By Sanjay Gupta
As Express Computer turns 24, there is an incredible amount of flux in the air. Flux in the political climate of the country, flux in the business environment and, of course, flux in information and communication technology itself.
One of the most amazing aspects of this edge-of-the-seat state of change is that the more we separate things, the more they seem to be connected. Church-state, politics-business, IT-operations, aam aadmi-khaas aadmi…take your pick. One thing affects the other and vice versa. Like the English metaphysical poet John Donne had said: No man is an island.
Today, the CIO might well say, No technology is an island (though some would replace “island” with the more frequently used term in IT, “silo”).
Every technology an enterprise puts in place is related to every other technology by six degrees and less and less of separation. A box is no longer just a box but a bundle of possibilities. The microchip is getting embedded everywhere, the cloud is casting its spell in all directions, there is software-defined this and software-defined that…
Now analyze that with big data analytics, if you will, and post it to your Facebook or LinkedIn account.
For those whose business it is to run or help run technology, it is becoming increasingly difficult to talk about big data without also bringing in the cloud; about social media without touching upon security; or about memory without computing.
The Internet will soon be the Internet of Things—where the “Thing” part could be anything, including the traditional computer.
Is everything becoming hodgepodge? Of course not! What is happening is that the forces of consumerization, openness and availability are drastically altering the course of enterprise tech.
Some in the vendor community call it the New IT. Others may give it more disruptive names as we go. But one thing is agreed to by most stakeholders: how IT is viewed, how systems and technologies are bought and sold, how software is developed, how networks are treated, how the device onslaught is tackled—all that is passe and giving way to a different approach.
So as Express Computer celebrates its 24th Anniversary with a special issue, please join us by flipping through the pages. Inside, you will find some of the leading technology heads pondering over the changing role of the CIO as well as the CISO, and an array of features on technologies that continue to matter—and that continue to get inter-connected, with interesting results.
Rather than sink, float and have fun on the flux.
– Sanjay Gupta
Editor, Express Computer