Driverless cars

Driverless cars have caught the imagination for years; mostly the conversation turns to advanced technology (satellite navigation, laser collision detection, automatic parking), but for me it's even more interesting to guess how technology might turn business models upside down.

Once cars can drive themselves, taxis get far cheaper. That's because you're not paying a taxi driver's wage. Far more people will take taxis, which will mean there are more taxis on the roads, which in turn will shorten taxi waiting times, which will attract even more people to take taxis - a virtuous circle.

I don't mean to imply that no one will drive cars or own them - there's satisfaction and freedom in driving on open roads that can't be beaten. But perhaps not for the weekly slog to the shops, or the commute, or the evening out, or the occasional traveler.

What happens when a significant proportion of cars are driverless taxis? The rise of the taxi company - massive customers for Motown with the power to significantly negotiate prices down. What's the natural response? Motown buys the taxi companies. They will no longer sell machines - they'll sell the service of transporting people, it'll be Ford taxis versus Toyota taxis.

Of course, for the next decade at least, we'll see only "assisted driving", not "no driving" - better aids to navigation, steering, breaking, and cruising to help the driver concentrate on reacting to the road.

But the auto industry will surely learn the meaning of the phrase "disruptive innovation".

HR and corporate identity management

I've followed the recent surge of debate on identity management with interest. Massive government data loss, new social network APIs, and gains for OpenID have shown the importance of identity management, and fundamentally changed its landscape.

Technology nowadays seems generally led by consumer markets, not enterprise ones. However, in the enterprise, many of the pieces are already in place, if unevenly distributed. For example, many corporations have purchased single sign on applications from the likes of IBM and CA. Similarly, HR suites from SAP and Oracle compete to automate the management of personal information, and most firms have a web-based corporate directory with people's contact details.

What's missing are the connections between these tools. The HR suite - Peoplesoft, for example - should contain the corporate directory. Employees should be able to go in and update details via the directory page about them. And this page should also define their Single Sign On identity, via OpenID.

In this picture, HR is identity management. A breath of Web 2.0 should hit monolithic HR applications!

Future of IT: the IT view

Continuing an occasional series, I'm taking a look at the IT department of 5-10 years from now.

Most IT departments break down into four components - client support, development, operations, and IT management. Each will be radically changed by new technology and business models, focused around the web.

Client Support

If all applications are web applications, then all you need is a browser with broadband web connection. Client computing will therefore become much more straightforward; no more configuring hundreds of registry settings and data on local c: drives. It also may not really matter which computer anyone has, since they all have browsers.

Similarly, with the focus on Software as a Service, application support will be given by third parties. I can only see a small role for client support within the IT department in future.

Software development

I already predicted that all applications will be web-based, and 80% of them hosted by a third party via Software as a Service - including the office suite, communications and collaboration.

Therefore, hardly any software development will take place inside the IT department. Instead, business analysts and architects will be responsible for configuring and integrating third party web applications, using the vendor-provided tools. Most of this will not involve code, except perhaps a smattering of regular expressions to manage data in two dominant formats; the relational database, and the Atom feed.

Any remaining software development will be enabled by an online tool. Imagine a website that stored your code, compiled it, helped you manage software configurations and releases, offered integrated bug databases and test environments, provided WYSIWYG user interface design, and hosted the resulting application. All client-based tools, like Eclipse and Visual Studio, would be replaced by web applications, with a full data centre to host your application behind them.

Software developers wouldn't need to know anything about the underlying hardware - they would just see their memory, CPU, network and storage usage, and be charged appropriately for each. The data center is hosted by the software development tool vendor and totally behind the scenes.

Operations

Most organisations will have zero servers to maintain, so won't need to spend much effort on operations. As for network operations, many devices will be connected to the internet via 3G or 4G wireless networks operated by third parties. Desktop devices will still be connected to a LAN, for the sake of speed, but that will plug directly into the internet. Hence network operations costs are likely to be low too.

IT management

IT management won't have to focus so much on operations - however, they will have to improve their vendor relationship management processes, because of their reliance on Software as a Service. IT managers will decide which vendors to use, and build a framework of best of breed web applications tailored to their business.

Because of this, IT managers will have less capital equipment to procure, and more subscription services to manage. They will have to learn the business more closely and take a more proactive role in determining the future of business oeprations.

Conclusion

The IT department, it has to be said, will be smaller in future. CIOs will rely on a network of partners and suppliers to achieve their goals, and will become much closer to the business as their role becomes business process strategists.