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2011 is the Year of the IT ConsumerNairobi, Jan 17, 2011 (The East African/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- 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. IT will be a focus again - but the clever IT department will move the focus to how IT can help the overall organisation to better manage its overall energy usage. Consumerisation overtakes the business: Any business now trying to turn back the tide of employees wanting their own devices to be supported will lose. Devices ranging from the enterprise-focused, such as RIM Blackberries, through avowedly consumer focused iPad and the newer Android/Palm OS/Windows 7 slates, tablets and other form factor systems will no longer be centrally sourced by the organisation, but by the employee. These systems will have to be accepted and managed by IT - even if "managing" them means just providing a sandboxed environment for the corporate desktop to run in. Social networking continues to confuse and amuse: Facebook will continue its world domination, Twitter might fade somewhat as people begin to see its limitations. MySpace will probably fade to a greater extent. FourSquare will make some inroads for a while, but it is not a long term bet. Organisations continue to struggle in figuring out how to play the social networking field with employees placing inappropriate comments that hit headlines and embarrass businesses, resulting in knee-jerk reactions that end up in court. The iPhone 5 gets announced on April 1. This gadget will have a 24MP camera with a 3MP secondary one. It will have a 3D screen, which, using the retina capability and special glasses, will give the appearance of an Imax experience. It will make a leap to 6TB memory. It will not be compatible with Flash or with the Microsoft Kinect controller. Steve Jobs is also rumoured to be talking to telecoms companies about making sure that the iPhone5 will not be able to interoperate with any device on the same network that runs Microsoft Windows Phone 7. Android will keep growing and outselling iPhone although the comparison will remain irrelevant. Android will speed up the democratisation and commoditisation of a significant share of the smartphone market. Some hardware manufacturers relying too much on Android will suffer from this. Poor quality handsets and fragmentation will hurt the Android brand. Unofficial, unsupported and subpar Android variants will creep up and there is very little that Google will be able to do about it. Tablets will only make it worse. SMS costs to drop further: Texting will continue to cost less and less. In Kenya, operators are now required to implement lower termination rates starting January 1. All operators are at liberty to negotiate lower SMS termination rates subject to the capped rates. The new regulator permitted rate is 60 cents (100 cents is equivalent to Ksh1, Ksh80 is equivalent to $1) but that has been ordered to fall to 5 cents over the next two years. The CCK examined the marginal cost of additional users and found that it was a mere 1.5 cents but operators were charging interconnect fees of as much as Ksh2. That, CCK said, could not continue and ordered the telecoms companies to come up with a better pricing model. They didn't so the CCK has imposed one, much to the chagrin of the companies. Whatever the year unfolds in the tech world, one thing remains clear, the consumer is the all-time winner. The author is a telecom strategy analyst. |