IT will be delivered in a much more dynamic, responsive way, predicated on the rapidly changing needs of the business, predicts Marc Silvester, Fujitsu’s global CTO. Speaking as part of the global ICT company’s 75th anniversary celebrations, Silvester outlined how IT at all levels will not be the “finished product” it is today.

“We will see living, breathing infrastructures where change comes rapidly,” he says. “It is going be built for change rather than have change done to it as a result of a business request. Business is very much on an hour-by-hour, day-by-day creative curve, so we can expect a different focus on information, connectivity, speed of change and the dynamic nature of the solution.”

Such fast, fluid structures will be supported by the move to a subscription service model, with a matrix of inter-related services delivered on demand. “It will not be pay for what you use, but rather subscribe and thrive,” he points out.

That will make IT much more attuned to the needs of the business. “The next generation of business IT will come from activity mapping – being able to match business processes and activities against subscription services delivered from cloud-based platforms. This will make full use of real-time value, real-time functionality and real-time dynamic information, which represent wholly what is going on inside of the business. So we will have business-driven IT, and not IT driving the business.”

In the not too distant future, he says technology professionals will wonder why they ever bought equipment. “Did we really buy servers? Did we really get the spanners out and put those things together?” he says.

Rather than equipment, the emphasis will be on the business functionality running on the top of the cloud service. “Computer architecture will be more focused on specific workloads and specific business outcomes – so, it will be highly tuned, high performance, but very focused. It is the business processes of that app that actually makes the business money.”

The cloud and the next generation of online services are all about putting data at the centre of the equation, he says. “The data, process and functionality – the payload in a transaction, if you like – closely coupled with the business outcome is where the action is going to be.”

• Marc Silvester is senior vice president and global chief technology officer at Fujitsu.

• Watch the full video interview here.