How The Cloud, Social and Mobile Will Shape IT Decisions in 2012
Posted by Barry Canty on Thu, Jan 05, 2012 @ 12:03 PM
Why is enterprise technology so far behind consumer technology? Because the “user” isn’t the same person as the “buyer”. In enterprise software the user is generally a non-IT person, but the buyer is usually the IT department. Enterprise SaaS gives users greater influence over technology adoption, leading to products that are built to be used, not sold.
The combination of cloud, social computing and mobility can be used to raise productivity. Users expect to get access to personal, work, business applications and data from any device, anytime and anywhere.
The cloud might sound like a buzzword but is in fact a superior architecture, not because it makes installation and updates easier, but because it starts to remove IT from the purchasing process, meaning the user and the buyer are, increasingly, the same person. This will lead to high-growth markets, that will be dominated by enterprise software companies that didn’t exist a decade ago.
Business unit stakeholders often recognize the value of new technology before IT departments can harness it. In addition, emerging markets are growing rapidly in terms of technology expenditures and influence. Growing technology use and energy consumption around the globe have led to an increased emphasis on green technologies and power conservation within IT industries.
2012 is going to be a renaissance year for enterprise software, and everything—including, most importantly, the way we work—will be transformed along with it.