Conference summary report

Transcription

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 CIOs 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 Key take-aways 2 What attendees asked about 3 Conference session highlights Symposium/ITxpo Sponsors 7 Post-event tools and tips 8 Things to watch for challenges and opportunities 4 gartner.com/us/symposium 1

2 Eric Thoo Principle Research Analyst, Business Intelligence and Information Management Track Manager Message from Eric Thoo, Principal Research Analyst, Business Intelligence & Information Management Track Manager As IT leaders re-imagine how they deliver value, information will take center stage. How will that impact our world? Undoubtedly, business intelligence (BI) and information management (IM) will need to be on an equally strategic footing with the things that the business has cared about and paid attention to for many years, such as managing applications and re-engineering business process. What s more, those of us focusing on BI and IM will be called upon to deliver a cohesive and pervasive information infrastructure. In other words, information will have to be always available, where and when it s needed, in the right format and in a consistent and organized way across the business. Another consideration is unstructured data. What could you do if you were able to harness all the information sources that are less structured in nature? What opportunities could your organization capture? At Gartner, we ve given it a lot of thought and have come up with a strategic planning assumption that by 2015, those organizations that excel at integrating new, diverse and high-value types of information sources via a coherent information management infrastructure will outperform their industry peers financially by more than 20%. So hybrid use cases combining the worlds of structured and unstructured data are where we think the real power will be. As the need to differentiate your business becomes even more critical, so too will your ability to leverage and manage your information as an asset. Key take-aways Advance the discussion: We need to elevate the discussion of BI and IM above that of technology infrastructure. Both are strategic business disciplines and competencies that will drive tremendous business value in the long term, if done right. Reduce redundancies: It s time to stop siloed, overlapping and redundant infrastructural approaches and start deploying BI and information tools and technologies in a consistent, cohesive manner. Think beyond structured data: The ability to manage extreme data must become a core competency of enterprises that wish to leverage emerging forms of information (text, social, mobile, audio, video and more) to seek patterns that can inform business decisions (Pattern- Based Strategy). Cloud computing: Organizations must expand the focus of their data management efforts, ensuring that the same rigor in governance is applied to data residing beyond the firewall as to assets held on-premise. The challenge is typically not should we use alternative approaches, but how can we use them to our advantage, for which information assets can they be used, and what are the risks we must manage? 2

3 What attendees asked about We are considering cloud-based services for our information management strategies. What should we be mindful of? The benefits of cloud-based services can outweigh many of the traditional concerns companies have about adopting them. However, IT and business leaders shouldn t underestimate the implications for information management. If your organization is considering cloud-based services be sure to base your choices on providers ability to reliably deliver and provide access to your data. An essential sanity check related to information management can help prepare more effectively for cloud services projects: Ability to share data across on-premises and cloud-based services, such as integrating Software as a service (SaaS) data with an on-premises application to support data warehousing. Ways of monitoring and preventing service deficiencies across the collection of data and applications (combinations of on-premises and in the cloud) to ensure services and related data are delivered efficiently and reliably. Complexity involved in addressing information requirements, effort required, expertise and any hidden costs, such as for data conversion and migration. Before committing the enterprise to a cloud-based application (and creating new information in it), establish a clear understanding of the information delivery expectations across various corporate roles and set data priority levels Where is the data and what data can cause unaffordable service failures? For critical data, while there may be an SLA established to address ramifications in these events, it is, nevertheless, an aftermath and, consequently, unacceptable. Any data that is critical for business operations shouldn t depend on the availability or capability of a single cloud-based provider s infrastructure, but rather needs a range of capabilities to assist with information management. Organizations in countries where regulatory controls dictate where data can reside should verify that service providers data hosting plans ensure safety of business and customer data, and comply with local regulatory requirements, but do not impose data location restrictions on providers unless compliance is mandatory. The appropriate scope of information in some cases, such as data that is not personal or finance related, presents opportunities for using services in the cloud, while steering clear of regulatory restrictions. With extreme information challenges, what will happen to the data warehouse? The one big monolithic centralized store of data will give way to a logical and distributed model where certain kinds of data may live in the warehouse while other kinds may be distributed in operational systems and in the cloud. Multiple systems, including content management, data warehouses, data marts and specialized file systems tied together with data services and metadata, will become the logical enterprise data warehouse. The result: The way we do analysis and the way we manage it will happen in a more federated model. 3

4 Things to watch out for challenges and opportunities Information infrastructure: Information-related challenges are among the most significant issues facing CIOs and business leaders. Lack of agility, increased costs and governance risks arising from the rapidly expanding information landscape will derail many. The information capabilities framework (ICF) is a collection of technical capabilities that allows the enterprise to create value from information assets by addressing these challenges. See The Information Capabilities Framework: An Aligned Vision for Information Infrastructure (G ). The right analytics: Business intelligence isn t always about looking backward. Right now, there are some very new, sophisticated and forward-looking analytical approaches worthy of your consideration. These approaches are predictive, context-aware and pattern-based. And they go well beyond dashboards, with improved visualization capabilities that enable interaction with data in a personalized manner. Another trend worth noting is the ability to embed analytic capabilities directly into operational business processes at the point of action. 4

5 Conference session highlights Information 2020: Scenario for BI & Information Management Presenter: Ian Bertram, Managing Vice President Ian Bertram Managing Vice President Information volume, velocity and variety as well as the business hunger for better data is forcing a change in information infrastructure. To understand the magnitude of change, organizations must look at the entire cycle of information: access, storage, management, governance, analysis, collaboration and sharing. This session discussed the technologies, best practices and processes that will be impacted through 2020 and beyond, and noted that the 30-plus-year-old infrastructure, now in place, will be difficult to change. IT leaders were urged to guide their organizations in understanding how information is used, where it needs to be shared and integrated, and to focus on aligning the most critical areas to business imperatives. Also up for discussion were managing extreme data as a core competency, the evolution of the logical data warehouse, the rise of social analytics and the criticality of managing information as an asset. Content Management Strategies That Deliver Success Presenter: Gavin Tay, Research Director Gavin Tay Research Director After many years of fragmentation, frustration and failure, some strategies and better practices are emerging that showcase ECM s potential for ROI. Content management, as we know it, is coming to an end. What is emerging is a new world of enterprise content management that consists of four discrete areas: transactional content management, infrastructure content management, social content management and online channel optimization. Business buyers are seeking clear business cases for further investment. In this session, Gavin Tay examined ECM strategies to deliver the best long-term payoff, provided best practices and benchmarks to support the ECM business case and delivered the following recommendations: Over the short-term: ECM must be somebody s job establish roles and an organizational structure to support the vision. Build a vision for how content management can transform and drive your business. Focus on the four worlds and determine which is of most consequence right now. Review tactical plans for content, social and mobile. Set scope by assessing risk and value of information assets, across the breadth of the content continuum. Start with the highest-value people, process and content. 5

6 Longer term: Leverage existing technology and vendors. Determine what you have and how it supports the ideas of information infrastructure. Rationalize and align, and add where you have gaps. Investigate alternative delivery, and plan a cloud entry point. Accept the fact that technology alone will not succeed. Policies and governance models are critical for long-term value. So, too, is ROI from customer-facing applications. Information Management Goes Extreme: The Biggest Challenges for 21st-Century CIOs Presenter: John Radcliffe, Research Vice President John Radcliffe Research Vice President The challenge in managing data today is not just about the volume ( big data ). Velocity, variety and complexity also must be considered. Combined, these define extreme information. Many challenges of information (in support of BI, analytics, pattern-based strategies and other use-cases) can be addressed with improved understanding and competencies for dealing with extreme information. In this presentation on extreme data, Gartner Analyst John Radcliffe advised organizations to manage information as an asset and encouraged IT to seize the opportunity and lead the effort. The 21st- century CIO will have to monitor and exploit three themes of growing importance to information management initiatives: Big data is a first taste of the extreme information challenges that will become increasingly difficult to address. The concept: data volumes are growing dramatically faster even as storage technology and network infrastructures increase in capacity. In addition to volume, information assets will exhibit irregular rates of change, governance rules will become increasingly fluid, new asset types will continue to emerge and the desire of all levels of analysis to use that data will increase exponentially. All this combined will define the extreme information management environment. The combination of consumerization and mobility is only one obvious example of the proliferation of information sources which will underscore the importance of understanding how information assets are linked together and their inherent reliability. Comprehensive, complete and deliberate architectures play a critical role for creating standards or guidance to deal with the massive news to noise ratios that are pending and the wide diversity of information assets and the resulting use cases. 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 Thank you to our 2011 Platinum Sponsors Please click here to view ALL sponsors 7

8 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. 8