CSC: The Pursuit of the Dual Disruption – Silicon Valley's Unbounded Ambitions

InsightaaS: CSC’s Leading Edge Forum carries occasional posts from several CSC experts – notably, author and analyst David Moschella, who has grown from a role as the executive responsible for IDC’s international research into his current position as an advisor to CSC’s global enterprise clientele. In this post, Moschella examines the difference between two different types of IT firms: those that are focused on technology disruptions (such as cloud, SaaS, Big Data, IoT, etc.) and those that are focused on industry disruptions – transforming entire economic sectors. Noting that depending on the IT vendor’s approach, a major corporation can be viewed “as either a valued customer or potential lunch,” Moschella outlines five cases – education, payment systems, 3D printing, healthcare and self-driving cars – to examine the extent to which Silicon Valley will act as a supplier to or threat to established industry leaders.

We have all grown used to the information technology industry disrupting itself — PCs replacing minicomputers, and now mobile devices surpassing PCs. But in Silicon Valley today, technology disruptions are occurring on an unprecedented number of fronts — cloud computing, Software-as-a-Service, consumerization, social media, open source, DevOps, Big Data, sensors, and the internet of things. Forward-thinking IT leaders know that the underlying platforms of the IT industry are in for a period of profound and sustained change.

However, in ‘the Valley’ today, these dynamics are largely taken for granted. The more ambitious agenda is for the technology business to become a serial industry disrupter. New firms and ecosystems are now emerging that seek to fundamentally transform entire economic sectors including manufacturing, retail, healthcare, education, energy, food and financial services…

Read the entire post: http://lef.csc.com/blog/post/2014/03/the-pursuit-of-the-dual-disruption-silicon-valleys-unbounded-ambitions