“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
– Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
IBM was the market leader in technology throughout the years with their market status really only declining in the 1990’s. If IBM still only focused on selling mainframes, would they still be in existence today? While IBM excelled at the concept of utility computing throughout the years – installing fully accessorized systems with lots of CPUs, memory, disk and other hardware but only activating what customers paid for – they failed to quickly adjust to the trend of distributed computing in the early 1990s. This could have been the end of the company, but through strong leadership and strategy they have been able to “return to power” as a highly respected consultative organization.
IDC announced today that year to year growth of cloud computing will be over 20% – growing from $21.5B to $72.9B by 2015. What does this mean for traditional integration companies that focus on delivering data centers, infrastructure, security solutions, communications and other on-premise solutions? That $50B of additional spending on cloud computing has to come from someplace.
When the revenues are flowing into your organization it’s tough to think about investing in the “next big thing” – but this is when it’s most critical to invest into a strategic analysis of where the market is going. By positioning yourself today for tomorrow’s business needs, you position yourself as a market leader as the market evolves. Eventually you become known for your focus on advanced and emerging technologies – especially if you understand how to assist businesses with increasing efficiency, decreasing costs, improving customer service and increasing profits as a result of the implementation of this advanced technology. While commoditized service offerings have low profit potential, advanced and emerging service offerings can drive significant success for an organization.
And all you have to do is invest some time in thinking ahead.
Chris Labatt-Simon
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