Nicholas Evans writes for Computer World, “In 2016, as the race to Digital transformation progresses, we’ll start to see the leaders separate themselves from the rest of the pack and set a firm pace that’s fueled by five essential ingredients: a deep understanding of digital disruption, the art and science of the customer experience, the next wave of enabling technologies, a mastery of digital services and continuous innovation from ideation to execution.” Beyond the individual technologies such as cloud or methods such as DevOps, digital transformation brings it all together. Here are his thoughts on 2016:

• Market activity around digital disruption processes, models and products will become stronger and more frequent in 2016. Mr. Evans describes the activity as “seismic.” He writes, “Companies with a deep, intuitive understanding of precisely how, where and when to create business disruption will pull ahead in terms of user adoption, whereas those who haven’t done the upfront strategic homework may see lesser or even minimal results”
• IT will need to focus on these capabilities: agile development, DevOps, as-a-service infrastructure, intelligent automation, personas and context and digital service management
• Organizations that understand the full scope of the customer experience will start to pull ahead in the market. Mr. Evans explains, “The full scope of the customer experience will incorporate a rich set of elements including value, engagement, simplicity, timeliness, accessibility, personalization, contextualization, intelligence, anticipation, sharing, listening, information, analytics, recommendations, safety, security, education and consent”
• Enterprise architecture will be the keystone that holds the digital business and brings SMAC technologies together (social, mobile, anaytics and cloud)

Mr. Evans summarizes, “2016 will have a lot to do with digital business strategy, corporate innovation, and the digital customer experience, in addition to more IT-centric aspects of enterprise architecture and digital services mastery.”  Share your thoughts on digital transformation in 2016.