COMMS VISION CONVENTION SPECIAL REPORT IT TAKES VISION TO BE A LEADER
COMMS Vision, staged at the world famous Gleneagles Hotel, is now firmly established as the de facto thought leadership forum for the global ICT industry. “The Comms Vision Convention has established itself as the must-event for CEOs and directors of channel companies,” commented Event Content Director John Chapman. “Our topic this year – Transformation Taking Shape – focused on the catalysts that are driving business transformation and the impact of these on traditional channel models. The feedback from delegates and vendors has been astonishingly good.” For more information please visit
www.commsvision.com
Transformationism marks a new dawn
SENIOR executives of leading ICT companies have descended on the world famous Gleneagles Hotel for Comms Vision 2011, the channel’s premier strategic business planning convention (November 9-11).
In a keynote address John Chapman, CVC 2011 Content Director, set the scene with words of strategic insight on business transformation follow- ing an IT Renaissance catalysed by a period of ‘great change’ that has, in a swoop, brought about a need to totally rethink the mar- ket and customer engagement. Chapman urged channel players to better understand the end customers’ evolving demands in an environment that is increasingly technology and consumer driven. The ‘Transformation Taking
Shape’ theme of this year’s event also highlights a big opportu- nity for resellers and integra- tors to leverage existing skill sets, skill-up further and take advantage of the available and evolving ICT offerings. “For the first time we have the toolsets to deliver what the customer requires,” said Chapman. Having stated the Business
Transformation mantra many times over within the pages of Comms Dealer magazine, this industry term has now left its mark indelibly as an ideology and an ‘ism’ that signifies the
www.commsvision.com
Intelligent devices to reign supreme in post-PC world
TRADITIONAL certainties are crumbling in the face of an information revolution as we enter the post-PC era, claims Richard Osborne, Business Transformation Manager at Platinum sponsor Cisco. “We are in the middle of something extraordinary,” he told Comms Vision delegates in a keynote address. To say that the era of the PC is drawing to a close would be to greatly understate its demise if predictions by research house Gartner are to be believed. Analysts at the think tank have revised downwards their growth predictions for PC sales from 15 per cent, to 9.3 per cent, and following another reassessment, Gartner is counting on 3.8 per cent growth. Watch this space... As PC sales topple headlong into a terminal tailspin, analyst projections are now focused on intelligent devices such as tab- lets as the next big thing in the years ahead.
John Chapman
march of customer-led ICT- based business process enable- ment. These watchwords have also become ingrained in the channel’s collective conscious- ness and imprinted perma- nently on the business cards of Transformation leaders. Transformationism has now entered the channel’s lexicon, giving birth to a new language and a more meaningful con- versation with the customer that speaks volumes about the channel’s potential and ability to add value.
Chapman says that comms
and IT resellers should relin- quish their traditional modus operandi and embrace the
social, economic and techno- logical agents of change that are transforming the market. “The IT Renaissance has been enabled by the cloud, bringing scalability,” added Chapman. “It’s about scaling up, down and sideways to give the customer what they need. There is a strong desire for peo- ple to work differently. “We have also seen the emer- gence of new devices and appli- cations. This is a superb oppor- tunity but we need to innovate and ensure that IT changes the business rather than supports it. This is where the industry is heading. This is where Comms Vision pushes the envelope.”
Once termed ‘additive’ by industry watchers (a term that signals a peripheral function) gizmos such as tablets have now gained a new reputation under the ‘subtractive’ banner, meaning that more and more people are moving their work away from PCs onto their mobile devices. To help prove the point, Osborne noted that Cisco’s mobile device count rose by 59 per cent during the past 12 months. “You can’t decide what devices your customers are going to use,” added Osborne. “The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend shows that peo- ple are ignoring the corporate standard, so we need to support new devices and those devices that people will be using in the future, which we haven’t even heard about yet. This is a big challenge as we have no idea how platforms and devices will
develop in such a fluid market. To avoid collaboration islands it is key to remain completely agnostic about devices and fully support open standards.” The post-PC world is not yet defined and difficult to predict, but what is certain is that during the golden age of the PC, IT ‘automated’ many jobs out of organisations. However, IT is no substitute for the imagination, innovation and effective teamwork. Osborne says the priority is to enable people to collaborate and share ideas and documents in a process that breaks down space and time and increases the power of who we are in the relationship revolution.
According to Osborne video plays a key role in this informa- tion revolution where people connect anytime, anywhere. Equally, Osborne suggests that we are entering a post- mobile phone era of mobility. “The mobile used to be the primary device, but the world is changing as we adopt more smartphones and tablets,” explained Osborne. “In the post-PC world we must provide solutions onto these devices.” In plain terms, delivering on customer expectations boils down to the basic principles of keeping things simple.
“People will only use video
if it’s easy,” noted Osborne as an example. “This is about get- ting the experience right. Our job is to build a roadmap for customers that plots where they want to go, offers flexibility for new devices and operating sys- tems and gets it all working. “We are at a crossroads in the way that we deliver services to customers. We need to keep changing tack to stay relevant. This takes a different mindset. But the only way to succeed is to get the customer experience right. That is everything.”
20 COMMS DEALER DECEMBER 2011
www.comms-dealer.com
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