Business Technology Roundtable

The emergence of Generative AI (GenAI) represents a pivotal moment in business technology evolution, with early enterprise adoption showing promising results according to PwC's latest Global CEO Survey . While much attention has focused on potential future impacts, concrete productivity, and revenue gains are already materializing across industries, suggesting we're at the beginning of a transformative wave in how organizations operate. Current State of Enterprise Adoption The PwC research findings, drawing from 4,701 CEOs worldwide, reveal encouraging early returns from GenAI tools and associated use case investments. Notably, 56 percent of CEOs report that GenAI has improved employee time efficiency, while about one-third have seen increased revenue (32 percent) and profitability (34 percent). These performance metrics, while slightly below initial expectations, demonstrate that organizations are finding practical ways to extract value from the latest technology. Perhaps most...

Business technology investment continues to evolve. During the last decade, I've had a front-row seat to the meteoric global rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its transformative impact across industries. The AI Consulting professional services market has emerged as a critical enabler of this transformation revolution, helping organizations navigate the complexities of AI adoption and implementation. The global AI consulting market is experiencing ongoing growth, with forecasts indicating it will reach $72.5 billion by 2025. This remarkable expansion is fueled by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40.3 percent from 2020 to 2027, highlighting the insatiable appetite for broad AI expertise and proven experience. The AI Consulting Market Analysis One of the most striking statistics is that over 80 percent of AI consulting firms report increased demand for their professional services in the past year. This surge in demand is not limited to a single sector but spans across va...

The CEOs of leading companies are already striving to create an agile business model -- one that responds quickly to competitive pressures and shifting market demands. Commercial agility often requires a corresponding accelerated business technology deployment. Meaning, the IT requirement is for applications to be provisioned in hours -- not weeks or months. That's a tall order for many corporate IT departments. Regardless, it must be done. More often than not, it's accomplished via a cloud services-based methodology. Savvy executives that proactively migrate their IT infrastructure to a cloud-centric architecture will generate new revenue that could surge by a factor of three from 2011 to 2017, according to the latest market study by IHS. Global business spending for infrastructure and services related to the cloud will reach an estimated $174.2 billion this year -- that's up by 20 percent from $145.2 billion in 2013. By 2017, enterprise spending on the cloud will r...

The young and savvy business executives of tomorrow will have high expectations and won't embrace or tolerate obsolete processes. As a new generation is entering the management ranks of companies worldwide, they will bring with them their own preferred ways of communicating and collaborating. A global market study by Cisco Systems has revealed that the majority of these next-generation executives intend to depend heavily upon business-class video to connect with their teams, colleagues, suppliers, customers and prospects -- as well as to help their businesses deliver new products and services. The 2013 Cisco Global Young Executives' Video Attitudes Survey gives insight into what management-track leaders aged 34 and under think about business-class video, which delivers high-quality, reliable, and highly secure lifelike video to users. Cisco commissioned Redshift Research to conduct the survey of more than 1,300 global respondents. "Today's leaders are often tec...

When you follow the proven methodologies of the market leaders, and deploy business technology for competitive advantage, you can fine-tune your current online business processes, improve operational performance and increase productivity . But if this is the extent of your efforts to date, then I have good news for you -- we now know that there's huge upside potential for new value creation that's far greater than we ever imagined. The Internet of Everything ( IoE ) is expected to enable global private-sector businesses to generate at least $613 billion in global profits in 2013, according to the "IoE Value Index" study released by Cisco. The report -- announced via a global TelePresence event that connected more than 10 international locales -- found firms that optimize the connections among people, process, data and things will generate the largest profits. The study of 7,500 global business and IT leaders in 12 countries reports that the United States, Chi...

If you believe that you've had to learn more about the safe online operation and ongoing management of your PC than you ever wanted to know, then you'll be pleased to discover that there's relief on the horizon. According to the latest market study by Gartner, the reign of the personal computer is coming to an apparent close. By 2014, the personal cloud will replace the personal computer -- and this transition will likely include greater use of media tablets , chromebooks or other similar devices. Gartner analysts said the personal cloud will become the foundation for a new era that will provide users with an increased level of flexibility with the devices they use for daily activities -- leveraging the strengths of each device, ultimately enabling new levels of user satisfaction and productivity. However, Garner says that it will require enterprise IT leaders and their staff to fundamentally rethink how they deliver applications and services to their end-users. Seek...

Market leading companies are embracing enterprise talent networking practices -- to gain a competitive advantage within their industry. While Online collaboration tools have been readily available for some time, few IT managers proactively combine them into a cohesive strategy to advance their organization's productivity. That being said, it's been the tech-savvy forward-thinking executives that have led the cause to date -- enabling their organization to join the ranks of the early-adopters, and paving the way for others to follow. Cisco announced that Virgin Media, the UK's top entertainment and digital communications company, is deploying the powerful combination of Cisco Quad , Cisco WebEx and Cisco Unified Communications to its eager employee base. The solutions are part of the Virgin Media progressive "Flexible Working Initiative" that will enable thousands of employees to collaborate and work remotely -- utilizing video calls and shared documents, a...

Here's the scenario, you're a busy executive working away from your office and you just want to quickly research something on the Web. You turn on the company-provided notebook computer and you wait the standard 3-6 minute delay, before you can actually use it. The corporate IT department has numerous mandatory processes that must load first -- such as virus protection, data backup, system and app software updates, etc. -- on a typical Windows system. That's often dozens of processes running at start-up, and some will consume 100 percent of the available processing power. That automated cycle can temporarily incapacitate a notebook PC. Don't bother attempting to load a web browser while this PC start-up sequence is in motion. What's the alternative? If you have a media tablet, simply use it instead and you're on the Web in a matter of seconds. Mobile Workers and Their Virtual Workspace Is your company prepared for the pending business tablet invasion th...

The early-adopter trials have begun, the commercial apps are being developed -- it's now a given, purpose-built tablets will be used in more mainstream business settings during 2012. Besides, executives and IT managers at multinational companies will likely witness this phenomenon first, particularly in the more advanced markets. According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation ( IDC ), media tablet shipments in EMEA reached more than 12 million units in the first three quarters of 2011 -- growing to 20 million units by the end of the year. Although business purchases currently represent less than 10 percent of the entire tablet market, the near-term opportunity for growth from business use is believed to be significant -- including online collaboration applications. Functionality such as a touch screen user-interface, portability, secure LAN connectivity and more business apps for vertical industry needs, are all factors that demonstrate the potentia...

Multinational company CEOs are one of the most vocal advocates of the managed cloud services phenomenon. Many have been through the painful process of watching helplessly as their CIO championed the deployment of monolithic ERP and CRM systems -- only to discover that these huge enterprise software projects failed to live up to their promise. Meanwhile, purposeful line-of-business executives have successfully utilized software-as-a-service (SaaS), with their CEO's support, to break free from the legacy IT platforms and thereby give their employees the business technology (BT) productivity tools that they had hoped for -- or that the power-users demanded. Forward-looking vendors and prescient BT service providers are now leading the transition to the next wave of productivity-enhancing and cost-reducing platforms. Next year, we'll likely witness increased market activity, as the next chapter of this story unfolds. In anticipation, Cisco has pro-actively presented its cloud...

Media tablet and smartphone software applications (apps) have entered the mainstream of business technology. In fact, results from recent market research by International Data Corporation ( IDC ) demonstrates that service providers are already reporting increasing enterprise and independent software vendor (ISV) activity -- centered upon the new commercial mobile apps ecosystem that has emerged. These latest developments are establishing mobile initiatives for a variety of horizontal and industry-specific business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) application scenarios. Enabling Mobile Enterprise Agile App Development Furthermore, third parties are increasing their mobile application life-cycle investments to meet the growing demand for mobile applications -- such as native, Web-based or cross-platform -- with an emphasis on accelerating client mobile applications to market at lower total cost of ownership (TCO) with higher productivity and quality. An insightf...

Telepresence video communication systems enable groups of people to meet and collaborate in multiple locations worldwide -- while feeling as if they were all in the same room together. Executives can now equate the full positive impact from several tangible benefits of utilizing telepresence systems, according to the results of a new market study commissioned by the Carbon Disclosure Project . U.S. and U.K. businesses that substitute some business travel with telepresence meeting services can cut CO2 emissions by nearly 5.5 million metric tons in total -- the greenhouse gas equivalent of removing more than one million passenger vehicles from the road for one year -- and achieve total economy-wide financial benefits of almost $19 billion, by 2020. Other conclusions of the global market study determined a business with $1 billion or more in annual revenue that utilize four telepresence rooms could: Achieve a financial return on investment in as little as 15 months. Save nearly 900 busin...

As the European aviation sector encountered major disruptions, online business meeting services attracted growing interest and new demand. Apparently, few traditional globetrotters plan for, or even anticipate, the effects of a natural disaster so many were searching for last-minute alternatives to international air travel. Online visual collaboration platforms -- that enable just-in-time face-to-face meetings -- were a natural choice for the informed business travelers who, like most of us, only recently discovered that Iceland has an active volcano. According to the latest market study by Frost & Sullivan, renewed awareness of videoconference solutions will create further opportunities for TelePresence service providers . Telepresence Market Growth Predicted Frost & Sullivan estimates the global Telepresence market value was $396.2 million for 2009, and forecasts this market to reach $825.9 million in 2015. Their research assessment included both ready-built Telepresence room...

The National Retail Federation (NRF) released its 2010 economic forecast, projecting retail industry sales to increase 2.5 percent from last year. In contrast, total industry retail sales for 2009 had actually declined by 2.5 percent. "As we continue to see signs of improvement throughout the U.S. economy in 2010, overall sentiment will begin to lift, making way for slight increases in consumer spending," said NRF Chief Economist Rosalind Wells. While this past year certainly has been a challenging one for most retailers, they continue to seek out ways to apply business technology that helps to transform both their in-store communications and the way they interact and collaborate with their primary suppliers. Earlier this month, the NRF 2010 "Big Show" attendees were able to once again experience Cisco TelePresence systems and AT&T services in action. The above video includes insights from some of the people who shared their perspective about how business vide...

The accelerating Organic IT phenomenon is being driven by executive frustration that today's business technology demands are not being fully met by their internal support organization. Some IT teams, however, have taken decisive action to free-up time to become more responsive to their savvy user's requests for new capabilities. Perhaps that's a key leading indicator why remote managed services have emerged as a rare growth area within this tough economic environment. Clearly, proactively increasing business process agility and cutting operational costs has never been more popular. As a result, annual spending on remote managed IT services by the North American Small and Medium Business (SMB) sector is expected to increase 3.3 times in the next five years. That represents a compounded annual growth rate of 28 percent, according to the latest market study by AMI-Partners . Extracting Value from Business Technology "While SMBs have been steadily increasing their relian...

Cisco conducted one of the first comprehensive studies of the factors associated with successful adoption of network-based collaboration solutions . You can use the study results to maximize your return on investment from today's online collaboration tools. One way is to implement business practices shown to lead to more enthusiastic collaboration. Another is to identify and then actively support the employees who are most likely to benefit. Twenty First Century Collaboration Collaboration is a process that brings people and information together to accomplish a common goal. What's new today is that in a connected world, people no longer have to be in the same location, time zone, or culture to collaborate. Tools such as videoconferencing (or TelePresence ) and web sharing enable real-time collaboration across distance. Blogs, wikis, and shared workspaces enable online collaboration across time boundaries. Cisco conducted the first formal segmentation study of collaboration tool...

In the global networked economy, work is performed everywhere, at any time and any place. That said, what are the operational benefits? Cisco set out to evaluate the social, economic and environmental impacts associated with allowing and actively enabling employees to telecommute. Cisco announced the findings of its Teleworker Survey, an in-depth study of almost 2,000 company employees. The study, conducted to evaluate the social, economic and environmental impacts associated with telecommuting at Cisco, revealed that a majority of respondents experienced a significant increase in work-life flexibility, productivity and overall satisfaction as a result of their ability to work remotely. Create a Sound Telecommuting Strategy As the modern workforce continues to evolve and globalize, more companies are evaluating a telecommuting strategy to save costs and lower carbon emissions as well as to retain top talent. For these companies, Cisco's survey highlights the gains that a sound tele...