The increasing consumerisation of IT will result in tech budget control moving outside of the IT department, forcing a change in mindset and priorities.
So claims analyst firm Gartner which believes bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives, in addition to big data and cloud computing will become an increasing focus for businesses in 2012 and beyond. It described such changes as meaning "technologies and costs become more fluid and distributed."
"The continued trends toward consumerisation and cloud computing highlight the movement of certain former IT responsibilities into the hands of others," said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow.
"As users take more control of the devices they will use, business managers are taking more control of the budgets IT organisations have watched shift over the last few years."
These changes more than a third (35 per cent) of company IT overheads will be outside of the IT department's control - will disrupt the current way IT departments think about resources and budget. But those who drag their heels when it comes to embracing this evolution have an uncertain future ahead, Gartner warns.
"As the world of IT moves forward, CIOs are finding that they must coordinate their activities in a much wider scope than they once controlled," Plummer added. "While this might be a difficult prospect for IT departments, they must now adapt or be swept aside."
Increasing volumes of data, while a boon in terms of customer insight and engagement, will create challenges around managing and interpreting that information. As budgetary control shifts, there is a concern that the IT department will no long be able to guarantee just how accurate or consistent that data is.
"Any organisation that wishes to accelerate in 2012 must establish in itself a significant discipline of coordinating distributed activities," Plummer said. "They must establish relationship management as a key skill and train their people accordingly. The reason for this is that the lack of control can only be combated through coordinative activities. The IT organisation of the future must coordinate those who have the money, those who deliver the services, those who secure the data, and those consumers who demand to set their own pace for use of IT."
Other changes headed businesses' way in 2012 and beyond include the bubble bursting for enterprise social software companies (2014); the cannibalization of outsourcing revenue by low-cost cloud services (by 2015); Development will focus on mobiles and tablets rather than PCs 4:1 (2015); More than 85 per cent of Fortune 500 companies will exploit big data by 2015; The price tag associated with 80 per cent of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge (2015); Independent security testing will be a prerequisite for 40 per cent of business cloud users (2016); Desktop clients will be no more for at least half of enterprise email users (2016); Independent security testing will be a prerequisite for 40 per cent of business cloud users (2016); and more than half of the Global 1,000 firms will have place sensitive customer information in the public cloud (2016); the monetary impact of cyber crime will grown by 10 per cent year-on-year.
