Thoughts after Tech Vision 2018.

1. What is the size of SI business worldwide and how SIs are working on cloud solution now?

200 Bn. But the transition to the Cloud is big trouble for the $200 billion system integration industry, which has been designed around customization. “We need a new business model”.

System integrators (SIs) business development tactic was to go to a company, talk to multiple departments and document requirements. There would always be a gap between requirements and what any system could deliver. This was the entry point for expensive customization projects, long costly implementations, and a key reason that so many upgrades were difficult and costly. In short, this business model drove customizations that adversely impacted the total cost of ownership of IT products.

What has dominated IT thinking has been procurement” and the drive to get low cost solutions. That led to organizations having multiple vendors -mixing and matching solutions – that hasn’t worked. The bulk of the IT budget is spent on maintenance.” Thus, “the ability to innovate is almost zero. We can get 60 to 70 percent of the costs out of the IT budget.” These are not just software maintenance costs, but the need to own storage and IT data centers.

2. CIO/CTO and role of Tech decision maker?

The move to the Cloud has been supported by a changing set of players who influence IT deals. In the past, IT leaders often had veto power over deals. But CEOs and CFOs are more IT literate. IT departments often report to CFOs. The Cloud has also liberated functional leaders. But IT security issues are also beginning to give the CIO some of their power back.

My view, public cloud AWS, Azure, google, oracle … are the most secured environments.

3. Key question that challenges myself everyday. What will the role of system integrators be?

We need to evolve to be “trusted advisors”. SIs need to show a system to customers and explain how the system can be configured to meet their business. “We need to move to a business value of consulting role.”

There are a huge market for SIs in helping customers adopt new enhancements. Instead of “elephant hunting” – a focus on big, long costly implementations – so we evolve to more of a continuous engagement model. The SI focuses more on a customer’s business model, change management, and helping companies to understand new technologies, like blockchain, AI, big data.

Now let’s come Silicon Valley.