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Happy New Year. As as traditional at this time of year, I will make a few predictions for the IT landscape in 2008.

Or rather, I will predict some acknowledgements - state some ideas that I believe will be publicly accepted by the end of 2008. These are about what might be called the "new wave of IT": the host of new techniques and technologies that have recently become contenders for a place on the enterprise backbone. SOA and BPMS are obvious candidates for inclusion, along with associated acronyms such as CEP, BRM, mashup, and so on.

So here are the acknowledgements that I believe will happen in 2008:

1. The new wave of IT solutions is far too complex for most people


2. The new wave of IT solutions raises as many problems as it solves


3. There are fundamental business problems that need help from IT but that are not addressed at all by the new wave of IT solutions

Over the next few days I'll take these in turn, starting with:

The new wave of IT solutions is far too complex for most people

If there is a single subtext to the various discussions I have with business people, it is confusion. And this is hardly surprising. Consider BPM, for example, and let's look again at Ismael Ghalimi's original definition of "BPM 2.0" from Feb 2006:

BPM 2.0 is not for non-technical business analysts. Never should have been, never will, and nobody should care.
http://itredux.com/blog/2006/02/01/bpm-20/

Despite this frank admission from a founding figure in the BPM space, and the efforts of certain commentators to explain that BPM is first and foremost a management approach, analysts and vendors continue to present BPM as a set of tools aimed at business users. Presumably this is in the hope that the take-up of such tools will thereby be helped, by broadening the potential market. However, if anything take-up has been harmed by this approach - most business people I talk to are apprehensive about BPM tools, even if they are drawn to BPM as a means of organizational transformation.

Let's face it head-on: BPM tools are simply a new form of programming, and as with any other new form of programming, it is not yet well understood how to use them safely. In particular, mainstream programming aids such as automated testing and static analysis are not even available for BPM tools.

It is no different with SOA, CEP, BRM, mashup, and so on. In the end, these are all techie gadgets, and the first step towards making good use of them is to recognize that.

TAKE AWAY

The SOA analyst firm ZapThink, in their own predictions for 2008, write:

many organizations are still struggling with the business case for SOA, or even worse, have made a wrong turn or reached some kind of impasse with their SOA initiatives
http://www.ebizq.net/news/8772.html

It's hardly surprising. There are new business ideas emerging originally from IT, and resulting new software tools aimed at business users, but the larger incumbent software vendors are still busy trying to sell technologies. As a result, business users are either suspicious or struggling (or both) - and in 2008 we may well see a backlash.

Tune in to the next post for some more home truths about the new wave of IT. Welcome or not, you should consider these ideas before trusting your career, and your organization's livelihood, to the new wave of IT :-)

Posted by keithhb in Business Process Management • Service-Orientated Architecture |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us