Blog | From Munich, #live11 Socially yours - @Growwithorganic

Munich! Home of Lederhosen, Bratwurst, Bavarian clog dancing and of course really really big beers – and for three days only home to me!

Okay there is more to Munich than load of silly stereotypes. It’s a stunning city with a vibrant culture and of course the home of BMW cars. Its also the venue for Orange Business #Live11 which I will be attending.

If you don’t know, #Live11 is an annual event held By Orange Business for its customers. It brings together the leading IT decision makers form over 200 global market leaders in one place for a few days to evaluate the state of the IT industry, network – and of course have a good time!

I’m currently en route to Heathrow from Sunny Devon and perusing the agenda for the next few days ahead and three themes strike me as being central themes to the conference:

1. Agility

• Dealing with changing technology and demand, specifically the ability for IT services to be dynamic as the way people use IT changes.
• IT departments helping companies to deliver services direct to customers through dynamic ever evolving digital channels
• Implementing IT in this agile environment: Specifically acting more as a technology consultant rather than a systems builder, because as soon as you build the system it will need changing. Learning to outsource effectively is a key part of this.
• Managing people in this fast changing world.

2. Global

• Providing a global IT infrastructure in a dynamic world with vastly different localised requirements.
• Identifying emerging markets and delivering IT services within them
• Preparing for a more volatile and uncertain future.

3. Customer-centric

• Customer centric thinking at the heart of IT delivery.
• IT as a customer facing department: Delivering services direct to consumer at the sharp end

Whilst the details are relate to specific challenges faced by IT decision makers, the three themes themselves are much broader – affecting business as a whole and providing vital challenges to corporate decision makers across the board.

As technology allows more on demand services to develop and mobile connectivity drives global access to these services, a new generation of consumers and business people are entering the market who not only prefer their services delivered in real time, personally to them, but who also DEMAND it.