2014 Predictions from the Novell Team

Novell India has shared with us its predictions for 2014. The company sees a lot of traction for consumerization of enterprise apps, simple solutions for the masses and BYOD.

1.         Consumerization of enterprise apps: IT leaders will make consumerization part of their long term business strategy.  The lines will continue to blur between consumer apps and corporate apps.  For example, the corporate standard used to be MS Office for editing, but tools introduced for consumers are routinely used for business (such as Evernote or Google Apps).  These consumer tools will continue to pick up steam.   

App proliferation will drive up the importance of the corporate app store. Organizations will get serious about controlling apps in their environment and custom apps.

2.         Simple solutions for the masses: Future Tools and Software solutions that have less features but do what majority of common users need will become more pervasive (i.e. Evernote).

3.         BYOD: It won't be the hot topic that it was in 2013, but in 2014 BYOD will become very real with more people using a personal device for work than not--this will start a conversation around the value and viability of the "20th century" IT shop and the need for "IT to happen at the individual level".

a.       Also related – MDM: The IT customer will require and get mobile device management as part of their desktop/laptop management offerings.

4.         Cloud Rejection: The cloud will become more mature, more secure, and more cost-effective. But many organizations (and perhaps some specialized industries) will buck the trend, looking instead to reap the benefits of cloud models in on-premise solutions that offer them more control.

5.         Compliance: As software becomes more and more intelligent (and more capable of making decision ON BEHALF OF users), issues like ethics and compliance will take on new meanings, and the industry will have to entirely rethink the way today's lines of responsibility are drawn. 
The expense of demonstrating regulatory compliance will outpace the expense of penalties for non-compliance.

6.         Collaboration: As the trend for more streamlined collaboration tools grows, vendors will be able to meet end user demands not by replacing today's collaborative models, but by producing apps that "boost" discrete capabilities within the products users already know.

7.         Storage: Massive amounts of enterprise storage will become a given, and because manually tracking and sorting it all will be impossible, automated storage management solutions will shift from "nice-to-haves" to "must-haves" for virtually every organization.

8.         File Sharing Services: Users will not standardize on a single tool for file sync and share services, putting more pressure on IT organizations to establish governance policies and guidelines for users on when to use which service.  Progressive software vendors will provide a single pane of glass for viewing and managing multiple services.