For the past several years, the IT industry has been transitioning
to a whole new platform, built on mobile computing, cloud services, and big
data analytics technologies. Yet today, our business and technology is neither mobile,
nor as connected as we would like to be. It is high time to rethink about our
long-term vision and therefore listing the three main reasons to redefine our IT investment strategy: 1.Trend in mobile technology adoption, 2. Expand our presence in emerging
markets, and 3. Take advantages from cloud computing technologies. If we do not
act early on, there is a possibility that we might lose significant business to
our competitors and eventually slip our role as a business leader.
Trend in mobile technology adoption
Mobile platform and devices aren’t just for now, but they are
the future, and have certain impact to our business. The proliferation and use
of mobile devices have changed the way we operate things on daily basis, by
allowing users to stay connected to vital systems and data on the go. Innovative
leaders and new technologies continue to emerge expanding the options for use
and test the assumed limitations of these mobile devices. In order to be
successful we must understand how mobile platform can help us expand our
business more efficiently and effectively. An estimation by Gartner Inc. that
the year 2014 will see smart phones and tablets numbering 1.5 billion in sales,
up 50% from 2013, it’s no secret that the future of business technology lies in
mobile apps and solutions. Since our customers are mainly students and teachers,
where the mobile usage is 90 to 95 percent, allows a potential growth for our
revenues if we provide our services on these smart devices. A recent internal
survey results shows that our competitors are already ahead on expanding their
business on to smart devices.
Expand our presence
in emerging markets
Developments in emerging markets are started reshaping key
global markets because of their oversized share of industry growth. The BRIC countries will continue to dominate IT investments among the emerging markets
with China capturing more than a quarter of this investment. While mobile
devices will continue to drive worldwide IT investments, the mobile access
offered by these devices is impacting consumer behavior as more and more people
turn to their smartphones and tablets as their primary means of going online.
The popular embrace of Tablets will further accelerate this trend in 2014. In
many emerging markets, spending power is rising but still low by
developed-world standards. In those locations, multinationals are competing on
price in ways that will force them to innovate. To be competitive in emerging
markets, we will have to reinvent in our technology. Emerging markets will be
not only a source of significant revenue growth for us but also source of
talent, true innovation and groundbreaking opportunities to business, which we
can leverage on a global scale. Emerging markets will create plenty of
opportunities in the smart technology, and they will not be limited to
for-profit enterprises. We must enhance our product accessibility not only for browser-based
users but also for smart device users.
Take advantages from
cloud computing technologies
Analysts have been talking about cloud computing for years,
but cloud-based services are finally starting to take off. More and more
companies are moving towards public cloud services, transforming much of the
current IT hardware, software and database markets into infinitely flexible
utilities. Cloud computing will potentially reduce both initial and recurring
costs for IT, increasing flexibility and lowering their risks. Many of our
applications being day based, however, we are paying full price for the
infrastructure and hardware for full year. As we barely use half of the capacity, we can
take the advantage of cloud computing and bring down the cost. User base for
many of the applications are continuously growing and this trend will continue.
Cloud computing is a useful platform for both horizontal and vertical scalability,
it is easy to scale out the infrastructure and serve more customers with no
downtime.
Conclusion
We have a
tremendous business opportunity for revenue growth if we redefine our strategy about IT investments in mobile platform and cloud
computing. In order for us to be competitive as a business leader, we must take
advantage of “the trends in mobile technology adoption”, “emerging markets” and “cloud
computing technologies”.
