Old information technology (IT) is unable to cope with the modern business needs, with people now shopping, paying their bills and communicating with each other in very different ways to ten years ago, necessitating the updating of IT systems by governments and businesses to service their clients.
This is according to Alain Ozan, vice president of technology for the Eastern Central Europe CIS & Middle-East and Africa (ECEMA) region at Oracle, who said organisations were dealing with a dramatic transition.
“The average age of enterprise software is 20 years old, built in the early 1990s before even the internet came into common use,” he said.
Ozan, who was speaking at the IDC Francophone Summit held yesterday, also said mobile technology, social media and sensor technology all present opportunities for organisations to have a better understanding of their customers.
“Not so long ago in the buyer/seller relationship, the balance of power was with the seller. Companies were able to dictate to the world: “This is who we are, here’s what you know about us, here’s how you do business with us”. Now the balance of power has shifted to the buyer. Ten years ago it was okay to have a 95 per cent customer satisfaction rate. Today, that five per cent of dissatisfied customers can bring a business to its knees.”
The vice president was also of the opinion older technologies are too slow, too complex and too expensive to perform this task.
“The budget just to maintain these systems needs to increase by 4% every year. To cope with the enormous amounts of data generated through doing business online, analyse it quickly and respond to these needs, businesses need to have a powerful, flexible and above all affordable IT system.”
