Cisco is focusing on moving its IT towards business technology – and other businesses should do the same, according to its chief technology officer, Kevin Bloch.
He was speaking at a Journey to the Future keynote session on the transition of IT at the Westcon Group Imagine 2011 conference in Sydney.
The aim of the session was to show the changes in the consumption style of IT and how Bring-Your-Own-Devices (BYOD) has revolutionised the industry.
According to Bloch, the change in consumption patterns of consumers wanting a global, real time and fast connection has resulted in market and social disruption, eventually leading to digitisation and digital distribution.
“In Australia, we predict that by 2015, every single Australian will have 3.6 connections. When you bring digitisation and digital distribution together, you get some positive and some negative explosions,” Bloch said.
He said industries such as government, retail, video, books, music, newspapers, broadcast TV, toys, games and universities will be impacted by the growth of mobile technologies.
This, in turn, will result in the IT market moving towards social, video, mobile and virtual (Cloud) environments, all enabled by the network as a platform.
“We have to broaden our vision about architecture. I think it is a fundamental message and transition point not only to the industry but to individuals as well, because the basic tenant of architecture is to support IT as a business technology,” Bloch said.
Developments in the intelligence of a network and an architectural approach to BYO devices would result in IT capability alignment, simplification and integration of technologies and reduced investment, he said.
Bloch also added that although IT spend by businesses is currently at a flat rate, corporate technology spend within those companies has increased by 17 to 20 per cent.
He attributed this spend to the growing number of mobile devices in the market.
“We are now already transitioning into the mobile world. People want to move and they want to work and they want to play. We have to enable that. Anything and everything will be connected. With already seven billion devices connected, by 2015, it will reach 15 billion connected devices,” he concluded.
