One of the great pleasures of covering the broad landscape of Information and Communications (ICT) is going to industry events and having the opportunity to listen to and interact with some of the best and brightest minds.  In fact, if trying to be objective, one of the best places to do so is ITEXPO East where in the past few days here in sunny and warm Miami Beach, I have enjoyed listening to those great minds and kicking the tires of the latest innovations in a host of areas. 

As those who follow my postings are aware, finding common themes is a passion. And, having just gone through the annual cycle of predictions for the coming year, I can report that all of the lists about 2015 being dominated by cloud, SDN, NFV, WebRTC, IoT, mobility, virtualization in general and investments in companies in everything that improves the customer experience or helps companies build better contextual profiles of their customers to enhance marketing are all on display. They are also attracting a lot of attention.  Indeed, as will be seen soon in the announcements of our Best in Show category winners, the ingenuity of our industry knows no bounds and the pace of innovation is accelerating. That is good news for everyone.

While there are lots of themes and memes covering the granularity of the “big trends”, there have been two really interesting ones that have something to do with innovation, but have more to do about the business of business. Indeed, while it is easy to get caught up in the excitement of what is new and what is coming, as the title above suggests the two common threads that have been running through every keynote session and all of the breakouts are:

• Make it work
• Make it simple

Whether it was Gurivinder Ahluwalia from IBM (News - Alert) talking about the future of IoT, Mitel CEO Rich McBee making predictions about new unified communications (UC)requirements, or various lively panel discussions about security, in-building wireless, determining IT requirements, the future of data center transformation, and a host of other sessions that made news, those two messages were always top of mind. This was even true of the lively Net Neutrality panel moderated by TMC CEO Rich Tehrani (News - Alert), where the plea of various panel members,  especially as articulated Comunicano CEO Andy Abramson’s request to policy makers to “Keep it free, equal and open”,  roughly translated along with so-called equality for all means make it work and make it simple. And, what should be added is make it or keep it accessible and affordable. 

I hate to use an over-used phrase but the bottom line is the bottom line. When one cuts through all of the promise technology companies look to sell, if ICT vendors are to be successful focus must be on making it work and masking complexity so “E”verything is easy to use. If you can’t make it work it won’t get used, and if it is too hard to use it will be ignored. This is a message up and down the value chains of all industry sectors and the vertical markets they serve. 

Yes we live in what I have called in the past, “The Age of Acceleration” where the only constants we can predict is change and the speed at which it is increasing. Being fast to market, being fast in the market and even being best in market, whether you are a big enterprise striving to get there or a just one person in a garage, if you can’t make it work so its value can be appreciated and make it easy for your target audience to use success will not flow. 

The great news from ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the vendors are listening to their customers and the requirements that investments only go to those who can be trusted to provide demonstrable value and not solutions in search of problems.  If 2015 is going to be a “Year of …” it should be the year of “Make it Work!”  At least from listening to the voice of the industry: that is a prediction that has a high probability of being a reality.