Author: Emily Nagle Green
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional (www.mhprofessional.com)
Published: December 2009
Print ISBN: 978-0-07-163514-1
Print format: Hardback, 288 pages (also available as an eBook)
Prices: $27.95
The Role of Global Connectivity in Revolutionizing Business Practices
I can't imagine any IT professionals working for large businesses or corporations disagreeing with the statement "How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business". That particular statement happens to be the subtitle of the intriguing book "Anywhere". The book is authored by Emily Nagle Green, president and CEO of Yankee Group, a leading technology research and consulting firm, which, on its Web site, describes itself as a company that is "the most respected source of deep insight and counsel on the impact of the global connectivity revolution on networks, enterprises and consumers." (www.yankeegroup.com/about_us/).
But simply acknowledging that global connectivity is having a massive impact on how business is now being conducted around the world, and will continue to do so for years to come, is not enough. Employees of businesses, and especially IT professionals who are in a privileged position to best understand the technologies underpinning global connectivity, have a responsibility to help their companies and organizations to exploit the positive benefits offered by such global connectivity. But where to start? The answer is simple begin by reading "Anywhere: How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business"!
But before proceeding any further, it is important to have a clear understanding of what the term Anywhere, as used in the book's title and then throughout its text, actually means. In the book's glossary, Anywhere is defined as "the emergence of ubiquitous connectivity and its effect on consumers, businesses, and the world". Used in this context, the word Anywhere can then be subsequently linked to other words too to further explore how connectivity is expanding into all different aspects of our lives, with examples being "Anywhere consumer", "Anywhere economy", "Anywhere enterprise", "Anywhere worker", "Anywhere network", and so on. For instance, "Anywhere IT" is defined in the book's glossary as being "information technology that enables any user to work from any location, over any device, with the best possible experience that the device and network allow", while an "Anywhere worker" refers to "an employee who is able to interact, collaborate, and conduct business with other employees, customers, and partners Anywhere, at any time."
The content of the book has been divided into four major sections, titled as follows:
1. Welcome to Anywhere
2. The Anywhere Consumer
3. The Anywhere Enterprise
4. Profiting from Anywhere
The opening section of the book explains, in full detail, what Anywhere is, why it is vital to understand what's currently happening in terms of global connectivity, and most importantly, where Anywhere is heading, as well as some of the potential pitfalls. For example, Green, the book's author, points out that the "Anywhere Network is not maturing at the same pace everywhere around the world, given vastly different starting points, along with differing levels by country of communications adaptability, collaboration, and experimentation. Knowing where it's developing is critical to anyone who hopes to participate in the transformations ahead."
In the second part of the book, the spotlight is turned onto the Anywhere consumer. This is where Green challenges her readers to consider what the consumer world might look like in the year 2020. She poses the following scenario: "Estimate the number of personal items under the control of a typical person in the developed world where we'll have ubiquitous connectivity say 10. It's not hard to get there when you consider a computer, a handheld device, a car or motorbike, a primary TV screen, and a few other displays or entertainment devices. To this, then add the items we're exposed to in a given day that dont belong to us but that will have connectivity by that time: traffic lights and public transportation; industrial assets; goods in stores and warehouses; equipment in offices, farms, and factories. On a per-capita basis, this could easily be another 100 items."
To meet the connectivity needs of such consumers, it's obvious that businesses, and the people that they employ, will need to change in order to service that specialized type of consumer market. This is the focus of the third section of "Anywhere: How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business". As an example Green cites the case of a hypothetical ICU nurse named Ming Chen, and speculates that "for the head nurse of the Singapore intensive care unit (ICU), work is very different in 2020 from the way it was 20 years earlier. Ming is not just the head of the ICU at one hospital. She is the head of the virtual ICU, which consists of five real ICUs located at five different hospitals around the island of Singapore. Thanks to the comprehensive monitoring systems assigned to every patient on the five ICUs, Ming and her staff of registered nurses can provide intensive, around-the-clock care without leaving their nursing station. Everything they need to monitor patients' conditions, including up-to-date medical records, dietary information, and stats, are available on-screen to the nurses on duty."
In the fourth, and final section of her book, Green discusses Anywhere and potential profitability for your company or organization. She bases that discussion on the following two questions that she has formulated: "first, how to determine the urgency with which you should be creating your own Big Bang; and second, what tactics will help your enterprise profit from the effort." In doing so, Green also warns her readers of what she refers to as "primary disruptors to your Anywhere profit opportunities." These include bandwidth bottlenecks; delays in wireless spectrum availability; insufficient existing network infrastructures; and so forth.
The two major benefits to be gained from reading "Anywhere: How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business" are:
Finding out how to position your company or organization so that it can "cash in" on the commercial opportunities that Anywhere is currently presenting, or will continue to do so in the near future. There are two different types of Anywhere opportunities. The first is for your company or organization itself to create the sorts of products and services that people will want to use either at home or in the workplace. The second opportunity is for your company or organization to enter into partnership arrangements with other businesses, and then to help those partners develop the Anywhere products and services.
Learning to accept that the structure of your business will need to be flexible enough to cope with the demands of functioning in a globally connected environment. The roles of your workers will change, not only in what they will be expected to do but also how they will perform their daily tasks by utilizing new connective technologies as those technologies become available.
In conclusion, set aside some time to visit the book's companion Web site (http://Anywhere.yankeegroup.com/) to firstly, watch a video in which Emily Nagle Green talks about her book. And secondly, whilst there, download a complimentary copy of a chapter from the book chapter 9 titled "How Anywhere Do You Need to Be?" It is in this chapter that Green asks, and then comprehensively answers, the following five questions:
1. How Anywhere will the key markets for your products and services be in five years?
2. How Anywhere can the products and services in your industry become?
3. How ready for Anywhere are your people?
4. How Anywhere are the activities that help you make, deliver, and service your products?
5. How Anywhere is your core technology platform?
Lastly, in the book's foreword, Don Tapscott, himself a prolific author of books about technology in business and society he is also the chairman of the think tank "nGenera Insight" states that "global connectivity is revolutionizing the way we do business. Experiences are now portable. The consumer is now connected. Consumers are becoming producers. And enterprises are becoming networks not places." He recommends reading "Anywhere: How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business" in its entirety in order to discover how to exploit this new connectivity. And that's what I think too.