2015, A Year of Continued Transformation

The world is changing rapidly and we are living in an age of major transformations. For personal or for business, embracing the changes, looking forward to the future, being adaptive and flexible will become more important than ever. It’s certainly easy to say than done.

Almost all business leaders today agree that the coming years will see tremendous technology-based business transformations. The forces and momentum for changes have already been established in the broad market and society. Many of these transformations for businesses are taking place at this moment and year 2015 will surely be a significant year along the path.

Decade-old business models, mindsets or business processes will continue to be challenged and put under scrutiny as new technology innovations and new business concepts on the global scale are shaking up the society in every way. New breakthroughs will open ones’ minds and imaginations to far greater possibilities. Today’s technologies also helps enable many of the new business ideas to penetrate into the worldwide mainstream almost instantly.

When we look into the future, many seeds have already been sowed today. In 2015, TriStrategist thinks that we are likely to see fast changes in the following business areas, just to name a few:

– Cloud business: When IaaS are moving more towards commodity services, SaaS may become the differentiators in public cloud offering. Customers are seeking new features, flexibility and easy-to-understand pricing models in SaaS offerings.

– Device business: Worldwide competitions are only getting more and more fierce. It demands innovative ideas in manufacturing, selling and distribution, marketing, pricing and many more. Joint design and investment model will become a norm in device business as any new device comes and goes so quickly. Order-on-demand will likely be the preferred mode of operation for OEMs/ODMs and retailers. Speed and superior design innovations will be essential in all device business.

– Enterprise IT: Carried by the cloud computing waves, internally IT departments will likely move more towards SLA-based offerings – measurable on-demand or shared services models for more efficient and cost-effective internal infrastructure, platform and application support. Pain will be felt as many past established IT processes and roles will be shuffled through such changes.

– Ubiquitous Connectivity (UC): New gadgets, new sensors will continue to mushroom. UC will start taking clearer shape.

It will be an exciting time for many new entrants, but for large traditional businesses, trials and tribulations await because majority of technology innovations today are distinctively disruptive in nature. Yes, an elephant can dance, but for how long and how well is a serious question in today’s environment where new rivals and threats come from every corner of the world, possibly in the most unexpected manners.

For both personal and business, successful transformations will eventually come from the ready minds with visions, courage, dedications and agility. Peter Drucker once warned that yesterday’s breadwinner, “soon becomes a bar to the introduction and success of tomorrow’s breadwinner. One should, therefore, abandon yesterday’s breadwinner before one really wants to, let alone before one has to.” He also reminded us, “Do not kill tomorrow’s breadwinner on today’s altar”. If we have followed his wisdom and practiced routinely, we should hold onto the belief that successful transformation will be with us when we need it in the forward-looking new reality.