The Nexus of Forces describes the convergence and mutual reinforcement of four interdependent trends: social interaction, mobility, cloud and information. The forces combine to empower individuals as the forces interact with one another and their information through well-designed ubiquitous technology. Organizations of all types can harness the power of the Nexus to engage with their customers and staff, learn through the observation of behavior and interaction patterns, and create compelling experiences. These same organizations must disrupt many of their long-held positions and structures, all of which give way in the face of consumer-driven extreme collaboration.

The Nexus of Forces is a platform for:

• Engagement
• Dissemination, collection and analysis of data
• Value creation
• Creative disruption

This special collection of Gartner research examines the transformative nature of the Nexus of Forces across various industries and use cases — from new retail techniques to the democratization of money.

Research Highlights

Engage — The Nexus of Forces Is a Platform for Engagement

An engaged customer is a loyal customer. A disengaged customer discards or circumvents quickly. The "customer" may actually be a customer, but is also an employee, a partner, a citizen, a patient or a line of business. If organizations don't deliver "products" that "customers" need, they will look for it elsewhere.

Traditional approaches to IT delivery, product development and marketing emphasize creating and "pushing" products to users. However, modern approaches to the same disciplines require deeper engagement with and "pull" from the user as consumer. Through deeper engagement, more-valuable information (for example, offers, ideas and social connections) can be targeted through a smarter push mechanism. The Nexus of Forces enables reach, but does not guarantee engagement. That is because "reach" is primarily a technical challenge, whereas "engagement" requires design skills rooted in human-computer interaction (HCI), psychology, anthropology and related disciplines. Mobile devices and applications, cloud delivery mechanisms, and presence in social media create reach. The design, portability and usability of mobile applications; the contextually relevant delivery of information; and the integration with related user actions — all of these create engagement. The Nexus of Forces is a platform for engagement, and new skills are required to build on that platform:

• "Maverick* Research: The Digital Designer Is the Linchpin in the Nexus of Forces"
• "The Multichannel Revolution Is Ending: The Consumerization of Retail Continues With Personalization and Customization"

Engaging also implies networking. The Nexus enables extreme collaboration in which collectives cluster around shared purposes and where reputations are won and lost. As people engage, the information they consume, generate, co-create and share draws a map of the world they desire. Extreme collaboration creates results that defy prescriptive design. The best platforms enable these emergent Nexus-aligned scenarios because they are "jumping off" places. For example, the newest iPhone is a beautiful device, but it is more interesting because of the things people will do with it that Apple could not have imagined. Relevant Gartner research includes:

• "Enterprise Architects Must Ensure a Healthy Collaboration Cycle to Realize Significant Success With Social Media"
• "Extreme Collaboration: A Nexus-Enabled Operating Model to Enable Performance Breakthroughs"
• "Mobile and the Nexus of Forces: Creating the New Experience"
• "Portals Unbound: How the Nexus of Forces Is Reshaping Enterprise Portals"
• "Social and the Nexus of Forces: Supporting People's Interactions"

Networks of people consume and produce information that is contextually relevant and analytically useful. Increasingly, nonhumans (for example, sensors) are contributing data to networks that aid real-time response and insight. In the Nexus of Forces, the human is not replicated by machinery (as depicted in early artificial-intelligence scenarios) but rather augmented by technology. Gartner provides strategic advice for this combination of humans, information and operational data, including:

• "Information and the Nexus of Forces: Delivering and Analyzing Data"
• "Information Innovation: The Art of the Possible"
• "Internet of Things Scenario: When Things Negotiate"
• "Three Steps to Maximize Content Mobility for Total Online Engagement"

Learn — The Nexus of Forces Is a Platform for the Dissemination, Collection and Analysis of Data

As people engage with one another and their information, their patterns of behavior are useful input for business decisions and deeper engagement. The Nexus of Forces is a platform for the dissemination, collection and analysis of data that brings value to all participants. Emergent tools and techniques can assist the organization wanting to capitalize on this rich and complex information exchange. Relevant Gartner research includes:

• "Emerging Information Use Cases Challenge Traditional Information Environments"
• "From Data to Decision: Delivering Value From 'Big Data'"
• "Gartner's Business Analytics Framework"
• "Hadoop and MapReduce: Big Data Analytics"
• "Information and the Nexus of Forces: Delivering and Analyzing Data"
• "Market Trends: Big Data Opportunities in Vertical Industries"
• "Operationalizing the Information Capabilities Framework"
• "Research Roundup for Domain-Specific Analytics"
• "Research Roundup for Content and Social Analytics"

Create — The Nexus of Forces Is a Platform for Value Creation

Leading organizations will use the Nexus of Forces to create compelling experiences that engage users and provide autonomy for information workers. However, many new experiences, engagement models and value exchanges will simply appear as people participate in the Nexus of Forces ecosystem. As businesses foster engagement and observe patterns of behavior within the Nexus of Forces, they will flex to accommodate new opportunities. Through that accommodation, those businesses will deepen relationships with users, while finding new ways to monetize those opportunities. Thus, the Nexus of Forces is a platform for value creation:

• "Business Model Innovation: Unleashing Digital Value Everywhere"

The challenge for enterprise IT shops and vendors is that the hyperflexible nature of the Nexus of Forces makes traditional IT delivery and architecture increasingly obsolete. It also places stress on the IT workforce and skill set. Gartner research is available to help organizations reimagine IT from these and other perspectives, including:

• "Five Cloud Computing Trends That Will Affect Your Cloud Strategy Through 2015"
• "Gartner's Nexus of Forces and the Future of IAM, 2013-2015"
• "Survey Analysis: Transform the Workforce to Keep Pace With Business and Technology Change"
• "The Disruptive Effect of the Personal Cloud"
• "The Nexus Effect: Mobile Computing Alters Established Architecture Models"
• "The Nexus Effect and How the Nexus of Forces Alters Established Architecture Models"
• "Toolkit: Architecting for the Nexus of Forces"
• "Unready for the Future: Discarding Outdated Application Architecture Assumptions"

Disrupt — The Nexus of Forces Is a Platform for Creative Disruption

The Nexus of Forces is highly disruptive, not only to IT delivery, but also to many of the fundamentals of traditional business. These forces, driven by the consumer, threaten to disintermediate longstanding, previously unquestioned services and structures. Empowered with sophisticated devices and access to data and social networks, people are finding creative — if not wholly subversive — ways to reach their goals. These people are able to specify what they value in an exchange (for example, using mobile phone minutes as currency). They are able to build new applications on the platforms in their hands. They congregate around shared purposes and overthrow entrenched dictators. They capture global attention through the amplification of individual acts. Gartner is exploring these disruptions with research, including:

• "2012 Financial Services CIO Agenda"
• "Big Data, Mobile and Social Are Changing Geocoding"
• "The Nexus of Forces Is Reshaping the Future of Money"
• "Exploring the Future: IT Is the Business"
• "How the Nexus of Forces Will Impact Government"
• "Market Trends: Digital Rewards, Worldwide, 2012"
• "Maverick* Research: Banking on APIs and Apps, Not Applications"
• "The Multichannel Revolution Is Ending: The Consumerization of Retail Continues With Personalization and Customization"
• "Unlocking the Consumer-Focused Mobile Technology Strategy for Healthcare Payers"
• "Use Molecular Science to Rescue Your Mobile Banking and Payment Strategies"

Vendors and service providers are not immune from this disruption, and their clients are looking to them to enable Nexus scenarios. As explored in Gartner's special report, "Strategic and Disruptive Vendors: Support for a Changing IT Landscape," the heritage of a vendor shapes its ability to embrace the Nexus of Forces. Essentially, traditional strategic vendors whose roots are in traditional enterprise IT (for example, SAP) are having a more difficult time supporting Nexus use cases than vendors whose lineage is consumer-aligned (for example, Google). Enterprises will need to determine the right mix of strategic and disruptive vendors to accommodate their future. Relevant Gartner research includes:

• "A Nexus of Forces Creates IT Market Opportunities for TSPs in Manufacturing Through 2017"
• "Cool Vendors 2012: The Nexus Alters Business and Consumer Strategies"
• "Emerging Information Use Cases Challenge Traditional Information Environments"
• "Impact of the Nexus of Converging Cloud, Information, Social and Mobile Forces on CPM Applications and Strategies"
• "Rethink Human Capital Management Application Strategies in the Wake of Mobile Device Proliferation"
• "The Disruptive Effect of the Personal Cloud"

Conclusion

The Nexus of Forces demands a shift in perspective, as shown in Table 1.

Source: Gartner (October 2012)

This is not a simple shift, but it is essential for success in the technology-immersed world of the Nexus of Forces. Leading organizations use the Nexus of Forces to engage with their users and partners, learn from observing interactions, create compelling experiences and new sources of value, and embrace disruption.