Every year IDC has a widespread top ten predictions program that starts in November with worldwide top level firm predictions generated from a group of us, and is then followed by a series from across many groups. My group always contributes our enterprise application focused predictions. The document is now available on IDC.com (#233104, subscription required to access). I will summarize the predictions for you though, since many of you can’t access the actual document. In addition to me, the document was authored by: Mary Wardley, Robert Mahowald, Amy Konary and Scott Guinn.
2012, at least for software applications, should continue to see good growth across a variety of markets. Technology, particularly software, is seen as a competitive equalizer and automation is increasing productivity in an environment of scarcity. Companies continue to invest in edge applications that increase customer touch and facilitate a more collaborative business environment. The four major trends, cloud, big data, social and mobile continue to have far reaching impacts for businesses and for the technology that supports them. With this in mind we offer the following predictions:
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Demand for Digital Commerce Will Outpace Other Enterprise Software Markets as Traditional Retailers Search for an Equilibrium Between Brick-and-Mortar, Online, Mobile, and Social Commerce Channels, with Digital Commerce Growing Beyond Retail.
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Cloud Monetization Will Become More Sophisticated (Beyond Per User Per Month) as Cloud Applications Mature
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This Year, Businesses Will Move a Portion of Enterprise Application Seats to Public Cloud Infrastructure, Accelerating the Wholesale Model and Growing the Percentage of Applications Seats Deployed on Public Cloud IaaS to About 2.4%
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2012 Will Be the Year of “Putting the Pieces Together” for Effective Customer Engagement
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Context Awareness for Personalization (Not Customization) Will Be the “New Black”: The Ability to Customize Is Still Critical, But That Signals Time and Effort
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Innovation Management Will Become a Focus for Business as a Key Element of Competitive Advantage in a Tough Economy
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Cloud Apps M&A Will Be Led by Big Names: 2012 Will See Significant Buying as Major ISVs, Late to the Cloud Game, Fill Out Their Functional Portfolios
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As Social Business Gains Momentum, Panic Will Set in Across the Applications Market as Vendors Fear Losing Their Legacy Footprint to Vendors Offering New Models of Interaction with “Just Enough Support” for Core Enterprise Functionality
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As More and More Components of the ERP Suite Prove Out Their Viability in the Cloud, the Gravitational Pull of Vendors Around Platforms Will Accelerate
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As Heterogeneous Deployments Become the Norm, Cloud Infrastructure Hardware and Management Software Sales Will Grow by More than 100% in 2012 as Private Cloud Moves into the Mainstream and Service Providers Look to Accelerate Deployments
There you have it for this year, what do you think?
