Build talent for the digital organisation of 2020 now

The impact that the digital business economy is having on the IT industry is dramatic. Since 2013, 650 million new physical objects have come online. 3D printers became a billion dollar market; 10% of automobiles became connected; and the number of chief data officers and chief digital officer positions has doubled. In 2015, all of these things will double again.

Peter Sondergaard, senior vice-president of Gartner and Global Head of Research, recently explained to an audience of more than 8500 CIOs and IT leaders at the Orlando Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2014, that these are seismic forces at work, creating permanent, structural changes.

Gartner defines digital business as new business designs that blend the virtual world and the physical worlds, changing how processes and industries work through the Internet of Things (IoT).

"This year, organisations will spend over $40 billion designing, implementing and operating the IoT," Sondergaard said. "Every piece of equipment, anything of value, will have embedded sensors. This means leading asset-intensive enterprises will have over half a million IP addressable objects in 2020."

Dramatic shift in IT spending power

There is a dramatic shift in IT spending power. Sondergaard said there is a shift of demand and control away from IT and toward digital business units closer to the customer.

"Thirty-eight percent of total IT spend is outside of IT already, with a disproportionate amount in digital. By 2017, it will be over fift percent," Sondergaard said. "Digital start-ups sit inside your own organisation, in your marketing department, in HR, in logistics and in sales. Your business units are acting as technology start-ups."

Gartner estimates that 50% of all technology sales people are actively selling direct to business units, not IT departments. Millions of sales people, and hundreds of thousands of resellers and channel partners, are looking for new money flows in the fluid digital world, and they are finding eager buyers.

Bi-modal IT fills the digital divide between what IT provides and what the organisation really needs. Mode 1 is traditional, and the systems that support them must be reliable, predictable, and safe (like a great IT organisation). Mode 2 is non-sequential, emphasising agility and speed (like a start-up) because disruption can occur at any time.

Smart machines

Sondergaard used the example of smart machines to highlight the disruption caused in digital business. Smart machines are an emerging 'super class' of technologies that perform a wide variety of work, of both the physical and the intellectual kind. For example, school computers have been grading multiple tests for many years, and now they are grading essays, unstructured tests that require analysis.

"Not only is the grading more accurate, but students actually work harder on their essays when they are graded by a smart machine," Sondergaard said. "Other professional tasks won't be far behind: financial analysts, medical diagnostics, and data analytics jobs will be impacted. Knowledge work will be automated."

Smart robots will appear not just on the manufacturing floor, where they do physical work, but in the workplace and even in the home. Smart machines will automate decision making. Therefore, they will not only affect jobs based on physical labour, but they will also impact on jobs based on complex knowledge worker tasks.

Digital businesses will impact on jobs in different ways. By 2018, digital businesses will require 50% fewer business process workers. However, by 2018, digital business will drive a 500% boost in digital jobs.

Right now, the hottest skills that CIOs must hire or outsource for are: