The Next Wave of Technologies: Opportunities in Chaos [Hardcover]

Phil Simon (Author), Jill Dyché (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 22, 2010

Your all-inclusive guide to all the latest technologies

Providing you with a better understanding of the latest technologies, including Cloud Computing, Software as a Service, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Open Source, Mobile Computing, Social Networking, and Business Intelligence, The Next Wave of Technologies: Opportunities from Chaos helps you know which questions to ask when considering if a specific technology is right for your organization.

• Demystifies powerful but largely misunderstood technologies
• Explains how each technology works
• Provides key guidance on determining if a particular technology is right for your organization
• Contains contributions from experts on Cloud Computing, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Software as a Service (SaaS), Open Source, Mobile Technologies, Enterprise Risk Management, Social Media, Business Intelligence, and more

More of a management text than a technical guide, the book is designed to help your organization better understand these exciting new technologies and their potential impact. The Next Wave of Technologies: Opportunities from Chaos will help you determine if your organization is ready for a specific technology, how to prepare for its successful adoption, how to measure success, and the key risks and red flags to recognize.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"…is a must-read for IT professionals who are scrambling to keep up with the implications of new technologies and a book for their colleagues who need to interface with them." (impressionsthroughmedia.com, March 28, 2010)

From the Inside Flap

THE Next Wave of Technologies Opportunities in Chaos

The worlds of technology, business, and people are colliding faster and more intensely than ever before. Organizations today face increasing pressures to respond to innovation, maintain operational excellence, and improve financial performance while trying to keep costs at an absolute minimum. With each technological advance comes not only enormous possibility for organizations to grow and succeed, but also the need to understand these new technologies—and then actually use them effectively.

Featuring practical, real-world advice on the hottest IT topics from a panel of world-class experts—including renowned senior executives, authors, IT practitioners, journalists, thought leaders, and pundits, The Next Wave of Technologies: Opportunities in Chaos provides a veritable toolbox of the latest and most effective solutions for your organization to put its next set of competitive and strategic business practices in motion.

This complete guide helps you move forward to drive business value with solutions that are not only useful, but also transcend the buzzwords, the noise, and yes, the chaos. Here, you will:

• Learn to assess the threats and opportunities created by disruptive technologies

• Discover insights and best practices for averting undesirable outcomes

• Know the right questions to ask to ensure successful implementation of new technologies

• Understand the latest tools for managing organizational data

• Find out the essentials, best practices, and pitfalls of SaaS, cloud computing, business intelligence, open source software, social media, and other emerging technologies

• Understand the intersection of people, business, and technologies that make these trends work

It's time to take IT seriously again. The Next Wave of Technologies takes you there with smarter ways to get work done and the exciting new technologies that can help.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1st edition (January 22, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470587504
• ISBN-13: 978-0470587508
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.4 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #720,943 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Phil Simon is a sought-after speaker and the award-winning author of five management books, most recently Too Big to Ignore: The Business Case for Big Data. A recognized technology expert, he consults companies on how to optimize their use of technology. His contributions have been featured on NBC, CNBC, Inc, BusinessWeek, Huffington Post, Fast Company, The New York Times, ReadWriteWeb, and many other sites.

To find out more about Phil and his books, go to www.philsimon.com.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT BUNDLE OF INFORMATION !!! October 3, 2010

By Aquarius

Format:Hardcover

The next wave of Technologies is a very rich, and up to date, source of information. Chances are the reader has already heard, read and possibly work with some of these technologies. And of course we can always search for information on the internet. But this book bundles it all together in a consistent and comprehensive way. It also provides information that one can use as a starting point to investigate further. This book will also serve as an excellent reference book.

Next to describing and explaining the technologies, the reader gets an insight on:
- when and how these technologies and concepts, evolved to there current status
- benefits, costs, risks, limitations, and challenges
- who are (current) players (form vendor- as well as user and customer side)
- role and strategies of vendors/suppliers, and customer/user expectations
- impact on organizations
- best practices, key factors, models and frameworks
- development, management and deployment
- references to specific research done, literature, articles, whitepapers etc. (can serve as point for further study)

Phil Simon has done a great job in bringing together 15 other authors and there knowledge and expertise to form this excellent bundle of information. Each author writes a chapter on his/her specific area of expertise. One of the things I like of books written by different authors, is that each chapter has a bit different writing style, which to me makes it more interesting to read. Every chapter is written with a bit different style, while still maintaining an overall general structure. Nicely done!

Each chapter ends with a summary and a `next steps' section. The `next steps' section is intended to help the reader think about steps he/she can take when considering using, or is already using, the specific technology in their organization.

The book is structured in 4 parts:
Part1 - Introduction, Background and Definitions
Part2 - Architecture, Software Development, and Frameworks
Part3 - Data, Information, and Knowledge
Part4 - Management and Deployment
Part5 - Conclusion

the chapters are:
Part-1
Ch1 - The changing Landscape of Business and Technologies
Ch2 - How the Game has changed
Ch3 - The role of IT in an Enterprise 2.0 World

Part-2
Ch4 - Cloud Computing
Ch5 - Opens Source: The War that both Sides Won
Ch6 - Software as a Service
Ch7 - Service Oriented Architecture
Ch8 - Managing Mobile Business
Ch9 - Social Networking

Part-3
Ch10 - Enterprise Searc and Retrieval
Ch11 - Enterprise 2.0 Business Inteligence
Ch12 - Master Data Management
Ch13 - Procurement in Chaos

Part-4
Ch14 - Agile Software Development
Ch15 - Enterprise Risk Management
Ch16 - Implementing Open Source Software
Ch17 - Global Engineering
Ch18 - Enterprise 2.0 IT Project Failure
Ch19 - Readying the troops for Battle
Ch20 - Sustainability and Green IT

Part-5
Ch21 - Finding Opportunity in Chaos

That's it for my review. I hope it gives an insight of what to expect from the book.
Thansk fo reading the review.

*********

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars you should get course credit for reading the book August 15, 2010

By Vinnie Mirchandani

Format:Hardcover

Full disclosure - I have come to know Phil over last few months as a fellow Wiley author. I also know many of the contributors who wrote various chapters in the book.

Building such a compendium may seem easy, but making so many voices consistent and keeping content updated with the fast changing tech world is very difficult and Phil deserves plenty of kudos. It's an easy read and will help catch readers quickly to many of the major trends in enterprise IT.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Competitiveness Comes From "Opportunities in Chaos" June 27, 2010

By Julie B. Hunt

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

As Jill Dyche points out in her succinct forward to Phil Simon's new book, "The New Wave of Technologies", IT is integral to the success of just about any company or organization. Technology has changed for the better how everyone works. And technology can play important roles in company competitiveness - provided company management understands which new technologies are the ones needed. Phil Simon's book provides an excellent platform for that understanding, by providing not only insight on these new technologies, but also on the roles of people, practices and processes that make a difference for effective implementation of technology.

The deliberate choice of an anthology approach for exploring this topic works very well. While Phil Simon provides a great deal of his expertise, he shows how important collaboration is to cover complex material by looking to experts in their fields for insight and guidance. He wears his consultant's hat by showing that it can take several professional viewpoints to understand and make good decisions about technology. And as a good consultant, Phil guides the reader on the "What, Why, and How" of current technologies that can make a big difference for many enterprises, with wonderfully thorough inclusion of guidelines, case studies, exercises, and the "right" questions to be asked of many teams

I think it's interesting that this book captures the knowledge-sharing experience of the web: in some ways structured as a well-formed mash-up, where the reader can pick-&-choose how to use the expert content for specific needs. Many roles in companies will gain a lot from reading and using "The New Wave of Technologies", from taking the high level view across these technologies to understand how they might interoperate, to drilling deeper into individual technologies to understand how they work and what value they might bring. While this book is a smooth read, it has plenty of the rich content you would expect from technology experts.