Lundquists 2010 Halftime IT Report: Cloud, Mobility, Economy

by Eric Lundquist

Even though the economy remains uncertain, IT managers cant keep flogging along older systems. Those old systems cost too much to maintain and cant run new applications.

Advice to tech vendors: Stop saying why your private cloud is better or different than the other guys public cloud. Just like the Internet, it all becomes one big computing infrastructure and the real action is in building services and applications that can cross barriers between private and public cloud computing infrastructures.

Smartphones are now smarter than the desktop and laptop computer. They are certainly more mobile and have a richer set of applications. These phones are sweeping through the enterprise and will change the business computing model. There are also more choices as Google and Apple get ready to clash in this hot marketplace.

Enterprises are now dispersed with employees working out of their homes, hotels and cars. That is not going to change. It’s time for the business strategists to design companies for mobility rather than thinking the workers are coming back to their cubes.

The iPad may, and I emphasize may, be game changing. It is a great media and personal platform. You will see Google and Apple slug it out in the tablet space just like in the smartphone space. Microsoft is noticeably missing.

You want a secure environment? Keep the data secure and only allow it out of the house when an employee needs to work on it. When he is done working on it, move the data back to the secure space. That sounds like thin computing to me.

The business app store is on the way. This will be a big headache for CIOs who have not yet figured out how to meld corporate compliance needs and business apps available at the touch of finger.

Big vendors are cash-rich and innovation-poor. Startups over the last couple of years were designed for buyouts rather than stock offerings. The buying frenzy is not about to stop.

If you thought your employees using Internet e-mail such as Gmail was a problem, wait until they start grabbing apps and setting up social networks outside the firewalls.

Your inventory is talking to you. Your employees smartphones are ready to reveal their locations. Are you ready to build a company around those capabilities?