Reporter's Notebook: 9 Ways Enterprise Tech Is Getting Disrupted

As fast as technology changes, the main IT pain points for enterprises these days remain quite similar to recent years past: allowing for bring-your-own-device policies and tackling the security implications of that, struggling to extract value from big data and the evolving role of the CIO. These were among the top challenges highlighted at Wednesday's Bloomberg Enterprise Technology Summit.

Presenters, including execs from leading technology companies like Google as well as the former CIO of the United States, took to the stage to highlight these IT burdens and offer some guidance. Many answers are unknown, but one thing is certain: enterprises risk becoming the next Borders if they idly sit by. None said it as succinctly as panelist Ben Fried, chief information officer at Google: "IT and CIOs need to react to a different time."

Fried's point was that cloud services and consumer technologies are the new-ish normal at enterprises. "That ship has sailed," he said. To that end, Fried cited how he reviewed documents on his smartphone in the cab ride over to the conference as personal evidence of just how far business — and the mobile workforce — has come in the last five years.

And for those enterprises reluctant to give in to employees' technology needs, know this: With or without a company's permission, employees will use apps of their choosing (Think DropBox), and it's better for the enterprise to embrace — and better secure — the software than tell employees no. In short: they won't listen and the inevitable shadow IT will make the company less secure.

"You can't put the genie back in the bottle, but it changes the risk management," said Scott Totzke, senior vice president of BlackBerry Security.

Beyond employees driving new technologies into their employers' physical premises, below are nine salient themes from the day-long conference that are relevant to financial services players:

0. The use of cloud services demands an enterprise to rethink its business model as it requires migrating to pay-as-you-go subscription models from licensing models. That's a non-trivial change.
0. Gone are the days of selling to CIOs exclusively. Technology sellers are pitching to specific departments such as an enterprise's marketing team. With that shift comes the need for software companies to make a stronger case for the business value of their products and services.
0. If an enterprise buys an innovative startup, find ways to avoid killing off its spirit of entrepreneurialism.
0. Security remains a challenge for those enabling BYOD policies (which all panelists encouraged). CIOs need to own the responsibilities of the new risks.
0. Corporate apps can no longer look, well, so ugly. Employees expect an Amazon experience even when using enterprise tools.
0. Enterprises are spending more on regulatory compliance. "If you're in financial services and not seeing this, let me know. We've got to talk," joked Robert Lux, the senior vice president and chief information officer at Freddie Mac.
0. Even government entities are applying Silicon Valley-type principles. Freddie Mac, for example, held a coding jam in which employees created predictive models. (Don't worry, taxpayers, it was conducted during off hours.) The organization got a lot of participation and harnessed volunteers' desire to innovate, said Lux.
0. Customers are demanding personalization from enterprises. "Companies are reinventing themselves into customer companies," said Vivek Kundra, executive vice president of emerging markets at Salesforce.com and former federal CIO of the White House. Part of that is based on how people are sharing their aspirations and dreams digitally. Kundra highlighted Virgin America as a company working to layer in deeper personalization for customers.
0. In disaster recovery, enterprises are preparing for more scenarios than in years past. One reason why? Regulators are more aggressive about recovery scenarios than in years past, said Michael Zanga, chief information officer of markets and international banking in the Americas for RBS. That includes planning for a plane hitting a data center facility and formalizing the steps needed to get the business back to a functional state.