Tag: future of enterprise mobility
The only constant thing in today’s world is change. Enterprise software is likewise going through a major churn, to reflect changes in the wider ecosystem.
Until not too long ago, enterprise software development took a rigid and predictable model of requisitioning-requirements gathering-code writing-testing-delivery. The end product, which often took months or even years to develop, was delivered through desktops and laptops. Many enterprises, risk-averse as they are, stuck on to such time-tested formulas. However, the times they are a-changing and enterprises soon began to find out the hard way that who do not change inevitably find themselves “drenched to the bone,” if they aren’t already.
1. Enterprise Software is Becoming Lean, Mean, and Fast
Competitive pressures force today’s businesses to become lean and mean. The fast-paced business environment also raises the need for speed. Businesses are now hard-pressed to take decisions, to take advantage of an opportunity during the short window while it lasts. Likewise, businesses have no option but to be flexible and agile, to seize opportunities in the way it comes, and to please highly demanding customers. Unless the enterprise software, on which business processes and workflows run, are itself is not agile and seamless, businesses cannot position itself to be agile.
Today’s enterprise software seeks to leverage the power of simplicity. However, the need to deliver a simple front end, while ensuring the software is power-packed, often results in a complex backend. The wide range of emerging technologies both in the development and delivery process facilitates the reconciliation. A case in point is the emerging Docker technology that enables developers to create code that can run in their own containers, making the apps nimble.
Today’s enterprise software users are also far less tolerant of bugs and inefficiencies in software applications, and expect developers to implement fixes, and roll out updates rapidly.
2. Functional Programming is Gaining Centrestage
The high velocity of change forces IT leaders to innovate. One innovation that has caught on and now become the norm is functional programming. Many enterprises now build several small software components using functional components, and then architecture systems out of many such small software components
With the focus on speed and ease, enterprise apps are now becoming highly focused, including only what is really required, doing away with the frivolous. Instead of a single bloated one-size-fits-all enterprise app or software, enterprises are developing specific apps for specific functions. Tying the different front end apps together is a cloud-based backend and database, to which the apps sync seamlessly.
There is a new approach to the nature and structure of coding enterprise software as well. Developers are also abandoning the lengthy process of collecting specs and rather going ahead with a project through a new Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach. The MVP may be regarded as a “lite” version of a feature concept, requiring just a fraction of the time that it takes to build the full feature. After releasing the MVP product and gathering feedback, developers upgrade it to a full blown version.
Time tested procedural programming languages such as C and Java still retain their dominance, but new functional programming languages such as Scala, Erlang and Clojure,noted for the power, are fast gaining ground.
3. The Rise of Collaboration
Enterprise software is increasingly becoming business driven by business users, rather than tech-heavy. While hitherto businesses adjusted their processes according to what the tech team dished out, today business managers are key stakeholders in the development process.
A trend fast gaining ground is DevOps, a spin-off from the time-tested agile and lean methods of software delivery. DevOps basically entails bringing together a cross-disciplinary community, who build and evolve highly flexible and resilient systems. The different stakeholders associated with enterprise software, including coders, operations engineers, managers, and others come together and involve in all stages of application development, right from design to testing.
4. Enterprise Software is Becoming Analytic Heavy
Today’s businesses are increasingly becoming data driven, and facilitating the trend is big developments in deep learning and analytical capabilities.
Most enterprise software today come with built-in analytic capabilities that allow users to scour available data and generate customized reports, on-the-fly. Technologies such as Apache Spark enable businesses to develop machine learning capabilities more easily than before.
However, the successful application of analytics to crunch data requires contextual analytics. In other words, enterprise software developers need to ensure the application of analytics to data is based on a deep contextual understanding of what is relevant. Human judgment may work in some ad-hoc cases, but has its limitations, and in any case, impedes seamless operations. There is no workaround to develop a working contextual awareness model for data analytics.
5. The Cloud, Mobility, and Security
The two big changes in recent times, the cloud and mobility have its impact on enterprise software as well. While some enterprises still run enterprise software applications on in-house servers, more and more enterprises are migrating to the cloud, and opting for the SaaS model. SaaS ensures greater flexibility, anytime, anywhere availability, and lesser total cost of operations (TCO.) SaaS also facilitates mobility, or delivery of enterprise apps through mobile apps, which is now indispensable considering the prevalence of a highly mobile workforce and the need to remain connected at all times.
However, the cloud, the mobility, and the Bring your own device (BYOD) programs raise the stakes of security. Enterprise software developers are smartly but slowly realizing the need to develop robust code and plug vulnerabilities that prevent debilitating attacks from malicious intruders, both internal and external, out to steal confidential data, intellectual property, and trade secrets.
Enterprise software development is now evolving into a continuous process, a distinct shift from a one-off project approach. In this constant battle to stay relevant and stay secure, your in-house IT teams, who has more pressing priorities, is sure to be swamped. Partner with us if you want to leverage the skill sets of our highly talented and resourceful team of developers, backed up by our experience in delivering hundreds of powerful and customized enterprise apps.
Enterprise mobility has come a long way in improving organizational efficiency and helping companies empower their workforce digitally. It has been estimated that by 2020 the global revenue generated by enterprise mobility software market would surpass $140 billion annually. With a compound annual growth rate of 15%, it is also expected to be spearheading nearly 15 to 20 percent of annual IT spending by global organizations. The driving forces behind the growing market for enterprise mobility products are the increased productivity factor for mobile workforce and the availability of low-cost smart devices. 2016 is running to a close and so we decided to have a glance of what’s going to be the state of Enterprise Mobility in 2017.
Let us see the direction in which enterprise mobility will head into in 2017:
Market Focus
As usual, 2017 has a very robust growth outlook in existing markets especially North America, which will be the primary leader globally in terms of enterprise mobility adoption. However there will be a new name on the top of the list for fastest growing markets – Asia Pacific (APAC). With a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21 percent, APAC markets are expected to be an area of huge focus for enterprise mobility product vendors.
Flexible Device Management
Very recently, Forrester claimed that mobility is of prime importance for 71% of organizations. This means they will promote almost all kinds of mobile devices amongst its workforce. Bring Your Own Device or BYOD as it is affectionately known globally, will create room for newer policies in device management and control. Integrating flexibility into the BYOD ecosystem will be a challenge as good majority of employees would utilize the same device for personal and office use.
Information on the Go
Taking a leaf out of the previous trend, the rapid rise in number of devices will pose another challenge for information access. Enterprise data or information would be scattered across multiple organizational departments, hierarchies, geographical locations, etc. But for the end user or mobile workforce, all they need is information on the go, at their fingertips. Cross channel and intra-organizational data communication policies would face increasing pressure to synchronize information across mediums so that more informed decisions can be taken by end users.
Cloud Synchronization
It is hard to call Cloud a buzzword now not because it is irrelevant but because it is a norm for the entire tech world. From music to high end computing, consumers and enterprises are exploiting the world of cloud computing to manage their data. Enterprise mobility is no exception as cloud computing offers room for workforce to retrieve mission critical data from the cloud on demand rather than having to pre-integrate it with their devices. Application development for enterprise mobility too will face increased smoothness with more and more dev teams focusing on creating simple front end applications for mobile devices, while heavy duty tasks get organized and executed on private cloud infrastructure of the organization.
Security
Perhaps for the last few years, when people speak about trends in tech, especially when it involved data communication across channels, security had been the number one point on the list. Today we pick security to occupy a lower position, not because it has become a guaranteed surety, but because of the huge improvements that have been witnessed in the world of data security. Thanks to cloud computing, it is easier for enterprises to have a focused area to spend on information security. Whether companies opt for established cloud service providers like, Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, or whether they build their own private cloud infrastructure is not a relevant question in today’s cloud security context. Cyber-attacks are increasingly being reported globally and hence it is imperative for organizations to lay strict emphasis on security policies. The most challenging security scenario in the case of enterprise mobility would be the unmonitored usage of device on insecure public networks. Security applications would definitely find huge market scope in the coming years.
Internet of Things (IoT)
IoT today is what cloud computing was 5 years ago – the rising area of focus for businesses. The ability of devices, or more specifically sensors, to communicate user data will be instrumental for future marketing campaigns to attract genuine customers. For enterprises, IoT will enable field service agents to better track their core operational data, which would then be utilized at higher levels to arrive at better decisions. Devices such as smartwatches and other wearable will begin to serve dual purposes such as personal convenience and official data collection mechanisms. The future looks bright for wearable and IoT tech.
Dedicated Mobile App Development Centers of Excellence
This is a culmination of all the above trends. With such a huge emphasis being directed towards enterprise mobility, organizations would require dedicated developer teams to build customizable solutions for enterprise mobility. These developers would be groomed as an agile workforce to support the massive amount of organizational activities being migrated to enterprise apps.
So there you have it folks, 7 trends we feel will shape the future of enterprise mobility in 2017 and beyond. Enterprise mobility is here to stay and is definitely moving in the direction of becoming a hotbed for tech innovations in the near future.