{"id":1350,"date":"2012-07-17T21:06:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T21:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/yarmis-joins-hfs_071712\/"},"modified":"2012-07-17T21:06:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-17T21:06:00","slug":"yarmis-joins-hfs_071712","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/yarmis-joins-hfs_071712\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor Disruptive joins HfS to lead Social Business research"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jonathan Yarmis (aka "Dr Disruptive") is Vice President, Social Business Research at HfS (Click for Bio)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Social media and collaboration has been the heart of HfS, ever since we began as a wee blog in 2007<\/a>. <\/strong>And while “social” has provided an obvious catalyst for helping some analysts and\u00a0industry\u00a0influencers\u00a0share their insights and develop their networks with\u00a0incredible\u00a0speed and hapless abandon, we are now seeing the beginnings of social business playing a truly disruptive role in influencing the way global organizations are evolving.<\/p>\n

Today, managers, employees, provider staff and even consultants can have access to data, insight, infinite networking \u00a0and crowdsourcing\u00a0opportunities that simply didn’t exist even a couple of years’ ago. \u00a0Global business practices are starting to become disrupted in ways that are frightening many firms into retrenching, while others are\u00a0realizing\u00a0they have little choice but to\u00a0embrace\u00a0the change, otherwise get left behind.<\/p>\n

People no longer have to pay thousands of dollars\u00a0every-time\u00a0they need help or information these days, especially when dealing with business and IT processes that no longer require some “secret sauce” to become common practice. \u00a0“Best-in-class” industry process workflows, which many organizations have historically paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire in the past, can now be accessed and shared, within minutes, by visiting many of these social networks – and some are even facilitated by providers themselves.<\/p>\n

Buyers, providers, consultants, lawyers, analysts, investors… all of the industry stakeholders, need to wake up to what is happening in the world, as our skillsets, best practices, trade secrets and the like, are much more easily accessible at a global level. Remember how similarly disruptive delivery models blew up the media, entertainment and PR industries in recent years? \u00a0Well, the same is happening to all industries that thrive on collaboration and information<\/em> – and none more so than global sourcing.<\/p>\n

To this end, we are compelled at HfS to focus intensely on social business and its disruptive enablers, such as mobility and cloud, in order to stay ahead of the curve, with how our global operations industry is being impacted.<\/p>\n

So who better to onboard, than the services of a man I actually named “Doctor Disruptive” in 2007 (he’s probably forgotten I did that), who was lauding the future business impact of mediums such as Twitter, when a colleague of mine at AMR research. \u00a0The only difference was – in those days – most of the analyst industry thought Jonathan Yarmis was plain nuts. Well, they were right about the nuts, but not about the fact that he was onto something three years’ ahead of his time.<\/p>\n

Jonathan is a rare breed; someone who has an encyclopedic knowledge of technology, having been one of the original “Gartner Greats” in the 1990’s, before spending time as a lead executive in the hi-tech PR world for Hill and Knowlton, and finally returning to the analyst industry with AMR Research. \u00a0Yes, Doctor Disruptive has crafted a trade where he combines an intimate knowledge of technology, media and global business dynamics to bring to you a unique research practice dedicated entirely to covering the impact that social media and disruptive technologies are having on global business dynamics and operations. \u00a0Jonathan today resides in Stamford CT, a stone’s throw from his old Gartner stomping ground, where is the proud Dad of Sam, who is\u00a0going into her junior year at at Oxford University, England, and\u00a0Ben, who’s an aerospace and mechanical engineering major going into his senior year at George Washington.<\/p>\n

So after the longest-ever introduction to an new analyst hire, I hand you over to the notorious Jonathan Yarmis, who waxes lyrical on…<\/em><\/p>\n

Disruptive Technologies:\u00a0 The Sourcerer\u2019s Apprentice<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s outsourcing leaders broadly proclaim that the broad deployment of a new generation of disruptive technologies (social, mobile and cloud) offer new vistas and new opportunities for their businesses to add customer value. Their bold assertions of opportunity ignore the fact that these new platforms actually represent a significant challenge to their businesses.\u00a0 The water is rising and it will take a wizard\u2019s deft hand for them to survive the floodwaters that have been unleashed upon their castles.<\/p>\n

Disruptive technologies have been a hallmark of the technology landscape since the advent of the minicomputer and, more profoundly, the personal computer.\u00a0 (I began my career in technology back in the early PC days of 1979, before IBM entered the market.) However, successive generations of these disruptive technologies have all been constrained by the fact that they lacked enterprise scale and scope.\u00a0 This has been irreversibly changed; users now rule the roost<\/em>. Gartner calls this the \u201cconsumerization of IT.\u201d\u00a0 What they\u2019ve overlooked, however, is that this is inexorably leading to the consumerization of business and the \u201cIT-ization\u201d of consumers.\u00a0 Our users and customers now have access to infinitely scalable platforms with global reach.\u00a0 Facebook supports 900 million users.\u00a0 Can your enterprise solution deal with that?\u00a0 Amazon has deployed over 500,000 servers and is adding over 100,000 virtual machines to their cloud every day<\/em>. You think that\u2019s a big number?\u00a0 Google handles 34,000 searches every second.<\/em> That equates to 3 billion per day.\u00a0 Three billion.\u00a0 Has your enterprise system handled that many transactions in totality?\u00a0 Ever? The \u201cconsumer\u201d platforms like Amazon, Google and Facebook have been forced to define their own operating platforms building on top of cheap, scalable consumer hardware to deal with their own unique requirements.\u00a0 They haven\u2019t outsourced their platform development and deployment.\u00a0 They\u2019ve had to develop it themselves and, having done so, they make it available\u2026perhaps most amazingly, often for free.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re probably thinking \u201cyeah, but what does this have to do with me and my business?\u201d At the risk of gross generalization, today\u2019s generation of outsourcers have been able to flourish because business processes are:<\/p>\n