Conference summary report

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1 Thank you for making Symposium/ITxpo 2011 our most inspiring event ever. Your enthusiasm, insights and willingness to share with your peers is why Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the world s largest and most important gathering of s and senior IT executives. Transforming IT s relevance in an organization Re-imagining IT our theme for 2011 calls for you and your peers to lead from the front. While there still remains a great deal of economic uncertainty, the explosion of IT and advanced technologies is undeniable. As a result, there is a much-needed focus on customers, employees, consumers, competitors and suppliers. They are all quickly becoming part of the IT ecosystem that will be supported by the IT organization. Given that backdrop, it s critical for leaders like you to rethink or re-imagine IT s relevance within the organization. We hope your experience at Symposium/ITxpo this year gave you a fresh pair of eyes on the issues that matter most from supporting new business models to gaining positive impact from transformative technology initiatives like cloud, social networking, mobility and context-aware computing. To assist you in your reporting efforts, we ve created this special report to provide you with an at-a-glance review of select keynotes, session take-aways and other conference highlights. Share your experience and help shape Symposium/ITxpo 2012 Planning for Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2012 is already underway and your input is critical. If there is something you d like to share with us regarding any aspect of the event an idea or suggestion that may have occurred to you since you completed your evaluation form please simone.hulse@gartner.com. Thank you for your feedback, and we look forward to seeing you again next year at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, November 2012, in the Gold Coast, Australia. Contents Message from the chair 2 program session highlights Symposium/ITxpo Sponsors 10 Post-event tools and tips 11 Get ready for the next evolution in business 9 1

2 Andy Rowsell-Jones Vice President Message from Program Track Manager Andy Rowsell-Jones, Vice President Aimed at IT executives, the program at Symposium combined a mix of leadership, management, and technical topics that are core to the success of IT leaders across all industries and geographies. Sessions ranged from advice on what IT leaders should put on their leadership agenda for 2012 (Re-Imagining IT: The 2012 Agenda), to how to rise to the challenge of realizing benefits from IT investments (Stepping up Your Benefits Realization Maturity), to communicating with the board of directors (What the Board of Directors Want to Know About IT). Also examined were the thorniest of issues how to make decisions in a real-world, political environment ( Power Politics), and the best ways to reinvigorate efforts to drive business innovation (Masters of Innovation: What s Can Learn from the World s Best Innovators and Program Lunch Guest Speaker). However, for an IT leader, leadership and management skills have to be augmented by an understanding of IT trends. New technologies like mobility, cloud, social media, software as a service and virtualization are challenging IT s fundamental practices. In addition to the vast array of presentations on these topics found within the broader Symposium, the program included IT leader-focused sessions on social media (The Social Organization: How to Build a Corporate Competency in Social Media) and mobile technologies (Net IT Out: ipad Deployment in the Enterprise). More detail on selected parts of this program appears below. The 2011 program at Symposium was designed to equip s and IT leaders to rise to today s challenges. Program Session Highlights Re-Imagining IT: The 2012 Agenda Presenter: Mark P. McDonald, Distinguished Analyst 2011 has been a year of economic, strategic and technological transitions and achievements that have made IT stronger. Over the next four years, almost half of all s expect to operate the majority of their applications and infrastructures via cloud technologies. This change requires s to re- imagine IT and lead it through a process of creative destruction. This session highlighted the context challenges facing s today and how they can open new opportunities. Here are highlights of some of those key challenges. Digitization creates a new setting for IT s contribution Becoming a next-generation digital enterprise requires generating a greater percentage of enterprise revenue via information and Internet technologies. Businesses will need to become digital from the front office to the back, which will give s the opportunity to re-imagine IT as the center of the next digital revolution. 2

3 The enterprise needs new techniques to realize business benefits The importance s place on delivering projects and programs on-time, on-budget and within scope has obscured the fact that IT must also respond to an increasingly complex and demanding business agenda. IT organizations and their tools, approaches and standards focus on delivery, as opposed to value, and often represent little more than heritage baggage. IT leaders need to understand that benefits realization the realizing of business benefits depends on the rest of the enterprise doing its part. Delivering a new value proposition requires recasting IT resources and skills As IT organizations face increased pressure from Internet-based technology services and applications new skills are needed. Among them: enterprise architecture, internal relationship management and vendor management along with an improved knowledge of the business and its processes, especially since IT is now embedded in every process and in many products and services. Re-imagining the and the IT success cycle s need to re-imagine IT as a strategic catalyst and begin leading from that perspective. Lighterweight technologies have changed resource requirements, letting IT meet increased demand for innovation and solutions that support growth. Net IT Out: ipad Deployment in the Enterprise Presenter: Nick Jones, Distinguished Analyst Nick Jones Distinguished Analyst The ipad is one of the most influential devices to arrive on the corporate scene in the last decade. Adoption is often driven by employee enthusiasm for usability, style and simplicity. But because Apple is not an enterprise vendor, corporate use raises many new challenges, including new BYOD practices, which imply significant changes to the way technology is owned and managed. There are also many types of ipad deployment, varying from the very formal to deployment of rogue devices. What s more, some organizations that piloted the ipad have returned to more traditional devices for reasons arising from usability issues. The session walked attendees through an ipad deployment in a typical enterprise and offered the following tactical guidelines for consideration: The best ipad ROI will often occur in situations where the ipad replaces a PC. However, this will only be possible for minority of staff. Look for opportunities with knowledge works and customerfacing staff. Decide what types of ipad deployment you are prepared to permit. Adopt application architectures that allow applications to be delivered securely to the ipad today and to other tablets in the future. 3

4 Identify and adopt ways to secure applications and services on devices you don t own. ipads are a catalyst for employee-owned IT. Survey employees to determine what personal IT they own and how often they use it for work purposes, then consider appropriate pilots. Look for new opportunities enabled by the ipad. For instance, many airlines use ipads as replacements for expensive kiosk systems. The ipad won t be the only tablet you ll deploy. Define policies and technologies with an eye toward the future. The Social Organization: How to Build a Corporate Competency in Social Media Presenter: Mark P. McDonald, Distinguished Analyst Mark P. McDonald Distinguished Analyst As a leader, it s your job to extract maximum talent, energy, knowledge, and innovation from your customers and employees. That means your business needs to become a social organization. In this session, Gartner Analyst Mark McDonald argued that the best way to do it is by targeting social media to important business purposes. But there is a caveat. Social media has less to do with technology and more to do with building communities and fostering mass collaboration. What will result is a new source of competitive advantage, which can help your business reach levels of business performance that transcend the walls of your organization. The path to becoming a social organization follows these five management imperatives: Remember that it s all about productive mass collaboration, not the technology. Treat social media strategically. Take responsibility for creating and fostering collaborative communities. Stay focused on purpose. It s the key to productive collaboration. Guide and nurture mass collaboration. Don t try to prescribe or control it. Stepping up Your Benefits Realization Maturity Presenter: Dave Aron, Gartner Fellow Dave Aron Gartner Fellow When it comes to achieving expected value from IT-intensive investments consistently few organizations have cracked the code. Guided by Gartner Analyst Dave Aron, attendees discovered practical steps to improve their benefits realization capability and gained real-world insight about what gets in the way. 4

5 Benefits realization is the process of comparing the actual benefits received from a business initiative with those anticipated in the business case. Its focus cuts across many disciplines, including project, program and portfolio management; change management; and strategy. But at its heart lies the business case. Even before building the business case IT needs to establish that other non-it professionals should be accountable for benefits realization. If benefits are not measurable and accountabilities not appropriately assigned, IT will be left holding the bag. The good news: when benefits are measurable and accountabilities are properly placed, the success rate of IT investments increases. Power Politics Presenter: Tina Nunno, Distinguished Analyst Tina Nunno Distinguished Analyst What does the manner in which a wields power say about say him or her as a leader? An awful lot according to Gartner Analyst Tina Nunno. Nunno s session on Power Politics drew upon research recently published by Gartner Executive Programs in a special report written by members of Gartner s and executive leadership team. Based on case-study interviews with s from the Americas, EMEA and the Asia/Pacific region, the report addressed the question How can s grow their power and wield it to become stronger business leaders? The overwhelming majority of survey respondents suggested it was time for IT leaders to strengthen their position within the organization. Using that view as a starting point, Nunno laid out specific frameworks on how to realize sustainable power at a time when too many s are viewed schizophrenically. Are they business leaders with revenue-generating vision or jean-clad technicians who keep the BlackBerry and telephone working? Positing that power politics is an ethically neutral construct which people use to make decisions and resolve conflicts, Nunno offered the following recommendations to gain needed ground: If you do not have power you cannot wield it for good or evil. Power is like a muscle. If you do not use it, you lose it. Creating coalitions is a power imperative. Using power means knowing which battles are worth fighting for strategic gain, even if you lose in the short term. 5

6 What the Board of Directors Want to Know About IT Presenter: Tina Nunno, Distinguished Analyst Tina Nunno Distinguished Analyst Communicating technology issues to non-technical business executives is often a challenge, but presenting technology plans and investments to the board of directors can take that challenge to a whole new level. Which information will the board deem the most relevant? And once identified, how can s communicate that information to board members in new and compelling ways. Gartner Analyst Tina Nunno provided the answers by way of actionable guidelines that focused on these key areas: Let the board know that appropriate controls are in place: Boards look for controls across four primary dimensions: financial approach, enterprise information and privacy, operational excellence, and human capital management. There are only a small number of things the board considers valuable: Cost-savings, top-line growth and risk reduction. While each of these key value criteria is important, it is unusual for one investment to provide all three at one time. Be prepared to become adept at analyzing the options and tradeoffs of each investment relative to these criteria. The board wants to know when it will see value: s must sense and understand the investment mood and be ready to time initiatives appropriately. The board wants a comprehensive risk analysis for each IT-related investment: Consider multiple risk categories when analyzing investments and communicating at the board level. The most common are financial, implementation, skills availability, data and privacy, security, vendor and regulatory. The board benefits from a total-cost-of ownership approach to estimating costs which considers both implementation costs and run or life cycle costs for the initiative. Present data within a context: Rather than focusing on discrete data points that may be misinterpreted, present data in context to ensure understanding. Always show before and after successes: It is critical to communicate successes in IT because doing so builds and maintains credibility and trust. The board wants to know: do we have the right skills? High-performing enterprises recognize that human capital management can make the difference between competitive advantage and poor financial results. They will seek to understand how s are managing talent and skills. Re-experience the wisdom and wit of Symposium/ITxpo keynote speakers. Access them along with key session recaps at gartner.com/au/symposium. 6

7 Masters of Innovation: What s Can Learn from the World s Best Innovators Presenter: Dave Aron, Gartner Fellow Dave Aron Gartner Fellow Successful innovation is about mind-set and goals. It doesn t necessarily require significant investments of money. But, ultimately, all value creation and improvement in business depends on it. The faster-moving and more competitive the environment, the more important innovation is. The challenge is that most businesses and public-sector agencies naturally evolve to a business-asusual state that is hostile to innovation because it rejects disruptive change. Because of this, relatively few enterprises and IT organizations are consistently and successfully innovative. In a compelling presentation highlighting key traits the world s best innovators share, Gartner Analyst Dave Aron discussed how s can develop the very same strengths master innovators leverage to achieve breakthrough results on a consistent basis. Among them are: Steadiness of focus: Pressures notwithstanding, master innovators avoid dividing their focus and instead concentrate their attention in one of three areas of core strength protecting the creative space, driving toward a higher purpose or drawing on visionary leadership. Clarity of why : Masters spend more time understanding the problem and relatively less time upfront designing the solution. Rather than trying to figure out the problem intellectually, they sink into its context and live there for a while literally and metaphorically. Willingness to clean the slate: Master innovators are zero-based. At the start of a project they ask What would we like to achieve? rather than Here s what we ve got. They look well beyond the scope of their industries or environments for solutions. To start on the path of innovation, Aron offered the following recommendations: Choose your innovation core strength lead with it and be ready to fall back on it. Engage people based on their why more than their what. Worry less about skills gaps and think more about motivation and style. Are they creative and entrepreneurial? Get inspired from unusual sources. Keep the innovation process light and innovate the process itself. 7

8 Program Lunch Guest Speaker: Mike Walsh, CEO of Consumer Innovation Research Lab Tomorrow and Best-selling Author of Futuretainment The question that has been on my mind lately is this one: what next shifts will be capable of transforming business and markets. A leading authority on the digital future, Mike Walsh has helped some of the world s top companies fine-tune their digital strategies for the past decade. Mike previously ran the marketleading consumer insights house Jupiter Research in the Asia Pacific and held senior strategy roles at News Corporation in both the Australian and Asian markets. In a compelling keynote address, he shared his keen observations on the changing nature of innovation, how the technological expectations of next generation end-users will impact the nature of work and the increasing importance of data as a corporate asset. Here are highlights from his keynote session: The influence of Shanzai on innovation: The Chinese phenomenon called Shanzai refers to the production of high-quality, very rapid imitation of new, branded products by low-cost, nobrand competitors. Walsh views it as representing an open style of innovation with a grassroots mindset, which very well may portend a shift from high-tech R&D labs to a messier consumerdriven model. His advice to the audience: Keep an eye on emerging markets and their low-cost economic frameworks because in some ways constraint is the mother of invention. More than likely, we ll see some radical new forms of devices and services coming from this part of the world as Shanzai manufacturers continue to satisfy the aesthetics, value and needs of local populations. The rise of the Naturals: Walsh notes that the smartest kid at school is today is not the one who knows all the answers by rote by rather the one who can structure the best search queries on Google, build a very clever data model to extract information, or determine the accuracy of a Wikipedia entry. This new generation of end-users which Walsh terms naturals have never known life without computers or the internet and are poised to make a dramatic impact on the workplace within the coming years. By dint of their relationship to technology, naturals access information in new ways and so perceive the world differently than the generation preceding them. But the question is will the workplace have the ability to measure and leverage their capabilities? Walsh argues that new benchmarks for intelligence will be needed. The dominance of Data: In the future, the most valuable asset owned by corporations will be data. Markets will judge companies based on both the quality and quantity of data they collect as well what they can do with it. Consumers and businesses will expect transparency and greater control over their own data because, in a sense, it can shape their destinies. Walsh believes that the role of the is set to change in the new data era. Beyond managing technology, s will eventually have P&L responsibility for how an enterprise creates value from its information assets. 8

9 Get ready for the next evolution in business: The social organization New Social Media Book Released at Symposium Attendees were introduced to Gartner Analysts Mark McDonald and Anthony Bradley s recently published book, The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees. A social organization addresses significant business challenges and opportunities using the social media platform to create mass collaboration which Gartner predicts will be the next evolutionary pillar defining how work gets done around the world. In their just-published book, McDonald and Bradley share insights from their study of successes and failures at more than four hundred organizations that have used social technologies to foster and capitalize on customers and employees collective efforts. 9

10 Thank you to our 2011 Platinum Sponsors Please click here to view ALL sponsors 10

11 Post-event tools and tips Continue learning through Events On Demand and research reports Gartner Events On Demand Visit GartnerEventsOnDemand.com for: Attendee access Free streaming access for up to one year or upgrade to the download option. Share free access with a colleague Click on Register and gain access to 100 free sessions across the portfolio. If you have any questions, please contact eventsondemand@gartner.com. Learn more with relevant research Want to learn more about the topics that interest you most? Turn to the end of each analyst-led presentation for a list of related Gartner research notes. Gartner research is available on demand at gartner.com. Make the case for attending Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2012 Demonstrate the business value of Gartner Symposium/ITxpo with our online Justification Toolkit metrics and measures that clearly show how your attendance can make a direct contribution to your organization s success. Please visit gartner.com/au/symposium for your customizable template. 11