Florence during the Renaissance

I spend much of my time helping CIOs reduce their "utility" spend, that sometimes I forget all the innovation that is happening around us. Then there is noise around "consolidation and the death of innovation" and "IT does'nt matter".  If you cut through the fog and the noise, we are really in the midst of a revolutionary time. This is what Florence must have felt like during the Renaissance with so much happening in so many technology areas:

"Mobile Internet" - see this fascinating presentation by Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley as she generates renewed excitement this time around the "new Web"

Open Source - when Kleiner Perkins shows excitement, it is usually a pretty solid endorsement for a sector as this BusinessWeek article describes

BPO - a growing recognition in corporations business processes need to be "commoditized" and the wide array of call center, transaction processing and knowledge work that is being done in India and elsewhere

Sensor Telemetry - somewhat high-faluting term used by Accenture to describe all the neat payback companies are seeing from combining RFID, GPS and wireless technologies

Software as a service - the excitement being generated by AppExchange from salesforce.com and the growing understanding of operational and financial success factors for the model

Digital content and new media - the realities of the on-demand, blogging and podcasting world and how Madison Avenue is changing - and changing us along the way

Analytics - a growing focus on the challenge of master data management and the promise of next generation predictive analytics

Security and Surveillance: All the stuff from biometrics to other sensors to basic security for fraud detection and intrusion management

I did not even mention web services, mesh networks, collaboration, storage and server technologies and a whole bunch more.

Here's what's really exciting. This time "Florence" is virtual. Open source excitement from Scandinavia, mobile commerce excitement from Japan, BPO from India. New media in the US. Telemetry payback in utilities and healthcare. Security payback in financial services and government.  BPO in insurance claims and mortgage processing.

And for a change, many of the technology initiatives do not require 8 or 9 digit budgets. You see this is why CIOs send me emails like this one  " ..more power to your elbow in driving out waste and excessive premia in our industry". They all want the "innovation dividend" so they can book that trip to the new Florence. Exciting times!