Stamford, Conn. (May 22, 2013) β The age of a locked-down IT system is disappearing rapidly, with total control of technology by IT fading away as more of the workforce chooses to use their own devices and applications for business purposes. This disruptive trend presents some great opportunities for enterprise architects.
From the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit 2013, Marcus Blosch, research vice president at Gartner, offers a review of his presentation at the Summit: βTop Five Actions: Taking on the Disruption of Consumerization.β Below is today’s analyst guest post by Mr. Blosch:
I’m looking forward to presenting in London on how enterprise architects can harness the disruptive force of consumerization to deliver tangible business outcomes through enterprise architecture (EA). I’ve prepared five top actions for practitioners to consider.
1. Get Out in Front of the Business
Harness the employee interest in consumer devices and applications, using it as a hook to engage with the business to brainstorm and create and offer solutions around collaboration, sourcing, distribution, marketing, support, incentivization and other areas.
2. Offer Advice on Technologies and Trends
Identify and prepare for key technology trends that will impact the business e.g. bring your own program and LTE. Faced with the proliferation of devices in the enterprise offer technology road maps to the business, suggesting when and how key technologies should be adopted. Use this activity to champion the use of strategic technologies like the increasing use of HTML5 to ensure that core applications function well across a range of devices without need for extensive modification.
3. Architect for Consumerization
There are many things to consider here, covered in more detail in my presentation, but a few initial pointers are:
- License/authenticate people not devices: become endpoint independent.
- Standardize on data formats, not applications or tools.
- Move data away from devices and into the cloud, protect it well.
- Stop trying to control things you don’t own.
4. Lay the Foundations
Be clear on the business outcomes that need to be achieved and the architectural features needed to achieve it. Endpoint or device independence is going to be increasingly important to effectively achieve core business outcomes in an environment that is increasingly consumerized.
5. Provide Project-Specific Advice
Be a valued source of knowledge around specific projects, offering sanity checking and examples of similar projects and their successes and failure. Offer problem solving while providing expertise on risk management and recommended architectures and approaches.
About the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit 2013
Chosen by senior enterprise architects, strategists, systems analysts and IT innovation teams year after year, the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit is the most comprehensive and respected EA event in the world. The Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit 2013 took place in London on May 14-15.
About Gartner
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the valuable partner to clients in 12,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 5,000 associates, including 1,280 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, www.gartner.com.
Source: Gartner