Oct 11 2007
iRise Fusion ‘07-Day 1 Wrap-up By Gary Beach
Gary Beach, Publisher Emeritus CIO Magazine, is a self-avowed “generalist” and he was at Fusion taking notes all day. Based on his notes, Gary wanted to make 5 key points before dismissing the crowd for the day.
Listen to Gary’s entire presentation at the iRise conference (Time: 22 minutes).
1. Business Alignment
“You should put a big red x through this word and take it out of your lexicon”. Instead, business transformation is where it’s at. Gary also encouraged everyone to think about business flexibility. The hard part of transformation is developing the necessary soft skills. Gary stated, “your career trajectory will be much steeper when you pay attention to the soft skills of business transformation.”
2. The Role of Technology
“We are at the cusp of the golden age of software development,” said Gary. The perfect storm of 3 things are coming together to propel software development and visualization:
- a massive amount of computing power available to anyone
- incredible amounts of bandwidth; the capacity added from the last decade is finally being taken up
- smart embedded objects in devices
One of the pain points of technology is Web 2.0. Gary reminded us that Guy Hamblen from UPS encouraged everyone to embrace collaborative social computing.
3. Global Sourcing
“We have to take the out out of out-sourcing.” Gary noted that global sourcing is the seminal social and economic moment of our age. Global sourcing is something already embraced by leading companies like GM and UPS, and it is something that is around to stay. Gary noted that only 18% of the world’s population has Internet connectivity, but that 53% have access to a cell phone. He predicted that cell phones will become access points to the Internet.
Earlier in the day, Gary attended Rich Frost’s GM case study presentation and his key takeaway is that software visualization is language and culture neutral.
4. IT Funding
In the short term, IT budget will be growing at only going up 5% or so per year. However, in the big picture the dollars available for innovation and growth will move out into the lines of business. “In the real world,” positioned Gary, “IT execs have to let go of innovation, as innovation must be owned by the lines of business”.
5. CIO Priorities
Gary also thinks that the CIO function is at a crossroads. CIOs and their organizations can either embrace the notion of re-invention or accept the path where IT becomes a utility - an overseer of the data and networks that run a company. Only the CIO’s and others who have reinvented themselves will be around in the future.
Gary’s closing thoughts came from Dick Rutan and Guy Hamblen. “To determine your limitations you must exceed your limitations”, “fail fast and fail often” and “have fun”. In the Key Bank case study presentation, Gary heard the iRise champion say that her users now ask if they can “iRise an application”. Gary made a comment to Emmet that you know you’ve made it when iRise becomes a verb.