Business
2011 is the year of the IT consumer
Posted Monday, January 17 2011 at 00:00
Every year analysts make predictions for the next 12 months; we’ll do the same for information technology for 2011.
The economic crisis presented a good opportunity to drive through technology-led initiatives.
Therefore, customer service must remain the priority area for IT investments throughout this year.
This is for good reason as evidence from several sectors shows that customer loyalty is eroding and customer churn is increasing.
Information management will also be a priority, especially when it comes to projects designed to improve understanding of customer behaviour.
The rising customer churn means that retention of existing customers will likely take priority over acquisition of new ones.
A number of technologies will stand out as well.
Cloud computing will continue to grow steadily in 2011, and the initial attempts by many companies to adopt cloud computing will show some of the issues — latency, service levels, lack of predictability — that will make organisations wonder if cloud computing is all it has been made to be.
This means that we shall witness a data centre transformation since the cloud computing era heralds a new dawn in the delivery of IT services in 2011.
We expect to see an increased number of data centres in East Africa.
As far as cloud economics is concerned, being cheap is good — pay only for what you use.
Not only will cloud computing help leading enterprises gain greater insight from their information, it will also help them derive revenue from it.
Consolidation will continue
We expect to see more consolidation as the changing nature of IT continues to stress large and small IT vendors, and acquisitions continue for those with deep pockets, mergers for those in trouble, and failure for some.
Going green is the new tax – governments will be finding ways to extract as much out of businesses as they possibly can through as many means as possible, and taxing what will be defined as profligate use of energy is a great way of bringing in money.
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