The Globalization Of Information Technology

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

As journalist Tomas Friedman said, nowadays the world is fated, which means that the development of globalization builds a closer connection between different countries. Especially, the economic globalization has had great influence on the global economy, such as more frequent cross-border transactions in goods and services and the larger scale of international capital flow. Since the 1990s, the rapid development of information technology has lead to a faster globalization process.

From a business perspective, Information technology is a combination of company management, organization and technology to provide solutions or suggestions for those multinational corporations, which are facing problems and challenges. The management dimension involves some issues such as revising business strategy and monitoring the operating income. The technology dimension covers computer hardware, systems software and applications, database information technology, and networking/telecommunications technology such as Internet. The organization dimension includes some issues such as expanding sales channels, redesigning business processes, and restructuring the organization’s hierarchy. So what is globalization of management IT? As we know, IT represents a combination of technology, management and organization. First, the infrastructure of IT covers hardware, software and application, and networking/telecommunications technology, so globalization of IT includes globalization of hardware, such as widespread use of cellphones and Internet. The Internet is widely used into the international communication system such as Email and Social network sites. They have become essential tools for conducting global business. Communication between different nations and districts now is quite convenient and instant by using globalization of hardware. Therefore, customers can shop any where and obtain the latest products quality and price information at any time. And also, multinational companies can reduce their costs of producing, purchasing, and selling goods on a global scale, one of reasons is that they can find worldwide low-cost suppliers to achieve the cost reduction through searching the Internet or they can manage their factories in the low label cost countries through remote communications. Internet service corporations, for instance Google and Ebay, can replicate their expensive fixed-cost IT infrastructure in other countries because the business models are same as existing one. Second, the management of IT includes different kinds systems to support decision making, analysis and revise the business models, and monitor the business strategy. Therefore, globalization of management systems can help company to monitor the operation of company in different nations. For example, P&G company in United State office can manage and monitor P&G offices and factories in china to guide them to follow the company marketing and operating strategy, which are decided by exclusive managers, by using the ERP systems. Third, globalization of IT can be represented by organization of information systems, such as the global organization’s hierarchy. For those multinational corporations, the higher level managers can deliver their instructions to the lower level manager, even they are not at same countries. And also, the attitudes and suggestions from customers are fed back instantly to the CEO through the globalization of information systems.

In Conclusion, with the background of global economy, information technology system enable globalization.

History:

Globalization of Information Technology (IT) started when Asians, Egyptians, Romans and the Greeks used the abacus. As humans evolved and time elapsed there was need for a global platform to share information. The invention of the Telegraph in 1844 by Samuel Mores was the first step in the globalization of IT. After which the first international telegraph system was laid underwater in 1858 between US and Britain, which was followed by the birth of the telephone in 1876, followed by the automated telephone in 1891, the first television in 1926, and digital cellular networks in 1990. As the world moved into the 20th century companies all over the world realized the importance of a strong IT department to aid business globally. This led to the generation of IT departments where the use of computers, data centers, servers, database management, specialized software application and much more were in progress. Now in the 21st century IT systems and database administrators, IT managers and Chief Information Officers are managing departments within companies. The costs associated with IT support were initially minimum, have now taken up a major part of the budget with companies, spending over nearly 5% of revenues on IT. The globalization of IT has is moving the world in new unchartered territories making it exciting for the onlooker and participants of this industry.

Current Happenings

Despite uncertainties in the global economy, business growth related to innovation remains strong. The current trends of IT in business are especially surrounded around cloud based computing and the way it makes collaboration among executives and managers easier. Characteristics of cloud based computing is that it is easily accessible, and very convenient for businesses use. From the cloud , users are able to access documents and information from any location at any time. Corporations appreciate the high speed and reduced costs of the cloud. Challenges to global business still exist with the cloud. Security issues such as its transparency and governance and data sovereignty are some of the challenges corporations meet. As a result corporations now want to use private clouds (Kogekar).

As the global economy is becoming more digital more data is becoming available online. Internal business processes, as well as customers and suppliers demand data to have greater visibility. As a consequence it becomes a challenge to business to decide which information should be made available online. Moreover, the use of tablets and smartphones in business is increasing. Enterprise Apps are used on mobile devices in order to improve productivity. The use of mobile devices has made it possible for people to almost always be available and able to work anywhere, any time (Kogekar).

Large amounts of customer data can be gathered through social media via Facebook, Twitter and blogs, as well as through YouTube and Podcasts. Corporations have more possibilities to gather customer data through internet, but they are also faced with the large challenge to manage and analyze the information available. The trend today is to outsource knowledge management to find the right talent at the most reasonable price (Kogekar).

In business communication social media networking has become an important and useful method of customer relationship management (CRM). By using Facebook, blogs, public forums and wiki sites, business have a better understanding of how to attract and keep their customers. Just as social media, Skype is a trend in communication. Skype is used both internally for video conferences and for external communications with clients. Even though new technologies are being used in business communication telephone and email are still used frequently to communicate effectively within an organization. Another current trend is PowerPoint presentations. PowerPoint presentations stil ol serve as a popular tool to present business ideas and information. Furthermore, companies are creating interactive websites where clients can attain reports, invoices or product information whenever the client demands it. This increases the level of service quality. Clients no longer have to wait until the companies’ official opening hours (Haycox, C. 2013).

"Strong Collaborators are four times as likely as those with less collaborative teams to be Top Performers—respondents who said they are in the top quartile of margin growth, revenue growth and innovation" (PWC 2013). In a report from 2013 PWC states that strong executive leadership and collaboration are crucial for building lasting value from information technology (PWC 2013).

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Source: PWC 2013

The following represents IT technology which global corporations are currently investing in and which IT technologies they plan to invest in 2013.

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Source: PWC 2013

Sources

Kogekar, H. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.cio.com.au/article/431622/business_technology_trends_2012/

Haycox,C. (2013). Current Trends in Business Communication. Retrieved 03/09/2013 from http://ezinearticles.com/?Current-Trends-in-Business-Communication&id=6010218

PricewaterhouseCoopers. (2013).PWC’s 5th Annual Digital IQ Survey Digital Conversations and the C-Suite. USA: PWC.

Future Trends of Globalization of Information Technology:

As we discussed before in recent years we can see lots of differences in how we accomplish our works, and doing every steps of our life. When we look at couple of years ago we didn’t do anything like now, so obviously we can approve that our life will change in the future. But predicting the future trends of Information Technology is something very important and crucial, we need to know where we will go to plan and correct our insights.

In this section, we want to describe the most probable predictions of IT that will have an impact all around the world.

Enterprises will develop Hybrid clouds and Customers will have personal cloud

With the growth of this kind of services, cloud computing will use even more in the enterprise core processes with basis of hybrid clouds. Consumers at the same time will further embrace their personal clouds. Cloud computing represents as most important technology in these years that Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society has established a Special Technical Community on Cloud Computing. Members of the technical community expect increased deployment of open source cloud management solutions, although the adoption process will be slow. Cloud has great ability to work together with other systems and by this mean, cloud computing will continue to be known as energy-saving approach.

If we want to talk about how this trend fit in telecommunication industry, we have to remember about cloud based services and applications are not so much about the convergence of fixed and mobile networks - it's about the decoupling of applications from specific access methods and devices. As an example I want to be able to watch my TV at home, pause it, continue watching on my mobile device, and then maybe when I get to my end location watch the end of a program on my computer. These types of scenarios are attainable through the cloud. So I would say that the cloud is about agnostic access rather than convergence.

Moving beyond transactions to digital relationships

In these days, companies have to turn their attention to their relationships with their customers again. Specially, they need to redesign their digital strategies to move further than e-commerce and marketing. They need to try for the kinds of personal relationships which were usually years ago we saw between buyers and the store owners. The key element is that technology is finally believed that consumers can be handled like individuals again. Customers are more than unknown digital transactions, more than a demographic profile or a cookie file or a transaction history; they’re actual people with real differences. Up till now the perspective of many companies has been to use mobile technology, social networks, and context-based services largely to make more detailed views of customers, customer attributes, and transactions rather than using the new digital contacts to improve the ways in which they interact with them individually.

The solution for solving the problem of losing face to face relationship with customers might be in Holographic Customer Service which enable companies to gain more customer satisfaction

Seamless Collaboration: Right channel, right worker, right job

It’s time for the companies to reimagine the way its employees work. The rise in social networking has made new life of collaboration. Growing expectation that every app will be "social" and new social behaviors of users are forcing companies to create new user experiences. However, to increase productivity, companies must move beyond standalone social and collaboration channels; they must begin to directly insert such channels into their core business processes. The new approach: build social, collaborative applications throughout the enterprise. For the most part, enterprise collaboration today is still a set of soloed communication channels, from e-mail to videoconference to social-activity streams (basically a timeline of activity, similar to what’s on a Facebook page). Users are expected to figure out by themselves how to use those channels to do their job and improve their productivity. But employees don’t necessarily need to become more social for collaboration to work. The work and the process are what need to be social— and when that happens, it will transform the nature of work. To properly harness the power of social technology for collaboration, companies need to go beyond what social sites are doing. They need to use collaboration and social channels in such a way that they have the potential to create specific, measurable productivity gains. The real productivity gains from these technologies will find in company’s ability to integrate the social technologies into its business processes and the software that supports them. Companies cannot wait for software vendors to build solutions to address strategic needs. It is their job to actively identify the core processes where improving productivity will drive the most value and then to weave in the tools, putting collaboration back into work.

Matching the speed of decision to the speed of action

Today, it’s increasingly important to match the speed of the organization’s actions to the speed of its opportunities. If too much time passes between the acquisition of data and the ability to use the data to generate actionable insights, the organization misses the potential business advantage from that insight. More worrying, if the business hasn’t begun using data-driven insight to detect and evaluate opportunities in the first place, it runs real risks of falling behind. Up to now, companies’ leaders have been alerted about the rising volumes and incredible variety of data that they can mine for specific visions. But they need to pay attention to data velocity—the pace with which data can be gathered, sorted, and analyzed in order to produce visions which managers can act quickly on it. As expectations of instant answers become the standard, business leaders will like to have higher data velocities to gain and improve their competitive advantages.

Currently, new technologies which help to accelerate the whole data cycle from insight to action, increasing the enterprise’s ability to deal with data velocity.

Newer low-cost analytical packages decrease the time needed for problem driven exploration. Even new big data technologies designed to handle large volumes of unstructured data are being adapted to work in real time, or as close as possible to real time.

In all of these discussions what’s crucial is an improving rate of response, regardless of the rising volumes of data to be accessed and analyzed and irrespective of their sources. Going forward, it will no longer be about the size of your data, it will be about matching the velocity of your data to the pace at which your business processes need to act on it.

Source:

Accenture Technology Vision 2013

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/12/07/technologies-of-the-future-5-trends-to-watch-for-2013/

http://www.idate.org/fr/Actualites/Cloud-Ecosystem-and-Platforms-Competition_732.html

http://www.atkearney.com/paper/-/asset_publisher/dVxv4Hz2h8bS/content/it-in-the-telecom-industry/10192

http://www.technofunc.com/index.php/domain-knowledge/telecom-industry/item/history-of-telecommunications-industry

http://www.webbconsult.com/1990.html

http://www.kalliance.com/articles/history-of-information-technology.htm