BEAWorld 2007: CIOs must embrace disruptive tech

Disruptive technologies are heading towards a sector near you and business and IT decision makers who ignore their power are likely to be left out in the cold by competitors, customers and employees, a leading analyst has warned.

Andy Kyte, vice president and Gartner fellow, used the BEAWorld 2007 event in Barcelona this week to warn chief information officers (CIOs) and those in other leadership roles that they must embrace, rather than shy away from, the so-called 'disruptive' technologies he believes will shape the future of the industry.

"The colour printer disrupted traditional printing. Businesses were paying £15,000 for a colour printer. They needed it and wanted it and it was marginally disruptive but it wasn't until [colour printers] got down to the price point where they were effectively giving them away with cornflakes that they became really disruptive," he told delegates at the conference.

Recognition software is likely to play a big part in our future and the way in which businesses interact with customers and employees, specifically untrained voice recognition technology that is able to understand any accent and gesture recognition and gaze tracking.

"This [gesture recognition] is another area that we see significant development in over the next five years," he said. "To give you a real life example, a teenager sunk to the bottom of a pool in Wales. The life guards hadn't seen it but [the pool] had implemented a video system that had noticed an anomaly, sounded the alarm and the teenager's life was saved."

Kyte added: "It might sound a bit big brotherish but these are the capabilities available... It really is an enormous challenge for security guards to stay awake as it's a very very boring job. They've only got to turn their head away for a second and they could miss a critical event. A computer never turns its head. Could it be that Kylie Minogue has entered a station and everyone has run over to get her autograph or could [they be running] because there's a fire?"

Building on the top 10 list Kyte shared with IT PRO back in May, he reiterated how multi-core processing has shaped, and will continue to shape, business as we know it, in addition to detailing the power of emerging forces such as networked virtual worlds, mash-ups and web platforms.

"The current generation entering the workforce are digital natives not digital immigrants like us who grew up with postcards and letters and then discovered email. This is a challenge for IT organisations that are run by the old men of IT as they're not connected to the fuzzy, flakey stuff happening at the edge of the web.

"Digital natives expect to find this in their working environments and the services [on offer to them]...Letting go of control is frightening for the traditional IT organisation but the reality is that if they don't support it they're shutting themselves off from interaction with the next generation of digital natives and being able to sell to them or work with them and make them loyal customers or employees."

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