Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/90487
Full Tech Ahead What are some of the major technology trends that tomorrow's business manager will have to understand to manage the IT function? NCSU's Marc Hoit briefly describes four of the most important ones. ■ Big Data. This refers to the amount of data that organiza- tions are now filtering to solve their biggest scientific issues. There are new machines capable of creating half a terabyte of data a day, and major research centers have several of these machines. In the past, only large research entities—like the government, laboratories, and major universities—could afford these machines. But now they're available for about US$100,000, and costs will continue to decrease. That means access to them will increase, as will their capabilities. Big Data can be used by scientists to study everything from genomics to disease patterns; by city officials to improve traffic flows; and even by the fishing industry to track coastal weather patterns. Credit card companies have always used Big Data to detect fraud, but now they can do so from the second someone swipes a card. And Face- book, Google and other groups rely on social media data to help their clients reach customers and make decisions. Because Big Data will be used by more organizations in the coming years, managers must learn how to tap its poten- tial most effectively. And because many business schools already own the number-crunching machinery that will corre- late massive data trends, I believe they will become the natu- ral sites for Big Data research in the future. ■ The Cloud. The term has come to mean many things, but this is my current definition: The cloud separates the infrastructure you need from the services and applications you want to run. For instance, when individuals use apps on their smartphones to ask for directions, they don't care what kind of Big Data has to be crunched behind the scenes for them to get their answers. They just want answers. Because so much data and so many software applica- tions are working together in the cloud, those answers can be supplied without any effort from the user. But the cloud is going to be so much more. It's going to allow people who can't afford Big Data tools to have access to those tools cheaply. Right now, you can rent from Amazon the ability to do things that ten years ago would have cost same evolution that outsourcing did," he says. "Initially, businesses outsourced the easy, repeatable, commodity-like services; today they outsource complex business pro- cesses. Similarly, businesses origi- nally digitized easy, repeatable pro- cesses, but now the most complex areas of businesses are digitized— and must be managed by someone who understands their complexity." millions of dollars in infrastructure, hardware, and expertise. The cloud is making a range of complex calculations and searches cheaper, simpler, and more accessible. ■ Mobility. We're no longer stuck sitting in offices or research labs. No matter where we are, we expect to use our laptops, our tablets, and our smartphones to retrieve any information we need. Mobile technology encompasses how to access that data, how to keep it secure, and how to make sure we have enough bandwidth to send and receive data. It also considers questions like, "How can we translate research data from 20' x 10' research computer screens to 4" x 3" cell phone screens?" ■ Online Education. Online education touches every level of school from kindergarten through the university, and it is affected by diverse forces that range from the growth of for-profit schools to the reduction of state funding for educa- tion. While much of the talk is about how online delivery helps schools lower costs and reach a wider student base, I think a more important issue is how it will enable schools to develop more partnerships. Right now, in the North Carolina State University system, we're working on ways to share foreign language courses. With budget cuts, none of the schools can afford to teach the full complement of languages we would like to offer. But if we decide one school will be responsible for the faculty and resources to deliver one language, and another school will deliver another language, we can share costs and services across boundaries. We're sharing resources within the state, but other institutions can share them across states or across nations. The practice of sharing has been in place for a while, but, in the near future, it's going to explode. These technology trends tie together and reinforce each other, and they will be among some of the biggest issues that will shape business in the future. Business schools need to prepare their students to deal with them by offering programs that teach functional business disci- plines within the context of technology. Frick agrees that in today's world, where everyone can buy databases, technology alone isn't a competitive advantage. The advan- tage rests in how an organization uses it. "Deploying technology requires a true understanding of the business model of your com- pany so you can decide which initiatives will be successful and which ones won't because they do not achieve your fundamental goals," he says. As businesses bring technol- ogy into the boardroom, business schools need to bring it into the classroom. Tomorrow's CEOs won't need to connect the wires and switches—but they will need to connect the dots between what the business wants to do and what technology can deliver. BizEd November/December 2012 23