Technological innovation is just getting started—is your company ready?

Posted by Justin Hesser on August 27, 2013

Given the abundance of new technologies that have proliferated corporate environments in recent years, one would think we have reached  the peak of IT innovation. Think again.

While advancements have been made in cloud computing, mobility, data management and many other key areas of business in the last five years or so, we have not reached the end of technological evolution. In fact, we could just be getting started.

An article in the Harvard Business Review suggests we have just hit the beginning of the next digital wave, meaning new innovative technologies are right around the corner and more areas of our life will be digitized. This makes sense when you consider arguably the biggest change in technology coming down the pipeline: the internet of things.

This essentially suggests everything we use in our daily lives will be connected to an online network. We’ll be able to use our coffee makers to share with Facebook every time we make a fresh pot and our vacuum cleaners will tell us the last time we used them, giving us an idea of when we should vacuum again. These examples are obviously somewhat extreme and will be used in the home, but the concept is very real and will have a major impact on businesses and the data they process.

Intel CIO Kim Stevenson spoke with the news source about the overall trend of new technologies. She indicated that recent innovations have really only laid the groundwork for this tsunami of digital devices, and warned businesses to prepare for the onslaught.

“[IT functions have] gone through ERP, they’ve gone through BYOD and they’ve gone through cloud, and they think they’ve done it all,” Stevenson said. “But the reality is, we’re only at the very, very beginning of this next generation of computing, and I think that…industry leaders will be the ones that transform first. I don’t care what industry you’re talking about.”

Perhaps the biggest challenge companies will face due to digital innovation is a major spike in data. Not only will information be more prevalent, companies will have to be more efficient when managing it if they want to maintain long-term viability in their industry. Capitalizing on innovation is what will allow businesses to succeed during this time. Building a custom database software system can provide organizations with the resources they need to effectively manage their information.