Simplicity, the next big thing?

Recently, Dynatrace conducted a survey of CIOs on their top challenges. Of the top six, almost all deal with concerns about complexity. There is no doubt there are numerous technologies being injected in almost every industry from a range of vendors. Integration of this multivendor cacophony is ripe with security risks and misunderstanding – whether it is your network or IoT vendor environment.

Humans have a limited capacity to handle complexity before they throw up their hands and just let whatever happens wash over them. That fact is one of the reasons AI is being viewed as the savior for the future. Back in 2008, I wrote a blog post for HP that mentioned:

“the advent of AI could allow us to push aside a lot of the tasks that we sometimes don’t have the patience for, tasks that are too rigorous or too arduous.”

IT organizations needs to shift their focus back to making the business environment understandable, not just injecting more automation or data collection. Businesses need to take latency out of decision making and increase the level of understanding and confidence. A whole new kind of macro-level (enterprise) human interface design is required. Unfortunately, this market is likely a bit too nebulous to be targeted effectively today other than through vague terms like analytics…  But based on the survey results, large scale understanding (and then demand) appears to be dawning on leadership.

The ROI for efforts to simplify and encourage action, should be higher than just adding a new tool to the portfolio ablaze in most organizations. We’ll see where the monies go though, since that ROI is likely to be difficult to prove when compared to the other shiny balls available.