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Is Mobile Technology Driving Digital Disruption?

Jorge Sanchez, Sr. Director, Product Strategy, Appian
November 19, 2015

The concept of digital disruption and transformation has been around for years. Few companies are achieving true disruption and cashing in on their innovations. Some are achieving digital transformation, but most are on a continual quest to catch up.

Larry Page, CEO & Co-Founder of Google, said that we are no longer in a mobile-first world, we are in a mobile-only world.

I can't help but smile at this quote as I write this blog post from my iPad at the Enterprise Mobility Exchange event in Las Vegas.

I look around and I see people taking notes and pictures on their mobile devices as they learn about the latest technologies and methodologies that can help them take their businesses to the next level.

Attending these sessions, you start hearing a few common themes. Agile this, and agile that; mobile backend as a service; micro-services as the solution to mobile-enable your enterprise; the internet of things...the list goes on and on and on.

And while mobile is the technology currently paving the way to improve business and process performance, business leaders always seem to worry about the same things:

    • How do I connect with my employees, customers, and business partners?

    • How will they access our enterprise data?

    • How do I make sure it's secure?

The answers to these questions have been provided by different technologies over the years:

    • From pen and paper to mainframes and PCs.

    • From magnetic tapes to private or cloud-based data centers.

    • From thick or thin clients to browsers or mobile devices.

As Heraclitus once posited: the only constant in life is change. With this in mind, it would seem the most important questions for your organization are: How do I adapt to the next big technology shift? And, how can I protect my current investments so they are not obsolete in the future?

Future-proof applications are a fantasy. We all know that requirements change all the time. However, a future-proof platform on top of which ever-evolving applications can be built is certainly a promising path forward.

While mobile technologies appear to be in the driver's seat of today's digital disruption, business leaders shouldn't lose sight of the next disruption...and the next after that. For even after the disruption dust settles, there's always more to come.

Jorge Sanchez