Our Fantastic Voyage

I had a flashback to a childhood experience seeing the movie “Fantastic Voyage” in 1966 when I read this article about ingestible cameras in the WSJ;

You have to admit the visual similarities are amazing.

OK – no people inside that capsule on the right, but there might as well be.

We know that  IT, and IT infrastructure, is under siege with the amount of data and information that we are being asked to gather,store, slice, and dice.

It’s driving major league initiatives in Analytics, and is the basis for ongoing technological growth via the Internet of Things (which this is just another example of)

So we move from wearable electronics to edible electronics – and these are not overnight sensations, but trends that have been a long time coming.  Sure, you might add, but besides the obvious, what does this really have to do with IT?

Interestingly enough, we’ve coined a term at Gartner called “Vanguard Enterprise Architecture”.  It reflects that the CIO, and the IT department, is being called on not just to make sure the back office operation runs smoothly, but that new innovations, new business capabilities, are identified, vetted, and properly integrated into the business’ technology infrastructure. In the medical field, this is a prime example.

I know from first experience it didn’t take long for the Hospital CIO to realize he or she had to work closely with the Operating Room tech, or the Imaging tech – all those specific points of patient care were increasingly getting integrated into the hospital technology backbone.  Then the focus quickly shifts from the clinician, to the technologist;  From the point of care to the care delivery system.  Hospitals, and healthcare, are not unique.  This is happening in every industry.

So when the C-suite looks at the CIO for guidance and input  on these new developments, who does the CIO turn to within the IT staff?  The obvious answer is an Architect, a designer, a big picture guy or gal that can translate technology opportunity to small picture  tasks and implications.  That is the role of the Enterprise Architect – a Vanguard Enterprise Architect.  Our research provides guidance for Vanguard EAs, including behaviours, strategies, and techniques that we are seeing that make EAs successful in this role of tech strategy advisor.  It’s all “encapsulated” in one word: innovation….