Younger enterprise IT employees understand how easy it is to consume services from the cloud. They are becoming instrumental in helping corporations find better solution alternatives than currently available.
Enterprise IT‘s focus is moving from software development to data analytics, so it is not surprising that attention is also being paid to help them address these needs. The exhibit hall at the recent Strata conference (run by O‘Reilly Media) was packed with start-up companies demonstrating innovative data analytics solutions. One of the challenges in implementing analytics is customers‘ lack of skills. A common theme among start-up solutions was overcoming that skills barrier. Some of these solutions were designed to help users get started with simple BigData initiatives and then progress to solving more complicated problems.
Krish Krishnan from Sixth Sense presented on the first day of Strata and made an interesting comment on one of his slides: “The Gen Z and Millennial Generation of buyers will not be swayed by traditional engagement models of selling products and services.” Having worked with large enterprise vendors, I have seen many sales deals closed based on relationships between vendor account teams and enterprise IT buyers that often take years to cultivate. Customers take a long time to develop solution requirements in the form of Requests for Proposal (RFP) and then mandate proofs of concepts from vendors before they make a buying decision. While Krish identified these buyers as just Gen Z and the future, I think anyone past generation Y are ready for a new model.