Future ramble...

As a 30 plus year veteran of the IT industry (wow that went fast), and having built several businesses from the ground up, I have learned a whole lot.  And having built all this business wisdom I often find myself viewing the industry from a philosophical perspective.

Quite why I am sharing this on LinkedIn I don’t know, perhaps it just seems the best place to ramble a theory or two.  Perhaps it needs more of this type of content, then again maybe it doesn’t :-).

There are many great things about working as a technologist / futurist.  You get to theorise about what is coming, when you get this wrong you get to adjust and hone those theories, and in my case, you also get to look under the hood of how everyone else does business.

This “looking under the hood” teaches you a lot.  You see industries that are perpetual, you see exciting sunrise industry, and you try to help those sunset business models get a bit of a technology edge.  You certainly get a very clear perspective of the changes that your industry has brought to the world.

 So, why am I concerned about my own industry?  Well, I can see a lot of commoditisation going on, I can see a strong “race to the bottom” mentality, and I can see many skills disappearing that I never thought would.  So is it possible that we are beginning to architect our own demise?

Commoditisation concerns me a bit, everything as a “service”, everything “rented”, everyone’s data “somewhere else”, lots and lots of information “silos”.  All reliant on a single fibre cable provider across the pacific.  I was always of the view that IT services would be a perpetual business model, now I am not too sure.

Interesting also, to see the lack of investment in basic technology skills, you know, the “common sense” ones.  Everyone is an expert, yet very few actually know what they are really talking about (thank goodness for Google).  We are becoming highly reliant on services and skills delivered from other countries (globalisation perhaps).

 So what does this mean for the future of IT Services in this part of the globe?  As a futurist I would obviously say “adapt or die like the dinosaurs”.  Build services and strategies for the future more than the now. Teach customers the value of holding their valuable information locally, and the silo effect that multiple cloud services introduce.  Don’t join the “race to the bottom”. Add amazing value to your customer’s business. Stay humble and let your customers champion your skills. Do what you do incredibly well, and don't be tempted to do what everyone else is doing. And most importantly, think outside the square, because that is where you will find the blue ocean of business!