IT mega-trends for Enterprise and Consumers

photo credit: rAmmoRRison

Saw a presentation by NTT CTO Imran Sayeed on IT mega-trends today that I found interesting.  The list was not surprising, but it is more of thinking about what should be and should not be on the list.  In addition, it was interesting that the presenter divided the trends into enterprise trends and consumer trends as one could think about why a trend is in one list but not the other and if or when it would crossover.

For some of the mega-trends, I have also added my commentaries.

Enterprise mega-trends

• Cloud - especially around strategy to migrating in-house enterprise applications to the cloud
• Mobility
• Big data - maybe I should try this in my personal life!  Start by collecting data like weight, sleep quality with gadgets like wireless weighting scale and FitBit
• Enterprise 2.0 - especially on the use of social media
• Others (though not as much traction): Digital video, crowd sourcing, gamification

Consumer mega-trends

• Mobility
• Social Network
• P2P: ways for consumers to sell services to each other, e.g. getaround, airbnb, prosper

When I saw the list, I wondered why Enterprise Architecture (EA) was not on the list.  Subsequent discussion with the presenter confirmed my suspicion: practices like enterprise architecture and IT governance are needed to make new technologies work, but they are not as sexy as the mega-trend technologies, so they definitely don't get talked about as much.  

Is there then an underinvestment in enterprise architecture?  Will there be a time in the future when venture capitalists will be funding EA startups?  Or should we think of EA in similar ways as project management, that it is crucial but seldom the news maker?