| | June 20148CIOReviewRise of the Sharing Economy and the Next Generation EnterpriseAmong the most headline grabbing business page stories of recent years have been the meteoric rise of companies like Airbnb, Uber and oDesk. If any of these company names are unfamiliar, each is an online marketplace (overnight lodging, Black Cars and contract labor respectively), has been in existence and average of five years, is disrupting a legacy industry many times its size, and is already a multi-billion dollar company.Mark Gilbreath, Founder & CEO, LiquidSpaceMark GilbreathFounded in 2010, LiquidSpace is a real-time marketplace that enables anyone to find and book a space to work or meet by the hour or day. The platform uses marketplace technology to dynamically match mobile workers with professional work and meeting spaces ­ in real time via web or mobile appClearly, something interesting is happening here. These three examples are a sampling of the hundreds of startups that define the Sharing Economy. Sharing Economy companies in the simplest of terms, facilitate the Peer-to-Peer exchange of goods and services. These are internet marketplaces bringing liquidity to underutilized assets and transforming the purchase experience for the end user. The Virtualization of IT and Consumerization of ITComputing and storage moved from corporate premises to the cloud. The fundamental drivers were cost reduction and increased agility. The corporate impact has been profound in both economic and human terms.Hundreds of new companies and whole new industry categories emerged to service and build upon the Virtualization of IT - SaaS, Mobility, eCommerce, IT outsourcing ­ each massive in their own right.Established technology suppliers either adapted to this new market reality or were disrupted. "Consumerization" fueled the shift ­ with individual employees exercising newfound choice over technology solutions, eroding the primacy of the IT department. I still recall my first purchase of Salesforce.com.The Virtualization of IT provides a blueprint for two even larger disruptions that are just beginning to impact Enterprise ­ the Virtualization of Real Estate and the Virtualization of Staffing. The drivers are again the same, cost reduction and flexibility. Commercial office real estate is a $12 Trillion asset class, represents the second largest corporate spend after people, and tragically, is utilized on average only 35 percent of the workday (take a glance around your office right now for your own informal assessment ­ how many desks are filled?).All of these consumer-facing marketplaces -Uber, LiquidSpace, oDesk and others - will profoundly affect the enterprise. Enterprise IT organizations will be a central stakeholder in each of these transformations, just as they were with the Virtualization of IT. Some like LiquidSpace are packaging and hardening their platforms for enterprise adoption, addressing the unique security, governance and financial requirements of corporate use. These investments are not without their challenges. Enterprises move cautiously and often too slowly. However, a generation of entrepreneurs has their sights set squarely on enabling the Next Generation Enterprise. It will be a mobile, social and cloud based enterprise, a more efficient and agile enterprise. (As told to Joe Philip)CEO Spotlight
< Page 7 | Page 9 >