I’m bullish on software — specifically design and engineering — and I’m starting to see that many of today’s business leaders share that opinion as they come to terms with digital disruption and the age of the customer’s impact on their competitive strategies. I hear this often as I travel to meet with both business and IT leaders, and I increasingly see it in the survey data we annually collect. What do I see in our most recent Forrsights Business Decision-Makers Survey, Q4 2012 and Forrsights Software Survey, Q4 2012 results? Software, from design through development, matters:

• Business leaders have revenue growth first and foremost on their minds. On average, 70% of these business leaders place a high or critical priority on revenue growth, customer acquisition and retention, and addressing rising customer experience expectations for 2013. Our data suggests business leaders are 50% more likely to identify these as critical initiatives than they do margin improvement or reducing operating costs. Growth and customer experience improvement take business priority.

The changing business and IT landscapes bring increased demand for IT (or IT services) AND increasing complexity. The slide below (a tweaked version of a genuine Glenn O’Donnell original) paints a picture of increasing complexity and an impending capability gulf; if it isn’t already here.

So can IT organizations cope by increasing their manual ability, usually by employing or buying in more people resource?

Even if they could get suitable resource (availability and recruitment can be issues), could the parent business afford the jump in labor costs as these continue to be a highly-visible element of overall IT service delivery costs? Adding more people doesn’t necessarily fit in with the now oft-quoted mantra of “do (or deliver) more with less.”

A recent webinar with ServiceNow looked at drivers for and opportunities from automation, and how to approach building the business case for service management AND automation. Where Forrester defines automation as:

“Tools that perform functions otherwise done by humans.”

If you want to cut to the chase (i.e. don’t want to read the blog) …

… Then the on demand webinar can be found here: http://info.servicenow.com/LP=1021 (sign up required)

Forrester cloud computing expert James Staten recently published 10 Cloud Predictions For 2013 with contributions from nine other analysts, including myself. The prediction that is near and dear to my heart is #10: "Developers will awaken to: development isn't all that different in the cloud," That's right, it ain't different. Not much anyway. Sure. It can be single-click-easy to provision infrastructure, spin up an application platform stack, and deploy your code. Cloud is great for developers. And Forrester's cloud developer survey shows that the majority of programming languages, frameworks, and development methodologies used for enterprise application development are also used in the cloud.

Forget Programming Language Charlatans

Forget the vendors and programming language charlatans that want you to think the cloud development is different. You already have the skills and design sensibility to make it work. In some cases, you may have to learn some new APIs just like you have had to for years. As James aptly points out in the post: "What's different isn't the coding but the services orientation and the need to configure the application to provide its own availability and performance. And, frankly this isn't all that new either. Developers had to worry about these aspects with websites since 2000." The best cloud vendors make your life easier, not different.

Mobile App Is A Great First Cloud App

Yesterday BMC announced MyIT, which it describes as a “new enterprise software solution that empowers employees to take personal control over the delivery of the IT services and information they need — anytime, anywhere, from any device.” I was demoed it prior to the announcement, and it definitely does provide employees with greater insight into, and control over, the IT services they consume.

My initial reaction?

Once I had got the initial thoughts of “I don’t like the name” — because it seemed “dated,” and because something like this is about more than IT — out of my mind, the jigsaw pieces that make up my opinion started to fall into place:

• It is embracing so many of the challenges faced by IT organizations (and their customers), such as increasing customer expectations of IT per se, mobility, personal hardware (corporate and BYOD), customer service and support … and I could go on.
• It picks up and runs with, not so much social as many would expect, but the consumer-led penchant for self-service (both for service delivery and support).
• It starts to leverage the capabilities of our “gadgets” that are often neglected in the corporate (software) environment.
• It makes service catalog more relevant and more accessible — service catalog is really about self-service from the customer interface POV. This could be self-service on steroids.