Technology

Mobile enterprise solutions are on the list of priorities for many CIOs in 2012.

Whether the primary focus is to extend your in-house applications to your roaming workforce (B2E) or to interface with customers and prospects (B2C) via mobile devices, or possibly both, the options and considerations are ever-growing.

It’s no surprise that Gartner’s “Top Ten Strategic Technologies for 2012” shows number one and two as “Media Tablets and Beyond” and “Mobile-Centric Applications and Interfaces” with the fifth being “App Stores and Marketplaces.” This list is intended to help CIOs who are building their strategic plans and budgets. So, deploying mobile solutions should be a priority for most Information Technology departments. To show how fast this is changing, note that Mobility wasn’t even on Gartner’s list in 2009 and now it encompasses three of the top five. (See Figure 1 showing the list for the last four years).

Read the complete article at MC Press Online.

Businesses today must continually innovate or face shrinking market share by competitors who are ahead of the curve.

Innovation can take many forms, depending on your business, but agility in Information Technology is often critical to delivering new services and products and to connecting via new channels or markets. At the same time, many businesses are reliant on legacy systems that cannot easily meet these emerging needs.

And yet the legacy systems that many organizations depend on are not easily replaced, not without risk to the business. They may have grown with the organization and have information structures and embedded processing logic that is crucial to the unique products, services, and delivery mechanisms employed by the business. Highly skilled, long-time technical staff may be needed to maintain the system and keep the business operational.

So, how do you move forward? How do you maintain smooth operations and innovate to meet your business’ demands? There are many options, but identifying the best approach involves an assessment of your current enterprise applications portfolio, agreement within your organization on where you want to go, and many other factors. One size does not fit all when it comes to legacy asset management and transformation, but you can craft a plan that will take your systems and business forward on a safe and continuous path.

….for the full article, go to http://www.mcpressonline.com/general/planning-for-legacy-transformation.html