Happy New Year, A year of Promise for Operational Transformation

As I sit and look out over the surf in south Australia, with the end of year here, we have time to reflect.
Firstly happy new year to all of you.
2014 has a real opportunity to be a transformation year in the Operational Management space, with many of the seedlings of trends and direction becoming increasingly adopted as we accelerate into new requirement of agility.
In this brief blog the areas for watching:

• The increased use of the "internet" as a natural part of the operational / automation architecture
• The increased adoption of the cloud combined with the expect rapid expansion "managed industrial services" (offerings) available from vendors and specialist suppliers
• The increased transition from central to distributed, in all aspects of architecture and operational approach to plants.
• The increased role of energy and environment as one of the big factors in operational/ automation design.
• The change in operational Experience to accommodate the transition of workforce to Gen Y and to a more operational team
• The shift to the "internet of things" where smart strategies will increase the distributed landscape of operations, and control.

So many of these strategies are well under way, but 2014 there is the potential for surge in adoption to increase  as confidence and acceptance of the approaches takes place.

Enjoy the start of 2014.