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Deloitte talks tech in 2011

Published: Mar 21, 2011

 Consulting       

While maybe better known for its strategy portfolio, Deloitte is an increasingly relevant player in the ever-expanding field of IT consulting. And like any good consultancy, Deloitte's tech consulting unit likes to back up its sales pitch rhetoric by publishing research reports on its chosen specialty. Enter Tech Trends 2011: The natural convergence of business and IT, published today by Deloitte Consulting.

Headlining this year's annual report are a couple of top-5 lists of the most significant techie trends of the year; essentially, what's hot and what's not for CIOs around the world.

As for what's hot, Deloitte consultants call these trends "Disruptive Deployments": new prospects in the tech sector that Deloitte thinks businesses should embrace while still blossoming. Though "not necessarily disruptive" in a literal sense, these double-Ds "present significant new opportunities to improve business processes, rethink operations or even enter into new business models."

The DDs: Applied Mobility (or 'apps', as Apple and everyone else calls them); Capability Clouds (or 'the cloud', as IBM and everyone else calls it); Real Analytics (returning to the nuts and bolts of good ol' modeling and analysis); Social Computing (using the "digital exhaust" of social networking to mine for valuable info); and User Engagement (delivering better "usability" for IT customers).

What's not hot, then? Well, it's the (Re)Emerging Enablers of course! These are Disruptive Deployments of years gone by, high-tech trends that "many CIOs have spent time, thought, and resources on in the past." In a phrase, they're so yesterday. But not all is lost: CIOs can revisit these trends, Deloitte says, thanks to the rise of new(er) technologies that make them relevant again. "These familiar topics deserve another look due to specific factors in the technology or business environment," the report says.

The Enablers: Almost Enterprise Applications (better than the cloud?); CIOs as Revolutionaries (Che Guevara in suspenders); Cyber Intelligence (John Wheeler is not dead!); End of Death of ERP (newer not always better); and Visualization (revitalized by social networking).

Bill Briggs, director at Deloitte Consulting and a co-author of the report, wraps it up for us foolish non-CIOs with eloquence and grace. "It's evident that the next 18 months will be pivotal for widespread adoption of technologies such as cloud, social computing, analytics and mobile technologies," he says. "CIOs should keep ahead of these trends to help generate top returns not just of IT, but the business of the business."

For more information:
Deloitte: Technology Trends 2011

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