Time to gamble on emerging technology?

According to research firm, Gartner, users’ dissatisfaction with the speed of enterprise IT change will worsen in the next five years. More than 50 percent of users will be dissatisfied with the slow rate of IT change in their enterprises by 2013, up from 30 percent in 2008.

“Users’ willingness to take up web-based alternatives over and above what their IT organisation directly provides (already a significant factor) continues to rise and user skill levels and comfort with using technology rises for employees of all ages,” the researcher said.

“User satisfaction is likely to further deteriorate as the ‘digital generation’ constitutes a larger portion of the workforce and enterprises wait longer to invest in ‘softer’ technologies, such as social software, because results are less tangible than more traditional process- or data-centred tools.”

This exponential phenomenon has vendors scrambling to come up with new technology solutions and as they do so, develop specific programs to bring their resellers up to speed.

Kevin Bloch, Cisco’s Australian and New Zealand director of operations advanced technology and systems engineering, said vendors must not only have specific programs for developing technology, but also programs for mitigating risk on behalf of resellers.

“Cisco’s approach to emerging technology has been refined over the past 10 years to foster and accelerate technology innovation but not compromise our business, our partners or our customers,” Bloch explained.

He said Cisco has implemented a number of measures in order to mitigate risk associated with emerging technologies and markets.

These initiatives include the establishment of a separate business unit to develop emerging technologies (ET) and a process for the sale and support of ETs.

Support for Cisco ETs also comes under the Cisco brand through Cisco Technical Services, where training and equipment is supplied globally to support the technology.

Cisco has also established a separate section within its internal channels organisation to support new and existing partners for these ETs and supplies training and certification for all new and existing partners interested in reselling cutting-edge technologies.

“In Cisco we look at all technology and break it down into three areas,” Bloch said. “These include Foundation Technology, Advanced Technology and Emerging Technology. Foundation is really infrastructure switching and what we have done forever, but is the core of the network and our business.

“Our Advanced Technology program started about six or seven years ago when we realised we could open new market opportunities based on our Foundation Technology.”