Accenture has just issued it's annual vision statement on enterprise technology, and describes it in one, succinct term: "elastic." There is also a lot mention of Web services and REST as enablers.
As the report observes early on: "Elements of the elastic business already are starting to take shape. More and more high-performance businesses are thinking (and acting) in terms of
the capabilities of fluid, rapid-response networks rather than in the context of long-standing relationships with discrete sets of traditional entities or of conventional operating models."
What are these fluid, rapid-response networks made of? Accenture pins it down to four areas:
Internet/cloud computing: "This new paradigm enables technical capabilities--hardware, software and storage--to be sourced through the Internet across company firewalls and national boundaries... The new capabilities can be bought as services (rather than products)
in a pay-as-you-go model. Internet computing is enabled by a plethora of seemingly unrelated technologies.... Emerging standards -- Web services and REST -- enable software components running anywhere on the Internet to interact with each other."
Data and decisions: "A major impediment to accessing data from big, complex enterprise systems is being solved by standards such as Web services and REST that are widely supported by technology vendors. New technologies such as mashups are enabling users to access and manipulate live data from multiple sources to suit their particular job needs rather than depending on standard and usually out-of-date reports... Business process management is gradually maturing and has promise for automating the adaptation of business processes in response to patterns detected in data.... There is a dramatic increase in the amount of public information being generated by individuals. Data is flowing from current employees and potential hires, from staff at customers and competitors, from suppliers and from many other stakeholders--data in blogs, social networks and content-sharing sites that are waiting to be mined."
m is the new e: "Two distinct factors--the speed of innovation and the extent of worldwide
penetration--support predictions that mobile devices will augment and in many cases supplant personal computers as the new e-business channel for employees and customers."
Convergence of the 4Cs -- communication, collaboration, communities and content: "Companies and individuals currently have a wide range of options for communication and collaboration from e-mail to voice-over-IP to high-end telepresence, social networks, wikis and blogs. Until recently, these options have been point solutions to resolve specific communication needs. Fortunately, different combinations of these technologies are gradually beginning to converge."
As the report observes early on: "Elements of the elastic business already are starting to take shape. More and more high-performance businesses are thinking (and acting) in terms of
the capabilities of fluid, rapid-response networks rather than in the context of long-standing relationships with discrete sets of traditional entities or of conventional operating models."
What are these fluid, rapid-response networks made of? Accenture pins it down to four areas:
Internet/cloud computing: "This new paradigm enables technical capabilities--hardware, software and storage--to be sourced through the Internet across company firewalls and national boundaries... The new capabilities can be bought as services (rather than products)
in a pay-as-you-go model. Internet computing is enabled by a plethora of seemingly unrelated technologies.... Emerging standards -- Web services and REST -- enable software components running anywhere on the Internet to interact with each other."
Data and decisions: "A major impediment to accessing data from big, complex enterprise systems is being solved by standards such as Web services and REST that are widely supported by technology vendors. New technologies such as mashups are enabling users to access and manipulate live data from multiple sources to suit their particular job needs rather than depending on standard and usually out-of-date reports... Business process management is gradually maturing and has promise for automating the adaptation of business processes in response to patterns detected in data.... There is a dramatic increase in the amount of public information being generated by individuals. Data is flowing from current employees and potential hires, from staff at customers and competitors, from suppliers and from many other stakeholders--data in blogs, social networks and content-sharing sites that are waiting to be mined."
m is the new e: "Two distinct factors--the speed of innovation and the extent of worldwide
penetration--support predictions that mobile devices will augment and in many cases supplant personal computers as the new e-business channel for employees and customers."
Convergence of the 4Cs -- communication, collaboration, communities and content: "Companies and individuals currently have a wide range of options for communication and collaboration from e-mail to voice-over-IP to high-end telepresence, social networks, wikis and blogs. Until recently, these options have been point solutions to resolve specific communication needs. Fortunately, different combinations of these technologies are gradually beginning to converge."
This is something I know has been talked about a lot in IBM around SOA/Business flexibility discussions. In fact we are putting together a virtual world event inside our virtual Forbidden City that will look at this issue. If you are interested, check out the event website.
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