a
prime use case for social computing; the latter being one of many possible outcomes. Even for less lofty goals
such as sales or productivity improvements, social computing can help your employees, customers, partners and
prospects connect.

And connecting with stakeholders is always a priority. Because the fact is, people critical to the success of your
business will continue to interact – whether or not you are aware, and with or without your consent. Fostering
those relationships can yield tangible business beneﬁts, while also providing insight on consumer sentiment,
employee skills and market perceptions. Welcome to the hyper-social organization of the future.

Endnotes
1
Francois Gossieaux and Ed Moran, The Hyper-Social Organization (McGraw-Hill, 2010), 21.
2
3
4
Visit http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
5
Michael J. De La Merced and Evelyn M. Rusli, LinkedIn Files Papers to Go Public, http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/linkedin-ﬁles-to-go-
public/?ref=business (January 27, 2011).
6
Reed, Frank. Twitter Reports 200 Million Accounts. So What? Retrieved February 4, 2011, from http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2011/01/twitter-
reports-200-million-accounts-so-what.html
7
Van Grove, Jennifer. How Yammer Won 80% of the Fortune 500, Retrieved February 4, 2011 from http://mashable.com/2010/10/22/yammer-
growth/
8
Doug Henschen, Salesforce.com Acquisition Feeds Chatter, http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterprise_apps/showArticle.
jhtml?articleID=229000326 (January 7, 2011).
9
10
John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davidson, The Power of Pull (Basic Books, 2010).
11
Gartner, Inc. “Evolving employee social networks to support strategic communities at Deloitte (RAS Core Research Note G00200409)”, Nikos
Drakos, September 2010.
12
Francois Gossieaux and Ed Moran, The Hyper-Social Organization (McGraw-Hill, 2010).

8 User Engagement

Empowering business by focusing from the “user automation with exactly the information and actions
down,” not the “system up” relevant to the task at hand. Similar to how Apple
Software engineering has typically emphasized technical justified not including an instruction manual with
architectural “-ilities” – reliability, scalability, security, the iPad, “You already know how to use it.”
maintainability and flexibility. At the same time, low • Interoperability. Tasks and business processes
expectations were set for the other “-ilities” – namely, usually require transactions performed across
“usability” or employee interactions with enterprise many systems. User engagement looks to build
technologies. While people grumbled about the solutions that systematically handle end-to-end
systems they relied on for daily tasks, there were few integration, instead of forcing users to alt-tab
examples of any better systems, and little impetus for between disparate applications on their desktops.
corporate solution developers to implement change. • Aggregation. Related to interoperability, the ability
to correlate and expose relationships in information
Fast-forward to today’s knowledge workers who are (internal and external, structured and unstructured)
dependent on an average of six systems to do their jobs can allow users to expedite tasks and engage in
and little tolerance for difficulty with them1. For these higher-order reasoning around the business problem.
workers, the rise of consumer and Internet technologies • Portability. This requires creating a seamless,
has raised expectations for IT tools at work. Bing, controlled experience for employees to perform
Wikipedia, Facebook and Google Mail have defined business tasks on their second and third screens
experiences for search, knowledge management, (mobile devices, home PCs and televisions)2.
collaboration and productivity. eCommerce strategies • Outside-in. Proactively designing solutions with the
have become table stakes. And the rise of a technology- expectation of collaborating with external resources –
savvy workforce represents an opportunity to empower systems, information, individuals – instead of assuming
employees to find new insights, to continuously improve the transaction will take place within company walls3.
how business occurs, to engage customers to grow
revenue and to build your brand at customer touchpoints. User engagement can enable productivity gains, but
that’s not the only goal. Effectiveness and empowerment
Seizing these opportunities requires solutions designed are even more important, allowing stakeholders to
with user engagement in mind, and a focus on users make better use of an organization’s information assets.
and roles that brings together whatever resources New working styles and operating models can be
an individual needs to perform their work. Usability realized based on streams of information, actions and
becomes a cornerstone of design, represented by: communication, instead of siloed systems and data. This
• Intuitiveness. Simple, easy-to-understand, following is about engaging users by allowing them to execute
consumer-design conventions for layout and their roles with the organization on their terms.
flow. Atomic tasking design, bringing just enough


User Engagement

The science of human computer interaction emerged in the 1970s. Principles of user engagement have evolved from then
to today’s sky-high levels.


User experience (UX) • Science of improving practical aspects of system • UX concepts are being applied much more
interaction (utility, ease of use) with creative broadly to back-end legacy systems, mobile
and emotional aspects of the experience applications, cloud solutions, collaboration tools,
proved useful, but fell into a niche – notably social plug-ins and more.
around Web design. • Design standards and frameworks (e.g., MeeGo
• Many organizations do not have requisite User Engagement Framework project, iOS Human
skills in-house (creative minds, psychology Interaction Guidelines) have democratized some
backgrounds, design tool proficiency), forcing of the science of user engagement.
the use of expensive external resources. • Multi-touch screens, still/video cameras,
• Design was limited by the predominant input/ natural user interface (UI) (gestures, voice) and
output techniques – QWERTY, mice and embedded gyroscopes and accelerometers offer
immobile displays. new input/output (I/O) possibilities.

Web sites, Web front-ends • Solution design was data-driven or focused on • Technologies, tools and methods allow
and Rich Internet Apps (RIAs) computing efficiency vs. user effectiveness. greater abstraction of the solution design
away from the computing dependencies and
toward usage patterns.

Portals • Portals and “screen scrapers” attempted to • Integration, master data management and
provide a single unified user interface, but process orchestration have become core
integration with back-end systems and informa- disciplines for user engagement – moving
tion repositories proved costly and complex. If beyond experience to influence how work
incorporated at all, scope was typically a slightly actually is accomplished.
polished view of the legacy user interface, • Between advances in development frameworks
isolated from the rest of the portal experience. (e.g., HTML5, AJAX, Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe
• Features were largely focused on personalization Flex) and a general shift toward open architecture
– improving look and feel through page layout standards, there have been dramatic advances
and display options, but not improving content in the ability to create mash-ups and composite
or behavior. Without rules or workflow engines, applications, as well as to re-envision how
users were left performing the same inefficient applications are presented, data is visualized, and
tasks, just through a new front-end. transactions are enabled.
• Engines for business rules and workflow have
been added to user engagement solutions,
allowing management of routing and escalation
logic and tasks.


User Engagement

Though rooted in the psychology of human-computer interface, user experience and ergonomic theory, sophisticated user
engagement solutions require deep technology elements to realize the vision – especially the shift from passive look-and-
feel improvements to fundamentally supporting how work is performed.

Topic Description

Integration services User engagement’s impact is predicated on seamlessly tapping into systems and information stores
to assemble whatever resources are needed for users to perform their roles. This requires linkage
between existing enterprise integration buses, UI-platform connectivity (which may be a standalone
solution such as mobile front-ends) and cloud-based integration suites. This represents a general
shift from data and service-driven interfaces to event-driven integration.

Data management These are tactically important for performing translations, enrichments and “lazy loading” to improve
services UI-platform performance. And they are strategically critical in managing context and correlation,
applying logic to enrich transactions with business rules, orchestration and workflow hooks to model
user behavior and role-based needs.

Business rules engine, These provide the veneer of usability and intuitiveness, and are powered by complex tools managing
orchestration and the link between individual tasks and long-running, multi-step, end-to-end business processes.
workflows It is important to go beyond greater simplicity and encapsulate other factors such as ease of
interpretation and navigation based on unambiguous business terms, clarity and consistency of
business rules and hierarchical linkage from tasks to higher-level processes 4.

UI platforms UI platforms enable the creation of rich user interfaces featuring dynamic content updates, animated
navigation, video and graphics comparable to consumer-grade options. This requires experience in tools
such as Adobe AIR/Flex, Silverlight, HTML5 and JavaFX.

User experience Creative design of layout, flow and interaction patterns add value, whether applied to packaged
technology front-ends, custom systems, mobile applications or traditional functions such as site
design and marketing. Technical requirements include skills for page-flow rendering, wire-framing
and rapid prototyping. This isn’t limited to Web site graphic and widget design. There are important
lessons to learn from diverse sources such as the surge in mobility apps and the practicalities of
shop-floor design and time-and-motion studies.

Commerce tools In revenue-driving business models, commerce platforms provide everything from the nuts of
bolts of catalogs and order management, to the advanced decisioning engines that drive
recommendations and offers based on algorithms that can maximize margins or sales. Other tools
plug in around this to provide the analytics needed to track a user’s path from initial entry point
through the mobile or online experience to a transaction that may happen via call center.


User Engagement

Lessons from the frontlines Focusing on user engagement, the organization
Putting the service back in call centers invested in a new front-end to simplify processing
A leading consumer business company found its and improve visibility of the underlying ERP
customer service confounded by internal complexities. transactions and data. Transactions were simplified
Multiple acquisitions had led to solutions siloed by from 17 clicks on three screens, to five clicks on one
geography and product line, and years of decentralized screen. Relevant reports were pre-loaded to guide
upkeep had led to divergent customer service decisions. And a commercial Website was used as
representative (CSR) platforms across call centers. the model to promote intuitiveness and usability.
One main constant was industry-lagging benchmarks
on call resolution and customer satisfaction. The results were astounding. The at-risk business process
performance jumped to 300% of its goal. Training was
Enter user engagement solutions. Using CRM overhauled, removing formal classroom components.
transformation as a Trojan horse, the organization Using only computer-based instruction, first-time
decided to enhance the CSR desktop experience and completion rate for training increased from 27% to 98%,
replace the use of four legacy order management with a fraction of the original lost productivity. The power
systems, three legacy customer management systems, facility rating was no longer at-risk due to compliance
a stand-alone computer telephony integration (CTI) issues. What’s more, executive perceptions of the ERP
application, a centralized customer service log investment completely shifted – with a better-than-
and various Web-based content repositories. expected ROI and net-positive feedback from the field.

The solution was a single Adobe AIR-based application The “e” in eCommerce is for engagement
tailored to how CSRs actually perform their daily jobs. A leading life sciences manufacturer was looking
Calls, texts or emails are now more easily answered, held to extend products and services into new
or transferred. New tickets automatically pull customer markets and package them as more compelling
history, default geography, product preferences, pre-load solutions, targeted especially toward under-served,
on-screen catalogs and recent service logs, with links to non-institutional customers. With operations in
previous orders that might serve as templates. Call diaries more than 50 countries, dozens of back-end systems
are automatically updated based on CSR actions, canceling requiring integration and peak transaction rates of
post-call free-text entries. The nine back-end systems over 20 hits per second, the technical complexity
are programmatically updated, replacing legacy manual of their environment was a main challenge.
entry for order maintenance, customer updates or other
services. Agent productivity has increased 66%, with After interviewing specific customers, the company
calls requiring an average of 60% fewer clicks to closure. was able to understand what worked well today and
Because the app is deployable via virtualized desktops why. More importantly, they investigated the failings
or through Web channels, it is causing a fundamental of their existing services and blue-sky wish-lists of
shift in call center and CSR user engagement strategy. enhancements. While receiving industry awards and
accolades (including “top 5% in user experience”)
Powering the plant was a nice bonus, the business results were the real
A major utility company’s multi-year ERP went live, reward: a 300% increase in external channel revenue
but productivity suffered beyond expected traditional and a 150% increase in internal order growth,
ramp-up. The majority of the 2,500 users were with reduced sales and service support costs.
non-technical workers who uniformly struggled with
the new user interface. Specific business processes
were operating at only two-thirds of expected
efficiency, with training results significantly lacking.


User Engagement

Where do you start? • “User down” role-based vision. With stakeholders
Clarity from the start is a must. First identify who your identified and scope in hand, often the most difficult
stakeholders are - those who will be most impacted challenge involves creating a vision for users based
by improving engagement with each class of users. on how they should be engaged to perform their
roles. Existing business processes and systems should
Internal-facing efforts typically strive for increasing ease be understood to frame the answer, but should not
of use, improving efficiencies and accelerating adoption. constrain re-imagining what a stakeholder’s role could
External-facing initiatives are usually aligned with priority look like. Blue-sky brainstorming requires carefully
business metrics – building brand, driving revenue growth, tapping user communities and benchmarking across
increasing profitability. Once the goals are established, industries, functions and process areas to solicit
user engagement, not surprisingly, starts with users – divergent thinking. The downside risk to asking what
understanding their roles, their relationship with the they want is potentially setting expectations that might
business and how they interact with the organization. not be deliverable.

• Persona, persona, persona. Meticulously • Rapid prototyping. Seeing potential solutions is an
understanding the role of the targeted user is the first effective way for users to break historical patterns and
step. Whether focused on internal or external users, the to internalize proposed designs to the point of being
organization must know how they operate, with whom able to refine or refute. Even if underlying data and
they interact and how they engage with the business. transactions are stubbed, wire-frames and mock-ups
Demystifying the key-stroke and mouse-click details of should be used to guide the design toward improved
how they do their jobs (internally) or purchase/service usability.
goods (externally) is a necessary first step to envision a
new way forward. • Muscle memory. User engagement should become
embedded in the software development lifecycle,
• Roles and services. Decoupling how stakeholders baked into the value case, scoping, requirements
interact with what they are doing is the next step. and design of solutions. If left as an after-thought,
Individuals likely play multiple roles in their various it will be too late. In that case, an effective option
dealings with the organization. For some, the way may be retooling the look and feel, but not
things have historically been done may not only be improving how work is actually performed.
good enough; it may the preferred way. The success
of any user engagement initiative will come down to
determining the subset of roles and services where user
potential hasn’t been met. This could be due to a lack
of solutions, information and business process silos,
too much complexity based on IT-centric engineering
or dated systems with old-fashioned approaches to
usability.


User Engagement

Bottom line
User engagement is not something business executives naturally think about – and is decidedly absent from surveys
depicting IT spend priorities. Yet it lies at the heart of how businesses can turn newly-connected consumers into new
revenue channels, and how they can empower employees to better connect dots and improve efﬁciency and effec-
tiveness. Continuous improvement can start from the end-user, the literal point of business impact.

Enabling technologies are required for excellence in user engagement and they are easily available. Web x.0 tools,
platforms and standards have reached a maturity to allow for bold investments. But the real impact rests in deﬁning
value, engaging users and enjoying the innovator’s whitespace which results.

Endnotes
1
Forrester Research. “Amway Integrates Notes And SharePoint To Drive Its Information Workplace,” Rob Koplowitz, December 17, 2010
2
3
4
Gartner, Inc. “BPA for the Masses: Is It Real?”, Bill Rosser, June 25, 2010.

9 Applied Mobility

“The edge” has become the new battleground for These new mobile solutions serve the full spectrum
innovation of transactional, analytical and social computing
The rise of mobile computing is staggering in sheer scale capabilities. Accordingly, they may depart from
(5 billion subscribers by December 2010) and in its breadth traditional app design and deployment concepts.
of adoption – crossing age groups, economic classes Focused in scope and simple in execution, if only from
and geographies1. Consumer interest in smartphones, the user’s perspective, these apps have more in common
tablets and untraditional connected devices such as with “applets” than with conventional multi-purpose
set-top boxes, telematics, video games and embedded feature-rich enterprise applications. This is precisely
appliances is growing faster than with any other product what makes them so powerful – they are elegant
segment, with a projected growth of 36% in the coming solutions to well-defined problems, and designed for
year2. Connectivity is nearly ubiquitous with today’s operations on-the-go. The enterprise arms race has
mobile computing infrastructure and will only improve begun in these spaces and more – with big disruptions
with the widespread roll-out of 4G, LTE and WiMAX ahead for organizations that trail their competition.
in primary markets, and the impending launch of 3G in
India in 20113. As importantly, the mobile application The changes may be even more dramatic. For example,
(app) movement is fully underway, as traditional companies are already rethinking business processes
telephone service takes a back seat to messaging, email, and enabling new business models that would not have
media, social sites, games and productivity tools. been possible without mobile technology. Evolutions in
location-based services, social networks, mobile payment
As new devices find their way into the hands of processing, low-cost device add-ons and integration
business stakeholders, organizations are realizing with enterprise systems has led to the potential for
how powerful a mobile presence at the edge of their employees, customers and suppliers to consume and
enterprise can be. The underlying network, form produce sophisticated information, goods and services
factor, user interface (UI) and raw device computing from anywhere. And with the extension of mobile
power are necessary enablers, but what really matters solutions to sensors and actuators in physical goods and
is harnessing these features into rich yet simple and equipment, otherwise known as asset intelligence or
intuitive apps to solve real business problems. “the internet of things,” there is the potential for almost
anything to become part of the mobile solution footprint.
These solutions can be as simple as placing a mobile This will lead to entirely new business models like Zipcar’s
veneer over existing offerings and business processes disruption of car rental – and even ownership – models,
– that is, conducting business as usual, but through or to the connected consumer driving purchase decisions
channels untethered from physical locations. Think of based on immediate access to product alternatives, price
nurses accessing electronic health records from their comparisons, reviews, inventory levels and direct-purchase
tablets instead of a stationary hub or nursing station; options. The trend is toward a future where everything will
or of banks allowing customers to deposit checks be digital and available anywhere at any time, and mobile
anywhere by using their mobile phone cameras, resulting devices will be the medium of consumption. Tapping into
in customer convenience with the added benefit of this trend presents the opportunity for organizations to
off-loading processing tasks to the customer. define real and lasting value in applied mobility solutions.

Applied Mobility

Deloitte’s Depth Perception research featured Wireless and Mobility as an Emerging Enabler in 2010. But in 2011, the
explosion of customer and employee demand and advances in foundational capabilities such as carriers, devices and app
ecosystems allow for true business disruption.


Single-purpose • Often seen in manufacturing, health care, • Protective shells and hardware extensions are
industrialized devices public sector and the military, the durability and available from various third parties, integrating
advanced communication features of devices through open ports/protocols (USB, Apple 32-pin
came at a high cost, leading to selective roll-out. connector etc.), allowing simple consumer devices
• Specialized capabilities typically required workers to undertake highly specialized activities, while
to have additional devices in the field, creating also enabling communication and multi-purpose
complexities and burdens in performing jobs. functionality.
• Limitations of compute, storage and UI • The ability to use commercially-available devices
allowed only rudimentary data-entry and creates a fundamentally lower price point.
scanning functions. • Powerful processors, memory, capacity, screen size,
resolution and UI schemes remove hardware-based
restrictions on potential mobile business scenarios.

App stores, cross-platform • Applications were classically hard to find, license • A critical mass of developers leads to a critical mass
deployment tools and and install – with limited (if any) options on of apps, which leads to innovation and broader
developer ecosystems the device. Discovering and deploying via the adoption. This is enabled by well-designed and
desktop proved complex. governed sales and distribution channels such
• For vertical app providers, differences in as Apple’s App Store – whose catalog grew an
development platforms, deployment estimated 111% in 2010 4, with 94% of applica-
environments and management tools created tions reviewed within seven days of submission5. In
limitations on marketplace size and availability. response to the growing threat by Android, Apple
recently revealed its App Store approval guidelines
to developers and relaxed its rules on the use of
Adobe’s Flash.
• Application adoption can easily reach critical mass
to generate “buzz” and continue to drive incre-
mental uptake.
• The rising tide of spend in mobility apps has moved
the needle forward on the availability and sophisti-
cation of cross-platform development, deployment
and management tools. This improves the oppor-
tunity for a rich catalog of apps available even to
narrowly-focused business domains.

Telematics v1.0 • Portability and accessibility constraints, with • Auto manufacturers are increasingly adopting a
content and services existing only within the hybrid model – combining in-dash systems with
automobile. The user’s existing digital content mobile services accessed through Bluetooth or
was virtually inaccessible. wireless networks.
• Offerings largely focused on safety and naviga- • Solutions have expanded to include productivity
tion. While initially game-changing, these capa- (speech to text/email), collaboration (onboard
bilities were quickly eclipsed by mobile phones. social networking streams), and driver assists
• System lock-in, with sporadic updates (if at all) (sensor-driven parallel parking, Google’s self-
that were prohibitively difficult for the average driving platform).
consumer to attempt. • Platforms connected to the internet, allow
ongoing automated feature updates and content
upgrade options.
• Extension of vehicle-mounted telematics position,
presence and situational awareness to other
hand-held devices allows new and important
services to be conceived and delivered to customers
and employees.


Applied Mobility

While many organizations have some form of wireless infrastructure and supporting policies in place, these were generally
established before the explosion of potential usages and devices. Embracing the disruptive potential of mobility requires a
new set of technical and organizational capabilities to govern security, development, deployment and management – as
well as the supporting policies to control costs and manage compliance.

Topic Discussion

Device management Ability to monitor, manage and maintain devices connected to the organization’s network – including
enterprise-procured, as well as employee- and customer-owned devices. Allows tracking of assets,
usage reporting, provisioning and over-the-air updates for software or profile revisions, backup/
restore and remote locks or wipes for lost, stolen or compromised devices. Since several mobile
device management tools exist, selection should align with the overall operating environment and IT
maintenance strategy.

Security Password protection, encryption, controlling device administrative rights (system settings, permissions
to directly install applications) and managing entitlements to back-end services must be implemented –
ideally extended from the organization’s overall identity, control, and access management solution.

Development platform Decision to adopt native device/OS SDKs, multi-platform mobile development platforms (e.g., SAP Sybase
SUP, Adobe AIR/Flex, Pyxis), or use standards-based channels (HTML5 for Web-based; SMS or legacy
WAP 2.0 for feature phones) is a strategic concern – informed by the target personas, applicable device
standards and the desired capabilities of the intended mobile applications. Beyond versatility vs. native
feature support, middleware implications need to be considered.

Product management Dedicated focus to manage the lifecycle of mobile applications, including marketing product
management (understanding market wants/needs, competitor movement, solution wish list), technical
product management (managing bug/fix, feature, version roadmap), solution engineering (multi-platform
support, end-to-end experience management), solutions delivery (distribution and channel support),
and solutions management (on-going support). In many cases this can be an entirely foreign function
to organizations that are targeting mobile marketing channels for products that haven’t traditionally
required such complex lifecycle management (e.g., CPG or automotive industries).

Mobile middleware Mobile transaction management (dealing with interrupted sessions during transaction processing),
integration with back-end systems, handling off-line data access and requisite synching, device-specific
data management (pagination, “lazy loading” – retrieving only packets for data to be displayed instead of
the full object) and managing translation, correlation and extension of data to the front-end.

Wireless policies Contractual considerations to manage the explosion of wireless coverage and usages. Policies need
to be retooled to consider device and plan eligibility, reimbursement, upgrades, refresh eligibility,
types of pricing plans, employee profiles, categories of distinction within policies, security, expense
management and control, vendor choice and considerations around international usage. While
telecommunications providers are looking to combat predatory pricing and market saturation with
moves up-stream with content and added services, there are opportunities for aggressive negotiations
for many enterprise customers.

Application distribution While public storefronts like GetJar, Apple’s app store, the various Android marketplaces (e.g., Google,
Verizon, Sprint) and RIM’s BlackBerry App World allow for broad distribution of applications, a controlled
enterprise distribution strategy is required for sensitive, internal-facing applications. These can be as
simple as a repurposed Web server or platform allowing search, reviews and brokering of partner, vendor
and recommended third-party applications.


Applied Mobility

Lessons from the frontlines Because patients deserve better
Coffee, your handheld and the future of your than a dry-erase board
“third place” As part of their broader eHealth strategy, the
Starbucks has been on the forefront of mobile strategies, Tasmanian Government’s Department of Health
launching two initiatives poised for convenience and and Human Services wanted to identify ways to
customer engagement. The first is the Starbucks Card improve the quality of patient care while increasing
mobile app, allowing customers to pay for purchases organizational efficiency in their hospitals. One such
using their smart phone, where a 2-D scanner at the POS area of improvement involved replacing a critical but
reads a barcode linked to their Starbucks prepaid loyalty outdated part of their operations – namely, a manually-
card6. Roll-out is underway to retail stores in 2011, along updated magnetic whiteboard which tracked patients’
with support for additional mobile platforms (currently admission and care during their stay in the hospital.
iOS and BlackBerry; an Android version is imminent). Enter the Patient Journey Board, providing an iPad-enabled
solution for full-lifecycle visibility into information about
The second is the Starbucks Digital Network7, where patients, and help with managing updates from admission
customers are offered free WiFi (provided by AT&T) to treatments and discharge8. Hospital staff updates
and free access to subscription editions of the The Wall patient information quickly and easily, and any changes
Street Journal, The New York Times and USA Today – as are tracked for increased traceability, accountability and
well as content from Apple, Zagat and home-grown security. The overall result is that patient information is
Starbucks entertainment (including movies, short protected and managed easily and efficiently, leading
films and literature). Customers are encouraged to to improvements in the quality of patient care.
enjoy content while in the store – tactically promoting
longer stays and repeat visits. Perhaps even more The Rupee goes mobile
importantly, Starbucks is establishing a beachhead of A significant joint effort has been launched in India to
mobile relevance for the ever-connected consumer. enable transfers of small amounts of money between bank
accounts9. Backed by the National Payments Corporation
of India (which includes the support of 10 major banks),
customers can enable their existing accounts to allow
mobile transactions via SMS or mobile apps, with the
former featuring a lower daily limit over SMS (1,000
Rupees per day), but offering compatibility with the
majority of the 600 million mobile devices in service.
In the United States, Square, Paypal mobile payments
and the announced (or rumored) inclusion of near-field
communications in the next version of iOS and Android
code-bases will make mobile payments a reality in 2011.


Applied Mobility

Where do you start? • Choose favorites. With more than 35 variants of
For many organizations, the first step to applying wireless operating systems in the marketplace, universal
mobility technology is to create a vision for its business compatibility could be an overwhelming goal. Many
potential – either transforming how tasks get done or organizations will have a clustering of operating systems
opening net new avenues to interact with customers, around a handful of platforms, with some indication
employees or partners. As technical and cost limitations for trends and evolving preferences. A phased roll-out
are overcome, organizations need to challenge themselves approach can expedite progress. Unsupported users
in the art of the possible – looking across industries and will have something to covet (and be no worse off than
geographies for new ideas. However, a practical mobile they were before), while early adopters can inform
strategy should start with the consideration of putting improvements and offer new ideas. Although foresight
a mobile veneer on existing capabilities as a prelude to on eventual platform vision is required upfront to guide
pursuing more innovative, substantial mobile initiatives. infrastructure and development decisions, a phased
rollout can prevent diluted, over-ambitious initial efforts.
• Business first. Mobile efforts should begin by
understanding user personas and business impacts. • Cloud and social. Many of the boldest plays in
That means determining the targeted-use cases mobility will be combined with cloud and social
by identifying stakeholders that could benefit, computing technologies – tapping into information,
the business scenarios that should be targeted, services and relationships based on physical location
and the specific business process improvements and desired action. While some organizations
and new capabilities that would be enabled. have launched separate mobility, cloud and social
planning areas of focus, their convergence – termed
• Adopt a product mentality. As organizations CloMoSo – has particularly powerful implications.
introduce consumer-focused apps, product
management disciplines become a necessity. Managing • Mobile infrastructure. There are many moving
feature and version roadmaps, providing end-user parts required to ready an organization to implement
support and implementing frequent updates are implied its mobile strategy. Planning should consider
expectations from consumers. And so is the quality upgrades to infrastructure and operations, as well as
of the end-to-end user experience. Regardless of the telecommunication provider contracts and internal
number of moving parts required to fulfill the service, compliance and legal policies. The time it takes to
the user will hold the brand accountable for the quality reach operational readiness can take as long as the
and readiness of the service. The more critical the time required to scope and build pilot applications,
experience, the greater the potential impact if disrupted. so planning efforts should be launched upfront.

• Keep scope simple. Many effective mobile
applications are specialized, intuitive and transient.
Apps that target a focused business need and
solve it simply are preferred to complicated
multi-purpose solutions. Designing navigation
and controls for single-hand or voice operation,
minimizing interaction points and taking advantage
of location-based services to filter and pre-populate
information can simplify the user experience.


Applied Mobility

Bottom line
With the volume of smartphone shipments poised to overtake PC shipments by 201210 – and with connected,
intelligent assets becoming prevalent, leading organizations have begun to aggressively establish their brands and
services in the mobile world. According to a recent Deloitte study, more than half of Fortune 50 companies have a
publically-available, customer-facing application or mobile-enabled Web page11. This growth will continue – notably
as location-based services converge with cloud and social computing technologies, and as new consumer behaviors
and expectations are established.

Even more significant is the potential for business enablement, specifically in how employees and partners interact.
One mobility guru describes a not-so-distant future of continuous services and connected devices that fundamentally
change the way we interact with each other – and with our corporate entities12. As we begin to separate from static,
immobile computers and envision a world where business is increasingly conducted outside of cubicles and call
centers, different business opportunities are born. Applied mobility is about rethinking business with an untethered
mindset, innovating how the enterprise operates at the edge.

Endnotes
1
“Worldwide Mobile Subscriptions Forecast to Exceed Five Billion by 4Q-2010,” ABI Research press release, June 30, 2010, on the
FierceMobileContent Web site, http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/press-releases/worldwide-mobile-subscriptions-forecast-exceed-five-billion-4q-
2010.
2
Carl Weinschenk, M2M Growth Impressive, Even by Telecom Standards, http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/weinschenk/m2m-growth-
impressive-even-by-telecom-standards/?cs=44909 (December 31, 2010).
3
Kenan Machado and Romit Guha, Vodafone Essar to launch India 3G services in Q1 2011, http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=459586
(October 21, 2010).
4
Emil Protalinski, Google, RIM, and Nokia beat Apple’s App Store growth, http://www.techspot.com/news/41914-google-rim-and-nokia-beat-
apples-app-store-growth.html (January 10, 2011).
5
JF Martin, App Store approval time still improving!, http://www.buildingiphoneapps.com/2011/01/breaking-app-store-approval-time-still.html
(January 19, 2011).
6
Credit Card Processing Blog. Starbucks Widens Mobile Payments Test. Retrieved February 3, 2011, from http://blog.unibulmerchantservices.com/
starbucks-widens-mobile-payments-test/
7
Visit http://www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/wireless-internet/starbucks-digital-network
8
Additional information is available in Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (2010), “Case Study: Department of Health and Human Services Tasmania”, http://
online.deloitte.com.au/state-government-department.html
9
Cian O’Sullivan, Mobile payments: Indian banks show how it’s done, http://www.gomonews.com/mobile-payments-indian-banks-show-how-its-
done/ (November 23, 2010).
10
Patrick Thibodeau, In historic shift, smartphones, tablets to overtake PCs, http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9199918/In_historic_shift_
smartphones_tablets_to_overtake_PCs (December 6, 2010).
11
Deloitte Consulting LLP proprietary research, August 2010.
12
Ozzie, Ray. Dawn of a New Day. Retrieved February 3, 2011, from http://ozzie.net/docs/dawn-of-a-new-day/

10 Capability Clouds

The cloud market evolves from capacity to A focus on capacity is not a mistake. In fact, rapid
capabilities low-risk innovation is a benefit of the cloud, at any
For the past few years, the IT crowd has been enamored level. But in a world increasingly defined by services,
by “as-a-service” concepts and the potential to unleash capability clouds represent an open market of offerings
the power of distributed computing, virtualization and whose net value can surpass their individual, constituent
ubiquitous networking. The message being spread parts. The cloud is finally being put in terms that
is one of capacity and cost – the ability to tap into a the business can relate to, while enabling changes
nearly unlimited scale of computing power, storage, that the IT department has been clamoring for.
platforms and software with the hope of lower
overall technology spending1. Cheaper and faster are There have been three main drivers of cloud adoption
interesting terms to the bottom line, but better is a thus far: a preference for operating expense over capital
term that business can really get excited about. expense; speed to solution; and flexible, scalable access
to specialized resources – be they technology, software
Capability clouds move beyond the building blocks of or people. The capability cloud can add opportunities
capacity to deliver finished services that directly address for agility and innovation in how business processes –
business objectives and enterprise goals. Instead of even business models – are acquired, composed and
talking about machine images or database instances, the revised. For example, an analytics cloud may go beyond
discussion shifts to the analytics cloud, the testing cloud just delivering analytics databases, models and tools. It
or the sales cloud. And the conversation moves from the may also offer PHD-level statisticians applying the art
CIO’s office to the CEO’s office and the boardroom. of the science for the benefit of your business, where
you only pay for the level of service that you need.
Similarly, capability clouds allow the discussion to focus
on a more important set of values. The conversation As capability cloud adoption continues to mature, it
shifts from total cost of ownership and asset efficiency will require and enable more hybrid cloud and multi-
to accelerating time-to-results, adding new functionality cloud environments. With the rapid pace of change,
or changing business processes and business models. increasing success stories, the level of investment
It’s relatively easy for a business unit leader to buy a and innovation – not to mention the hype and
software-as-a-service tool for point solutions such as attention – CIOs must be prepared to answer how
workforce planning or compensation management; the they leverage the ecosystem of capabilities, services
main requirement is simply a corporate credit card. and value networks delivered by the cloud.


Capability Clouds

Cloud computing is continuously growing and maturing – in terms of its adoption, vendor landscape and offering
sophistication. While the technology itself is an evolution of long-standing virtualization technologies, utility computing,
application service providers (ASP), service-oriented architecture (SOA) services and high-speed networking, cloud
deployment in 2011 makes technology potentially disruptive, especially as deployments move from capacity concerns to
business capability enablement.


ASPs, managed • Prior to the widespread availability of cloud • Cloud is now a tested architecture for some workloads
service providers, computing services, previous models offered for large-scale enterprises. Adoption may have been
grid computing, significant customization of implementation accelerated by recent economic pressures, but current
utility computing, for each customer. Yet acquiring and deploying cloud business cases benefit as much from speed-to-
IT outsourcing and these IT services required sometimes lengthy and solution and sophistication of the capabilities, as they
other acquisition and complex selection, negotiation and implementa- do from the trade-offs between operational and capital
delivery models tion phases. expenditures.
• Cloud services – particularly public cloud – involve • While de jure standards are still evolving, de facto
simplification and standardization, but also offer standards are sufficient for confident enterprise deploy-
streamlined selection and implementation. ment and integration.

On-premise • Adoption of these methods and tools are • Beyond elastic capacity for IT services, capability clouds
virtualization, demand inherently valuable to the business of IT – often emphasize the business service linkages. IT can
management and IT creating efficiency, effectiveness and agility in clearly associate ROI in direct business terms.
service management the delivery of IT services to the enterprise. • The enterprise CIO can and must become a trusted
methods However, without the abstraction implied by storefront for these business services for business
cloud services, they stop short of enabling executives. Significant improvements in cloud
business service management. operations support systems (OSS) and business support
• Putting enterprise IT in a services management systems (BSS) allow effective subscription, billing,
mode, particularly in the development of a incident and customer management.
rigorous services catalog, is an essential step in
allowing the enterprise to fully participate in the
cloud ecosystem.

Capacity cloud • Hype surrounding cloud computing was – and • Capacity cloud continues to be relevant for several
computing in some ways, continues to be – overwhelming, usages – supporting applications with unpredictable
with many products and service offerings usage needs and rapidly scaling edge solutions. But it
being rebranded to take advantage of the buzz needs to be viewed as one of many possible options, not
– some with limited or no true cloud features. the default application of cloud.
Early adopters focused on the technology • Capacity clouds are enablers for higher-value business
realm – private infrastructure improvement, services, necessary for realization of additional value.
use of public platforms for non-production • Organizations have a much clearer definition of the
environments, point software solutions for “what” and “why” of cloud. Discussions in 2011 have
adoption of specialized tools – primarily focused moved from education to pilots and full-blown imple-
on IT services. mentations, many utilizing capability clouds.

Service-Oriented • SOA was relegated to a technical architecture – • Capability clouds lend themselves to rethinking about
Architecture (SOA) effectively describing Service-Oriented Software operating models in terms of services. Service-Oriented
Architecture. While the concepts were applicable Business Architectures are beginning to emerge, where
to the business, few organizations moved beyond organizations have identified their catalog of critical
static business processes and inside-out focused capabilities and are making targeted fulfillment decisions
architecture approaches to embrace business for individual areas.
capabilities – a tenant of Services Thinking2. • Multi-tenancy guides design principles that are usage-
• Even as independent software vendors added and purpose-driven, which naturally align to services.
compatibility for Web services, their underlying Because many of the platforms were designed in the
business and information models were data- era of SOA, they can be embedded, integrated and
driven and transaction-oriented, not service- or orchestrated – not acting as simply tacked-on interfaces
capability-oriented. applying modern standards to antiquated architectures.


Capability Clouds

The technology behind capability cloud providers is extensive – requiring deep network, virtualization, event
management, resource management and quality management engines. Several vendors have feature-rich hardware
and software products as cloud-enablers. The technical complexity is somewhat abstracted for cloud subscribers, but
several considerations remain a concern:

Topic Description

Cloud-to-cloud Increasingly, organizations are implementing more than one cloud-based solution to meet
integration their business needs. Instead of managing individual point interfaces, many organizations are
supplementing their internal service bus or integration solution with a cloud-based hub – managing
cloud-to-cloud interactions between the various APIs and services, while maintaining a single, high-
availability, maintainable integration point to the enterprise. Examples of solutions include IBM’s
CastIron, Dell’s Boomi and Pervasive’s Integration Manager.

OSS/BSS capabilities The ability to provide usage-based pricing and to rapidly provision services to scale up or down is
even more difﬁcult with capability clouds, where underlying solutions typically require a combination
of services across the stack. A sophisticated offering is necessary to manage ordering, provisioning,
metering, billing and remediation – with control points traversing the infrastructure, platform and
application layers. For subscribers, the availability of these capabilities will be a limiting factor to
contract and service-level capabilities.

Data management This concern is especially applicable to global companies, where local data storage, privacy and
protection regulations are critical concerns. At a higher level, information semantics, context and
correlation are required to maintain master data between the enterprise and the cloud offering.

Maintenance and Organizations are still responsible for their stakeholders’ end-to-end experiences, even if they are
monitoring increasingly realized through a hybrid environment of disparate on-premise and cloud-provided
services. Comprehensive maintenance and monitoring tools must be enabled – not just to detect
incidents, but also to identify potential bottlenecks or areas of concern. Stay focused on business
services, not just underlying IT services.

Application maintenance services (AMS) and application and development management (ADM)
services have new complexities when they involve in-house or third-party development for, or in,
the cloud. Service-level management and service-level agreements have not yet normalized across
various capability types. CIOs must use the business case associated with a particular cloud service as
the vehicle to plan and manage expectations and performance.


Capability Clouds

Lessons from the frontlines find things (e.g., price sheets, documentation, design
Talent in the cloud artifacts), they were able to find individuals and
A healthcare provider has moved several of its human institutional experience that were previously hidden.
resource functions to the cloud, including recruiting, Executives were able to mine the various bread crumbs
background checking, interview scheduling and talent – the digital exhaust – of the service and discover
onboarding. In the initial realization, the organization definitively who knew what, who was connected to
had to maintain relationships – and technical interfaces whom and which stakeholders were their leading thought
– to each provider, initiating transitions across leaders3. The “capability” here is connecting people
the prospect-to-employee lifecycle through point and information with far-greater effectiveness than can
interactions. The resulting complexity was beginning to be achieved through siloed tools of limited scope.
outweigh the point-feature benefits of each solution.
Identities as a service
Now the company is moving to a capability cloud Though the idea of federated identities has seen many
strategy, sourcing the entire process from a single cloud stops and starts over the past decade, capability clouds
provider, who in turn is managing the orchestration can offer the right balance of distributed services and
and individual transactions among the relevant tiered trust zones to make the concept a reality. A global
players. The business receives the same functionality bank was challenged with the security impacts of cross-
at a similar price point, but without the headaches organizational information and application sharing, with
of integrating between each individual tool. the expected complexity and operational risk. Affiliates,
acquisitions, subsidiaries and joint ventures all had separate
Not your grandfather’s collaboration suite disparate security domains. At the same time, it needed
The internal adoption of Chatter by Salesforce.com to collaborate and share critical information with partners
illustrates how a collection of individual services, and governmental agencies, providing the right people
seamlessly integrated, can deliver a capability more with the right access to the right information at the right
valuable than its individual parts. Upon the Beta launch of time. While their implementation today is an in-house
Chatter, Salesforce.com’s entire staff began using the tool private cloud model, more public cloud-based solutions
– a combination of collaboration, presence, networking, will likely emerge as standards like Security Assertion
messaging, document sharing and workflow features. Markup Language (SAML), WS Star (WS*), the Liberty
By allowing searches across productivity, collaboration, Alliance protocols (ID-ff), and OpenID continue to evolve.
social and transactional tools, users were not only able to


Capability Clouds

Where do you start? • Workload. Capacity discussions were focused on
The exploration of capability clouds should start with infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and
a clearly defined business problem in mind. Look at software-as-a-service. Capability clouds instead focus
your backlog or ideally at your services catalog, and on what is being delivered. Capability clouds typically
find a workload that would benefit from capability include refined platform-, software- and higher-value
in the cloud. The National Institute of Standards and software-as-a-service, as well as business processes and
Technology (NIST) cloud criteria are a great place information analytics.
to begin. If your business problem or technology
solution requires most of these characteristics, you • Delivery channel. The decision between private,
should consider a “capability” cloud approach: public or hybrid cloud solutions is tied to both
the performance, cost and scale needs of the
• End-user self service with automated opportunity; as well as to the organization’s
customer subscription and provisioning industry sector, geography and executive
• Location independence and multi-tenancy personalities. While edge adoption is trending
with regard to service delivery towards public clouds and core adoption is
• Network ubiquity, with access anytime and remaining private, there is no formulaic answer.
anywhere there is an Internet connection
• Elastic performance and load, both up and down Once an opportunity has been assessed according to
• Elastic pricing and contract terms these dimensions, one way to get started is to simply
get started. As one financial services CIO shared in an
Next, move to an actionable discussion by being specific interview, “We didn’t really know the value proposition
on the nature of the potential cloud solution, including: at the time we were making the decision. You can’t
really know until you see it and experience it.” But that
• Service model. While many companies begin their doesn’t mean you should “ready-fire-aim.” Prepare
cloud journeys by subscribing to cloud computing a business case. If it’s a small investment or a small
resources, cloud offers a vehicle to monetize intellectual downside risk – perhaps a pilot or a solution at the edge
property or operational capabilities that were of the enterprise – it can be a simple business case.
historically impractical to explore. For example, several For bigger bets, develop a broader business case.
health care plans are looking to offer claims processing, Cloud isn’t any sort of silver bullet. It’s an investment
administration and analytics-as-a-service – shifting from in enabling the business, and you must go into it
traditional business process outsourcing models. with specific expectations and metrics.

The beauty of cloud is the ability to rapidly innovate
in low-risk environments. Solutions can scale at
internet speed if the business and/or market demands
it. Make a move, take its pulse, refine and repeat.
The days of three-year implementation roadmaps
can thankfully be behind you, replaced by agile
composition, integration and orchestration of
capabilities. May the cloud revolution finally begin!


Capability Clouds

Bottom line
The difference between capacity and capabilities is more than semantics – akin to the difference between access
to a database schema and a programmatic, context-rich application programming interface (API). Or, put simply, a
plain-speak written catalog of products and services that a general manager can understand. It doesn’t invalidate
the value of the lower-level offerings, but it dramatically changes the potential audience who might find it inter-
esting – or at least comprehensible.

The tipping point of cloud will come when it can effectively disappear – when it becomes a part of the fabric of
how business executes, not an add-on consideration or an adjunct strategy. Much like the choice between taking
the bus, flagging a taxi, renting a car or buying your own automobile – each has a purpose for a specific place and
time – our transportation capabilities are richer because of the potential options. Capability clouds will be a big step
in changing the role and potential value of IT – shifting the focus its underlying machinations to business value.

Endnotes
1
2
3


Conclusion

When trends converge Explore <everything> + Cyber Intelligence. Stay
(Re)Emerging Enablers are, by definition, already in mindful of connections as you identify the key
play. Many companies have investigated them in some tactical choices that you believe will generate top
way, and have made investments. But important returns in your circumstances. Having a clear point
developments are underway this year, adding of view on each – how it affects your business and
compelling new dimensions to the decision process. We how it fits into the strategic vision of your company
recommend taking a fresh look at each (Re)Emerging – is a good first step. Understanding how multiple
Enabler to see how it can apply to you in the near trends converge for even more innovation and
term, and whether new investments make sense. value is a way to discover the big opportunities.

Disruptive Deployments require a more creative lens. We close this year’s report as we have done in
Think tactically at the front-line or back-office. Look the past, with a comment from writer and futurist
beyond competitor benchmarking and into other William Gibson: “The future is already here… it is
industries to spur ideas. Don’t lose sight of business just not evenly distributed.” Our hope is that the
results that can be measured. Many opportunities 2011 report on these ten trends will allow you to tip
require innovation and change – in business models, the distribution in your favor in the years ahead.
in the way work is performed, even in the very
nature of IT assets. But the reward opportunities are
real – as real as the dangers of falling behind.

By taking these steps, you can position yourself ahead
of the game. But to really accelerate value, consider one
more thing: Combine multiple trend topics to discover
patterns of potential. Each trend is important individually,
but a multiplier effect can occur when you evaluate
them together. For example, Applied Mobility + Social
Computing + User Engagement + Almost Enterprise Apps
can offer an innovative approach to driving business
value through software. Visualization + Real Analytics +
Capability Clouds can help define a tremendously powerful
and affordable platform for essential business capabilities.
Take time to think through the relationships among
the trends. Look at <anything> + Capability Cloud.

2011 Technology Trends - Conclusion 62

Authors

Mark White Bill Briggs
Chief Technology Ofﬁcer Deputy CTO
Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP Director, Deloitte Consulting LLP
mawhite@deloitte.com wbriggs@deloitte.com

(Re)Emerging Enablers Disruptive Deployments

Visualization Real Analytics
David Steier John Lucker
Director, Deloitte Consulting LLP Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
dsteier@deloitte.com jlucker@deloitte.com

“Almost-Enterprise” Applications Social Computing
John Peto Doug Palmer
Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
jpeto@deloitte.com dpalmer@deloitte.com

Cyber Intelligence User Engagement
Ted DeZabala Jaco Van Eeden
Principal, Deloitte & Touche LLP Senior Manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP
tdezabala@deloitte.com jvaneeden@deloitte.com

CIOs as Revolutionaries Applied Mobility
Matt Law David Smud
mlaw@deloitte.com dsmud@deloitte.com

The End of the “Death of ERP” Capability Clouds
Bill Allison Chris Weitz
wiallison@deloitte.com cweitz@deloitte.com

Nidal Haddad
Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
nhaddad@deloitte.com

2011 Technology Trends - Authors 63

Contributors

Rich Baich, Heidi Boyer, Mark Charron, Jeff DeLisio, Suketu Gandhi, Ryan Jones, Rick
Kelley, Doug Laney, Kristi Lamar, Peter Makohon, Blair Nicodemus, Nima Oftadeh,
Johannes Raedeker, Peter Sedivy, Sudeep Singh, Cyndi Switzer, Andrew Szabo.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of Deloitte practitioners. Deloitte is not, by means
of this publication, rendering business, financial, investment, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such
professional advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision
or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified professional advisor. Deloitte, its affiliates, and related entities shall
not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this publication.

As used in this document, “Deloitte” means Deloitte & Touche LLP, which provides audit, assurance and risk management related services, and
Deloitte Consulting LLP, which provides strategy, operations, technology, systems, outsourcing and human capital consulting services. These entities
are separate subsidiaries of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its
subsidiaries.

© 2011 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.

Tech trends 2011

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked (9)

Similar to Tech trends 2011 (20)

More from MMMTechLaw (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

Tech trends 2011