The ends of decades aren’t quite as good for reflection as millennium milestones.
But they’ll do in a pinch.
Remember the Y2K craze? Computer systems across the planet were going to crash and burn one second past midnight on December 31, 1999, plunging the world into chaos. Power grids would go black. Airplanes would drop out of the sky. Companies would fail as their core IT infrastructure became worthless piles of junk.
Well, it didn’t quite turn out this way.
Y2K made great press. It also gave software vendors a boost in making new sales. But as a disaster, it pretty much turned out to be a major bust.
One could attribute this to the foresight and diligence of countless IT departments and professionals who addressed a known problem in a measured manner with plenty of time to spare. But the normal replacement and upgrade of obsolete systems had something to do with it too.
Y2K’s roots were in an older generation of software and data structures. As the old gave way to the new, the magnitude of the problem diminished.
This doesn’t mean that some folks weren’t working right up to the stroke of midnight on vintage 1970s code. However, Y2K is still a great example of how flexible and adaptable the IT world is at addressing the known.
It’s the unknown that really tests the mettle of businesses and IT.
Roll back the clock to January 1, 2000. Who foresaw what the first decade of the 21st century would bring? We now worry about airplanes dropping out of the sky and companies failing for reasons that weren’t apparent in anyone’s crystal ball back then.
So as I wait to shout Happy New Year, I can’t help but wonder what’s next.
The prospect of the unknown doesn’t mean we are all flying blind. As anyone involved in demand forecasting can attest, the past and present can help predict the future.
We tend to view progress as a linear function, with some justification. What’s next in the supply chain information technology integration world can be discerned from the events of the past decade.
Despite the past worldwide recession, globalization is here to stay. The world will continue to get flatter and smaller from a supply chain perspective. Visibility, global trade management, and trading partner integration will play an increasingly important roll in successful supply chains.
Moore’s law as applied to the computing industry as a whole is still very much alive and well. The Internet, service-oriented architecture, mobile computing, voice recognition, and RFID all have made their mark on supply chain systems in the past decade.
But you ain’t seen nothing yet. The recession of 2008-2009 put quite a crimp in supply chain IT investments.
As the world recovers from the recession, IT as a strategic weapon that drives efficiencies in supply chains will be very much back in vogue.
I realize that I am being a bit light on details. But I don’t think I’ll find too many people disagreeing with these rather vague predictions. Given another 10 years, I’m not sure that any of us will be that shocked on how these trends play out.
But what about other developments? Sustainability for businesses, carbon footprint, and energy costs will matter to supply chains in the coming decade. How will supply chain systems respond?
Recent events drive home the importance of security in our highly interconnected world. What impact will this have on supply chain IT?
What else is lurking out there?
So as we count down the minutes to the New Year, let’s collectively wonder what’s next and party like IT’s 2009.
Happy New Year!
Tom Singer
Photo credit: hyperscholar