Editor’s note: Judy Fainor will be a guest on Quality Digest Live this Friday, Sept. 20, 2013, at 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern. Fainor will also present a webinar on this topic on Tuesday, September 24, at 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern time. Register here..
As the chief architect for Sparta Systems, I spend a good deal of time researching technology trends in the IT industry. It is important not only to be aware of technology as it is evolving but also how chief information officers (CIOs) are reacting, and where IT departments are willing to adopt and allocate budget.
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As various technologies gain traction, we need to determine if there is applicability in the world of enterprise quality management (EQM) and where EQM software should be on the forefront of the evolution. In the upcoming Quality Digest webinar on Sept. 24, 2013, I intend to share my most recent findings on technology trends and how these are influencing enterprise quality systems (EQS). Using research and surveys conducted by Gartner, Forrester, and others, I will walk you through the top four trends that are having a huge impact on organizations and their overall EQS strategy.
Going mobile
Mobile technology is changing the way we conduct business, and CIOs expect their enterprise software to have a mobile solution. Companies are looking to increase worker productivity by enabling device usage and mobile applications to complete critical steps in a workflow that previously required access to a laptop or desktop. Workers are demanding mobile capabilities that allow them the flexibility to work in various locations at various times throughout the day without being tethered to their laptops. The demand for 24/7 access to critical systems is quickly becoming a requirement, not a luxury.
According to Gartner analysis, in 2013 mobile devices will surpass PCs as the most common web-access tool, and by 2015 tablet shipments will account for 50 percent of all laptop shipments. Because this is evidence of the mobility surge, during the webinar I’ll discuss what mobility means in your EQS and how various devices are making it possible to be more productive than ever before by providing round-the-clock access in a user-friendly, streamlined manner.
Thank the clouds
Cloud computing continues to evolve and is fast becoming an integral part of enterprise quality ecosystems. Synchronization and real-time information sharing are a critical part of every enterprise. The ability to offload IT burden and leverage cloud services is allowing organizations to invest in their real value-adding options instead of IT infrastructure. Faster access to quality information and time to react allow many organizations to be proactive instead of reactive.
SaaS-based offerings provide the ability to reach beyond the four walls of your enterprise and extend your quality management workflows to external parties. Without a close integration between on-premise and external systems, there are a lot of manual processes for communication (e.g., email, fax, spreadsheets) that can lead to operational inefficiencies or errors, which in turn increase the level of risk management required.
As operational costs continue to play a major role for every company, having a robust, centralized quality management system that is used by contracting entities as well as their invited external affiliates will become essential. Globalized services and access to them anytime, anywhere will make Saas-based solutions and cloud computing commonplace in the enterprise.
For several years there has been a lot of talk about big data and systems that take massive amounts of data from disparate systems in structured, unstructured, and semi-structured formats and reside in a centralized repository to provide blazing speed for querying and retrieving data. The initial intent was to address vast amounts of data that exceed the workable thresholds of most relational databases; big data address this problem by introducing the “3 Vs” model; high volume, high velocity, and high variety.
Big data + analytics = value
However, for the past couple of years the adoption of the big data platform has not really been to solve a big-data problem but to introduce a “4Vs” model that includes value. Big data unlock the value of data via analytics. As the tooling for the big data platform continues to expand and mature, businesses have been able to gain insights from both operational and business data. The ability to combine data from many disparate data sources where it can be interrogated for patterns and trends is proving to be invaluable as many organizations seek to be proactive instead of reactive in operating their businesses.
The ability to make better business decisions, improve operational efficiency, and gain competitive advantage has helped drive the adoption of this technology. Statistical, predictive, and sentiment analysis are all moving to the forefront of technologies that are becoming must-have initiatives for many businesses.
For the first time CIOs are not only watching this space but also are allocating resources and budget to implement analytics via big data technology. It is predicted that by 2015, $16.9 billion will be spent on big data and analytics. During the webinar we will take a closer look at how enterprise quality management systems (EQMS) play a major role as both a data feed into big data analysis and as a receptacle for the analysis output or outcome. This leads to proactive resolution of potential issues of poor quality.
In addition to the technologies listed above, I will also cover some other areas that Sparta Systems is monitoring because we believe technologies for enterprise archiving and in-memory computing also play a large role in EQMS.
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