The state of innovation, and the resurgence of technology disrupts has reached unprecedented levels. In the coming years, there will be a high rate of change, that will see the migration from legacy systems to new age ones. Such changes will redefine the very nature of how all aspects of technology interact with one another.

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Core technology apart, there will be significant considerations given to environmental and business concerns. Energy efficiency will emerge as a dominant factor in decision making, and so will increasing data center densities and throughput.

Power independence: Increasing consumption and pressures on governments' power supplies, have translated as risks for businesses vested in large data centers. For such businesses, mitigating this risk will focus on future proofing power supplies. Large consumer businesses such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft have already adopted and achieved partial independence in their power supplies.

Privacy and data legalities: A heightened sensitivity to data security and privacy is steadily changing the dynamics of how businesses store their data. The penetration of cloud based services, and advances in user behaviour tracking, will only further it. Privacy norms and laws will now decide how and where data is stored. And, this will become only murkier with wide scale adoption of the internet of things (IoT) and its supporting infrastructure. Given this context, there is a significant possibility that most businesses would focus on core services, and leverage data centers either on-demand or with colocation providers.

Decentralized, edge centric deployments: Rising demand in services will require data centers to be 'closer to consumption'. This will help nurture new age services such as streaming, IoT, among others. Such a deployment will help reduce latency, increase connectivity and bandwidth availability.

Localized nodes: Edge deployments could also see the shape of self-contained servers that could be deployed in urban areas - such deployments could leverage basements and terraces of buildings.

Convergence: An emerging trend is convergence of servers and storage into a single box. The availability of super fast memory express, and solid state drives, have enabled unified server-storage combinations.

Penetration of solid state drives: The penetration of solid state drive products has already reached critical mass in consumer tech. In the next few years, data centers will include adoption of such drives, and by 2020, bulk hard-drive boxes may have been completely replaced.

Docker containers: Docker containers help wrap software as ready to run code. These containers include everything that is required to run an application - anything that is required to be installed on a server. Such container instances have seen steady uptake, and are expected to increase. Docker containers will lead to a major reduction in server count and space.

In the coming years, IT admin teams will focus on procedures and policies, not on hardware. The nature of these changes will put immense pressures on legacy systems. There will be a paradigm shift that will see further commoditization of data center hardware, and focus on an economical, consumer centric and future ready design.

The corporate environment is characterized by a number of variables: competition, dynamism, turbulence, complexity and change. All organizations must develop ability to continuously and consciously transform themselves and their contexts. Such contexts include restructuring for optimum effectiveness, reengineering key processes and streamlining functions that are able to provide a source of competitive advantage. The aim is to adapt, regenerate and most important, survive. (McLean, 2006).

For a company to thrive today, strategists must find ways to increase the organization's ability to read and react to industry and market changes. They must know their goal to boost the company's strategic flexibility by recognizing disruptions earlier and responding faster.

Strategic flexibility or adaptability can be defined as the organization’s capacity to identify major changes in its external environments, quickly commit resources to new courses of action in response to such changes, and to recognize and act promptly when it is time to halt or reverse existing resource commitments. Being adaptable means leaders must not get stuck in a too-rigid way of looking at the world. The organization must view change as an inevitable and essential part of an organization's growth, in order to achieve this adaptability.

When there is uncertainty or unpredictability in the environment, managers tend to focus almost all their energy on successfully executing the current strategy. What they also should be doing is preparing for an unknown future. Flexibility stems from the ability to learn; managers tend to overlook the negative and emphasize the positive. They need to understand not only what led to the positive outcomes but also what led to the negative ones. This will optimize their learning experience. According to Ford (2004) four points to foster and maintain adaptability include challenging complacency, giving all employees a voice, encouraging participative work and driving fear out of your group.

The companies chosen for this task vary by industry: a famous automobile manufacturer (Ford) a bank going through a merger (Compass) and a start-up software company (DawningStreams). Ford and Compass have been in business for a long time; it is likely they have changed their strategic plan based on changing forces and trends. DawningStreams is new (established in 2005 and incorporated in 2007). Even though they have not had their first sale and have no staff, the owners have devised several iterations of their strategy.

There is a diversity of stakeholders all that are interested in the activity of business organizations. Emphasis must be placed on their adaptability in strategic analysis and their adaptability in strategic management of business organizations. The organization must have a strategic management model.

Each company might scan the same areas, but for different reasons. Considering technological advances, Ford would prepare itself to lead the market by having various electronic equipment in their vehicles, as well as robotic equipment with which to build them and the supply chain technology to keep all in check. Compass Bank is going through a merge and expanding globally; therefore they will need to keep abreast of communication technology. DawningStreams is a software company; they will need to monitor those companies who would be their competition to ensure their product offers better functionality. All three companies would make sure potential customers would be able to get good information from internet websites and advertisement, which encompasses yet another area of technology the organizations may need/want to scan. In this instance, many members of the organization must be enrolled: upper management and finance, who will determine budgetary factors; the IT department, power bi course uk who will be responsible for the implementation and maintenance of some of the technology; the staff who must be trained to use the technology; a sales force who will sell the technology.

To the outside observer, it may seem unnecessary for any but Ford to scan the (actual) environment when it comes to issues such as emission control, fuel efficiency and hybrid cars. That is true however; Compass Bank and DawningStreams can plan a strategy to be friendlier to the environment (and their pocketbooks) by practicing paper reduction (through the aforementioned technology). Lastly, DawningStreams’ product may be useful as a file sharing service to environmental groups.

With regard to the legal environment, all three must be acutely aware of laws, which affect their respective industry among others. To Ford, legal applies, among other areas, to environmental protection laws and department of transportation safety laws. To Compass Bank, they would abide by the rules of the Federal Reserve () and the Federal Insurance and Deposit Corporation (). DawningStreams must follow laws as they pertain to the transfer of files, which have intellectual property and also the export of products, which have algorithms. All three companies are global and will need to monitor those laws in other countries, which could effect the strategic planning.

At one company after another--from Sears to IBM to Hewlett-Packard to Searle, strategy is again a major focus in the quest for higher revenues and profits. With help from a new generation of business strategists, companies are pursuing novel ways to hatch new products, expand existing businesses, and create the markets of tomorrow. Some companies are even recreating full-fledged strategic-planning groups. United Parcel Service expects to spin out a new strategy group from its marketing department, where strategic plans are now hatched. Explains Chairman Kent C. Nelson: ``Because we're making bigger bets on investments in technology, we can't afford to spend a whole lot of money in one direction and then find out five years later it was the wrong direction.''

In such a world we need a planning model that allows us to anticipate the future and to use this anticipation in conjunction with an analysis of our organization--its culture, mission, strengths and weaknesses--to define strategic issues, to chart our direction by developing strategic vision and plans, to define how we will implement these plans and to specify how we will evaluate how well we are implementing these plans. The fact that the world is changing as we move forward in the future demands that the process be an iterative one.

Ford Motor Company – Socio-cultural

Ford