Introduction
Over the next three to five years, the enterprise IT landscape will undergo rapid modernization. This transformation will be primarily triggered by digital adoption, fueled by the rising emergence of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud.
The top business leaders will aim to provide technology-driven differentiation in the form of innovative applications in the marketplace. Hence, enterprise application ecosystems are likely to face unique challenges as the need to drive continuous and rapid innovation will soar.
As business requirements and environments will continue to evolve, buyers will also begin to play an increasingly prominent role in the technology lifecycle. Buyers are likely to influence how platform vendors, service providers and developer communities will evolve in the coming years. Moving forward, the enterprises that are able to anticipate trends and adapt rapidly will outshine other players. This article provides an insightful look into the future, and the dominant trends that will shape enterprise applications in the coming years.
Five Trends Shaping the Future of Enterprise Applications Solutions
The transformation of the enterprise applications landscape will undoubtedly have a large impact on technology, businesses and consumers. Five major trends that will play a significant role in shaping the future of enterprise application solutions are:
- Hyper-contextual, micro-capabilities will lead to mass personalization at scale: As cloud technology becomes the primary choice for enterprise applications, technology architecture of the future will be standardized across customers with minimal scope for customizations. The primary aspect of differentiation of future implementations will be that they will be highly personalized and offer contextualized micro-capabilities. This will be the result of: (i) a cloud enterprise’s capability to re-route hyper-personalization to the target customer’s market context, and (ii) the evolving Apps marketplace that publish micro-capabilities through Application Program Interfaces (APIs). Business concerns including security, data privacy and meeting regulatory requirements will ease due to multi-cloud adoptions. An exception to this will include some sector specific applications that may remain on-premise, instead of cloud, which are specifically for on-premise capabilities.
- AI predictability will drive the selection of micro-capabilities: Product assessment is likely to be replaced by outcome-driven selection. The selection process will be from a pool of specified capabilities rather than standard subscription-based modules. Once businesses assign Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and finalize expected outcomes, the enterprise platform’s AI engine will recommend relevant micro-capabilities. These will be chosen from libraries, customer’s market context and the industry best practices. The AI engine’s predictability will be measured against certain outcomes to ensure accurate selection of micro-capabilities.
- Agile enterprise applications will reign: Providing in-built agility in the life cycle of product capabilities will become a key priority of a large amount of application vendors. As frequency and feature’s selection are upgraded, selection will be customized at source. Moving forward, closed-loop systems will emerge to integrate user feedback directly into the product innovation cycle. This will be done in near real-time and bring the application implementation cycle closer to agile product development.
- Businesses will be free from vendor lock-in: Vendor lock-ins will be eliminated due to standardized technology architecture. This will enable enterprises to switch from one vendor to another, without risking a major change in the application configuration already implemented. It will become possible to have multiple products seamlessly deliver different micro-capabilities of a particular function or process for a targeted customer. These adopted capabilities will be portable across different platforms of the enterprise.
- Buyer’s market will emerge: Vendors offering application services are likely to offer new try and buy models without requiring any commitment for upfront investments. This is primarily due to less fear of vendor lock-ins and higher portability. Certain vendors can also offer subscription models based on the outcomes. This will be an additional benefit for customers as they will have flexibility and assurance to make the payment only when desired outcomes are achieved. Based on this, business capabilities may also be priced based on outcomes.
Conclusion
The world is quickly transforming to an application-driven landscape. Enterprise applications services will undoubtedly play a significant role as a catalyst to innovation and driving business operations. Stakeholders in the application ecosystem must pay close attention to the emerging trends to achieve goals and improve business experience and outcomes.