Gear up for the return to growth

Capgemini Australia’s CIO Brett Wilson* heralds the start of the New Year with optimism about more efficient and collaborative ways of working.

At Capgemini, our clients and partners are talking about interesting new directions for 2010. As many companies stabilise and return to growth next year, there will be increasing pressure on IT departments’ resources to deliver new capabilities, and to once again support expansion.

While 2009 was one of the IT industry’s worst years, according to Gartner, characterised by reduced or postponed investment, 2010 will see businesses reprioritising and reallocating their technology resources to drive greater collaboration. The focus on cost containment will remain, but the ability to drive the best commercial value from existing and new investments through complementary business consulting expertise will intensify.

Increasing confidence in cloud computing at an enterprise level will shift IT budgets from capital expenditure to operational expenditure models. New research from Telsyte shows that around 40% of Australia’s mid- to large-sized enterprises are likely to move into the cloud in the next three years. A lasting consequence will be a changing commercial dynamic around the capex and opex balance; a ‘service-on-tap’ mentality looks likely to set in.

Examining the costs of running IT on an ongoing basis will continue to be under the spotlight too. This is a good time to review the organisation’s supplier portfolio, renegotiate existing vendor contracts and seek maximum value from order volumes.

To deliver IT efficiencies, there will be an accelerating appetite for server virtualisation. According to Gartner, 18% of server workloads this year run on virtualised servers; but that will increase to 28% next year and reach almost half by 2012. Beyond achieving significant savings from more resourceful use of data centre space, cooling and power requirements, this also enables rapid deployment and enhanced control. At Capgemini, for example, we are now able to deploy entire application development environments for projects, in a matter of hours rather than days.

It’s hardly surprising that the trend towards virtualisation is also now happening at the application layer, to create the foundations for cloud computing and to continue the trend away from owned infrastructure towards a shared services model.

Enabling collaboration and connectivity within the business will be an imperative in 2010 too. Maturing unified communications technologies and a growing acceptance of social media networks, including tools as simple as instant messenger, as efficient ways to communicate within the business (not only in our personal lives outside it) will fire up the output of smart organisations. It also has the potential to act as a valuable source of business intelligence about the enterprise’s knowledge hubs and human stores of vital information.

At Capgemini, because virtually all our employees are road warriors, we have deployed Cisco Meeting Place Express, which integrates voice, video, and web conferencing capabilities, to allow our people to troubleshoot application problems for clients, regardless of where they are. They can also share ideas and mine knowledge across borders, so a colleague in Mumbai can provide a perspective on a client engagement in Sydney, quickly and easily.

As the recovery sets in, we will all encounter the inevitable scramble for talent - three months is all it takes for locally deployable testing, business information management and tech-savvy business analysts’ skills to dry up. Inevitably, that will lead to hybrid onshore and offshore sourcing models, to meet specialist skills requirements and deliver expertise which can be leveraged, as the business requires.

2009 has left an impression on all our businesses. The good news is that much of what’s passed has fast-tracked closer collaboration and smarter ways of working, which will leave us all better off as we head into 2010 and beyond.

* Brett Wilson is the CIO of Capgemini Australia, the local subsidiary of Capgemini, a consulting, technology and outsourcing services provider. With expertise in the financial services, energy and utility, telecommunications and public service sectors, Capgemini has over 750 people servicing its Australian clients. Wilson is responsible for the strategic direction of the company’s supporting IT and communications infrastructure and services.