Wondering about the form IT will take over the next few years is only natural. Technology has evolved so much in recent years that leaders are eagerly anticipating what comes next and hoping it falls in line with their own plans. New developments are changing business mores, and companies are becoming eager to tie IT enhancements and innovations directly into their strategies. Business intelligence software is a key part of this constantly evolving landscape.
CIOs predict new world
According to Forrester Research analyst John McCarthy, his firm’s North America CIO Forum gave several hints about the direction IT is taking. These indications could point to the future of business intelligence development, and many more technological trends besides. McCarthy stated that many of the thinkers on hand (85 percent) opined that the cloud will become the prominent delivery vector for IT enhancements. The public cloud, while it was met with some initial cynicism based on its radical new approach to resource sharing, has become a settled part of plans. CIOs have begun to process the idea that it is how they will be interacting with the world in the years ahead.
McCarthy also stated that CIOs have predicted the end of their own autonomous departments. While technology is, and will be, relevant, 90 percent of the executives at the convention voted that the age of a central IT department will break down by 2020, with experts in various types of tech use becoming parts of other departments. This development is in line with one of the widely observed trends in the business world in recent months, with business leaders taking a more active role in purchasing, deploying and leveraging new IT purchases.
BI repercussions
Both of the above points could hint at new business intelligence deployments. For example, the delivery of software through the cloud will come as no shock to the firms already using SaaS BI to measure their internal and external information with no need for onsite hardware or lengthy install and upgrade headaches. By a similar token, BI has begun to go beyond the IT department already, indicating that it will still be part of the enterprise world in a post-IT era. Self-service BI is meant for workers of all backgrounds.
Gartner survey data on analytics software sales backed up the presence of those trends. The source noted that buyers outside of IT are now purchasing BI and that SaaS has become a go-to delivery method for certain important types of everyday data use.
(CIOs predict new world of IT / shutterstock)
