Tech Transformation: What’s Holding You Back?

SOURCE:  BusinessFinance

Companies like IBM and Wal-Mart are already doing amazing things with Enterprise 2.0 technologies. Why are so many others reluctant to take the plunge? In the second of our 3-part series of extracts from his book “The Next Wave of Technologies: Opportunities in Chaos (Wiley, 2010), Phil Simon explains why organizations hesitate to embrace new systems — until it’s too late. (See our interview with Simon here.)

The potential of Enterprise 2.0 technologies is hardly unproven. Open source (OS) software, SaaS, cloud computing, social networking, service-oriented architecture (SOA), BI, and other exciting new technologies are enabling organizations to do amazing things right now. Beyond merely reducing costs, they are already doing the following:

• Reducing product development times.
• Allowing organizations to better understand their customers.
• Expediting innovation and new product development.
• Enhancing employee communications and productivity.

Nor are these technologies being deployed exclusively by nimble startups such as LinkedIn. Old-school corporations such as IBM and Wal-Mart are classic examples. The former got religion in the 1990s on collaboration and OS software. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine IBM as a shell of its current self if then-CEO Lou Gerstner had not fundamentally changed the organization’s thinking and culture.

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