From my vantage point here in the Silicon Valley, I have seen many technology-induced disruptions, starting with the semiconductor revolution that gave the region its name. Microprocessors gave rise to PCs, which were then leveraged with networks, client/server architectures and the Internet.

But as massive as these changes were, they are being dwarfed by the disruptive forces of mobile and cloud computing occurring today.

While most industries continue to struggle, the Silicon Valley and other high-tech oases represented at Structure are building the innovation engine that will drive all sectors of the economy into recovery. It’s a unique culture, a startup ecosystem fostering companies that are dynamic, elastic, expandable, virtual and uninhibited. Unlike many big public companies that are currently paralyzed by uncertainty – sitting on record cash reserves as they slowly move through the quarter-to-quarter grind – today’s startups can react almost in real time, adapting and creating on an ad hoc basis.

Opportunities in high-tech are expanding exponentially, as witnessed by the range of technologies on the agenda at this year’s Structure. Trends that catch my eye include an expansion of the software-as-a-service model to everything-as-a-service; and a broader definition of mobility.

Everything as a service 

As economic uncertainty continues, enterprises are less willing to risk investments in big software installations. It is simpler and cheaper to buy software on tap as a service. Upgrades are less disruptive, too, because they happen much more incrementally.

Businesses are even willing to give up features, trading off SaaS solution depth for simplicity and flexibility. The majority of features in those big, expensive software implementations never got used, anyway.

This SaaS model has proven so effective that it is rapidly expanding beyond software applications. Companies are now embracing infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solutions for data storage, provisioning, orchestration, billing systems and the like.

Similarly, big data as a service (BDaaS) solutions are emerging as a cloud-based alternative for businesses that are buried in mountains of unstructured data. Storage space is rented from the service provider, whose resident experts handle the data management. Now all that data can be leveraged to make better business decisions.

Redefining mobility 

Smartphones and tablets have been spreading like wildfire and are changing assumptions about user interfaces and content displays. However, the kind of mobility enterprises increasingly want extends far beyond these portable devices.

Ideally, businesses would like to see their premise- and cloud-based computing resources as one virtual system, and then be able to pick and choose where various components go. It should be simple to move a service from one provider to another, or to bring it in-house, in order to better leverage available expertise or take advantage of better pricing.

Complete virtualization of cloud services has moved beyond being a goal. However, enterprises are asking for higher granularity of mobility as applied to virtualization.

Agile software development

The agile software development method has been streamlining traditional software development significantly for years. Moving agile software development into the cloud produces some big synergies by enabling additional levels of automation.

Development tools for the SaaS environment have been slow to emerge, perhaps because it is already relatively simple to add features to SaaS-based software. However, as more tools appear, they will further accelerate the migration to SaaS solutions.

Other developments of interest include open source cloud development, analytics tools and identity and access management.

Conclusion

Economic uncertainty is turning enterprises from buyers to renters as they implement technology. It is also driving technological innovation. These factors are combining to reset the information technology infrastructure and thus lay the foundation for economic recovery.

I would love your thoughts on other trends, as well as the best questions I should ask the 11 startup companies who will be presenting at the Structure LaunchPad competition. Please send me your ideas via Twitter at @mattdhoward.

Matt Howard is a general partner at Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), where he invests in mobile and wireless, cloud, big data, security, rich media, networking and storage sectors. He currently serves on the boards of Avere Systems, Blue Jeans Network, ConteXtream, Hadapt, MobileIron, Pertino Networks, Retrevo and Summit Microelectronics. He blogs at NVP Blog.

Image courtesy of Flickr user LifeSupercharger.

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The result for Getty was a 20 percent increase in the efficiency of its software development throughput. At Rally, they gained increased insight into what tools their customers need to manage portfolios of information technology projects.

Nina Schoen, Getty’s senior director, planning and program management, describes their introduction to Rally’s preview of its upcoming agile portfolio management offering, Rally Portfolio Manager, as an “amazing coincidence.” Explains Schoen, “We were about to start moving to this new portfolio management workflow, and a team member knew that Rally was interested in a portfolio management offering … the feedback loop was instant. I’d never participated with a software partner like that. Catherine Connor [product manager at Rally] has amazing listening skills. She was really able to fit into our shoes.”

Getty had started the transition to lean/agile software development three years before meeting Rally. Getty was excited about the benefits of the new development approach, but Schoen notes that they felt their business stakeholders were distrustful and frustrated with the process. “We used Alan Shalloway from Net Objectives [consulting services] to understand what was at the root of the business dissatisfaction,” Schoen says. “It wasn’t around the technology, but rather around how we organized the work. It hit every single way we organize the work — new roles, how we manage the portfolio of projects at the exec level, how we set expectations around delivery.”

The Rally/Getty co-design highlights how technology and organizational practice can be built together to achieve clarity around needs and expectations. Schoen says that before the technology and organizational redesign,

Our planning process was flawed. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do in Q1, Q2 …,’ but when we looked at the list it was probably four years worth of work. The priorities were unclear. Our businesses didn’t know who to contact to get what done and how things got decided. We had steering meetings where we came to consensus, but it was a very imperfect model.

The situation improved after the process change and the implementation of the Rally Portfolio Manager preview. “We now let lines of business set their own priorities,” says Schoen. ”There’s less disruption as things are more visible. Accountability is back in the hands of the business where it should be. We don’t set time frames until we’ve started something and know a lot more. So many companies build road maps that are just plain wrong. Now we have the trust from our executive team — things are going to change, we’re going to learn more …”

Schoen says that they didn’t receive any pushback from the businesses:

We’d gotten to a point where the problems had become clear to the company. This change was really a process change that had a toolset … Changing how people think about how things work is always hard, but we got through it. It helped that we have a culture of change at Getty Images — that [the businesses] have a voice.

Co-creation is a deep form of transparency. With transparency, you can see the project developing. With co-creation, you can tailor the design.

Getty was able to rebuild wireimage.com, a Getty Image website that is critical to the entertainment area of its business. Schoen says, “That site had a lot of functionality that was unique, but we wanted to make that functionality available on other sites. Because of the new workflow we were able to bring that to customers a ton faster, potentially six months faster, a bit of wild guess but probably true. And they love it.”

And what did Rally gain?

Rally could see the explicit and tacit needs Getty had in its process. “This led to the delivery of Rally Portfolio Manager, which makes Rally a single system of record for both business and agile development teams to gain visibility into development progress,” said Catherine Connor, product manager.

Co-creation, available to use through better communication and changing norms, is one more step in reducing barriers between what a business needs and what it can get from its suppliers.

How else can co-creation speed up and improve our professional relationships?

Image courtesy of Flickr user lumaxart.

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With that in mind, we proudly unveil the pilot episode of GigaOM’s new ongoing video series, “See Founders Run.” No, we don’t take them out for a quick 5k jog (note to self: totally do a foot race video show). Rather, we sit down with startup founders and other entrepreneurs and find out how they run different aspects of their companies so that we can pass that firsthand knowledge on to you.

In our inaugural installment, Derek Dukes, cofounder Jetpac and Dipity before that, talks about how he runs product iteration. Dukes is a big believer of Agile and Scrum methodologies and talks in detail about how he structures his team’s week to incorporate his philosophy of building utility, not features, into the development cycle.

This is just the first of many talks with founders we’ll be doing. If you are a founder with an interesting way of running your business, we’d love to hear from you.

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