Fragments

IT is everything, everything is IT

June 30th, 2008 | by Klemen Stular |

Consider the following list of business areas:

• Energy and materials
• Transportation
• Construction and real estate
• Financial services
• Manufacturing and mining

No, it’s not a listing from the local Yellow Pages. It’s Cisco Systems’ list of verticals to explore and invest in, to have technologies ready for the future!

In years to come, you can expect your IT solutions provider to become your generic solution provider - and faster than you might have thought. Don’t be surprised at what strange businesses Internet providers will pick up. That’s their only hope for “staying tuned.”

This sounds funny, but the IT industry - more than any other - suffers from lack of new markets. Ironically, the reason for this problem is IT’s success: the rate of market penetration, technology evolution and adaptation and high competitiveness has made the world small - too small, sometimes. Moving to new geographies is only a partial solution. IT companies are used to good, great or amazing financial results, year after year. As a result, you can see another migration - to other businesses. Just look around. IT completely acquired the voice market during the last few years. It’s aggressively conquering the video market now. It’s starting to bite pieces from (what seems to be) the fat construction business (smart houses, physical security…). Who knows what’s next? Therefore, rather than looking around for a variety of different suppliers, you might explore what your IT provider can do for you in the long run, because it will be that way anyway. But be careful! Select a good provider. If they screw it up, not only your business stops, but your private and professional life becomes miserable overnight.

An aside to the story above. Who is becoming the most influential person in large non-IT enterprises when it comes to strategic business decisions? The chief information officer (CIO)! Gartner is saying that the CIO is the future CEO…