Top IT trends of 2014 – the successful player’s biggest challenges andopportunities
What an exciting year we have in front of us. My
list of top trends of 2014 is based on the buzz across industries where IT is business
critical. It’s based on what we, Netlight, are involved within. Netlight is a
Genuine Consulting firm, which means we are totally independent, we work and
create together for real (to make sure the gathered competence and experience
of all consultants are utilized) and we totally focus our work based on the true
need of our clients. What we do on a daily basis is totally ruled by the challenges
and opportunities of the companies we’re helping. So what we work on is really
what is hot currently - and if not we’re doing something wrong.
·
Streaming and VOD (Video On
Demand, Music On Demand, Radio On Demand…)
·
Cloud hosting
·
Organisations and teams – increased productivity
·
Omnichannel - retail
· Empowered web/front-end layer – increased business value
·
Node.js
·
BI
·
Operational Intelligence
·
IT as part of your business
·
Mobile first
·
Second screen
·
Programming for kids
·
Social Media
·
Equality
·
Online Payments and Mobile
Payments
Streaming and VOD (Video On Demand, Music On Demand, Radio On Demand…)
More
and more we’re heading towards a general on-demand lifestyle on behalf of
traditional broadcasting; why not enjoy when you have the time. This puts enormous challenges on the IT
environment both in terms of software, hardware and infrastructure
(however, as a perspective, infrastructure for on-demand services over Ethernet
is much cheaper in total than traditional broadcasting, which helps speeding up
the evolution).
Typical
challenges one see within the area currently are amongst the following:
How
to manage commercial licenses and copyrights for content? To come up with technical
on-demand solutions for mobile devices supporting good user experience but
still being affordable. Web vs. app, which is the right way to go? How to build your
business around streaming; how to charge the end user? (totally free i.e.
advertisement only, charge only for premium content, different models of payment
walls, monthly subscription). How to follow up, measure and increase conversion
and completion rates? How to handle AVOD
in the most effective way?
The traditional performance challenge is generally solved using CDN networks but challenges still remain to cater for when specific events starts at certain times, hence within
sports. Here we see great challenges in performance solutions due to significantly high
spikes when millions of people connect more or less simultaneously.
Cloud hosting
The
clouding technology has matured and at the same time qualitative hosting
becomes more complex and more business critical. Today we see Cloud hosting is becoming a more
and more attractive path for many companies to take, above all for the small or very big players. The main drivers are the
scalability of performance and data storage. The fact that our IT landscapes
with our deployments and deployment tools have improved in the way that they
better support one-click-deploys and continuous delivery makes cloud hosting a
more valid alternative today. As we automate and remove the risky manual steps
in our deploys, we increase the quality but also we get rid of dependencies to
key people. This keeps responsibility separated and healthy, and makes outsourcing
of hosting and IT operations possible.
And
talking about outsourcing; the main reason for many players to start using Cloud
hosting is just that, to outsource their hosting and IT operations, to refine and focus
more on core areas - business and new development. For example we see Majang
(Minecraft) walking in this direction.
(See seperate blog post "The unavoidable downside of your outdated Outsourcing Strategy - Symptom and Cure" http://mandusengman.blogspot.se/2014/02/the-unavoidable-downside-of-your.html)
Organisations and teams – increased productivity
We
call it by many names such as “value driven”, “self-sufficient”, “Holocracy”,
“Tribal leadership”, “purposeful organization”. It’s all about uniting people, making them work and create together, for real. Make them create and then act
and grow within their own inspiring working climate. See the individual but
fight individualism. It’s about believing and engaging in what you do; in your
business, in your clients and in your colleagues. Why? Because it’s so much
more fun and it creates so much more value than in traditional organization
where every individualist creates on her own. Remember you can never ever build a
monument or achieve something big on your own.
Omnichannel - retail
Order
anywhere (online or in any store), pick-up anywhere, return anywhere. And then
the merchant resell anywhere. So simple and natural in mind but yet so challenging
for our IT applications. We see and hear a lot of buzz within the area and I
know many players are investing heavily to succeed. There’s a lot of money to
be saved but above all the user experience is in focus here.
Empowered web/front-end layer
Due
to technology evolution more and more can be done and is being done in the
front-end web layer. The classical web layer is gaining ground on behalf of the
classical back-end layers. Technology supports this evolution with better environments
and tools but also we see new technologies arising, such as Open Source
Node.js. Node with its active and productive community is tearing down the
classical barriers between front-end and back-end. What is new and “revolutionary”
is that the framework and JS as language can be very convenient to use for back-end
areas as well as classical front-end areas (see seperate blog post “Will Node.js conquer the world
of large scale enterprise systems?” http://mandusengman.blogspot.se/2014/01/will-node.html ).
Also,
as technology matures and the online consumer market grows exponentially,
business today better sees and understands the full potential of the front-end
layer. They put pressure of increased agility and quicker TTM. I would say, and I'm sure many will agree, that
the media industry is really driving and challenging the area, pushing it forward currently.
Some
of the main challenges and opportunities I see are typically; to beat your competitors
by the best innovations and features and the shortest TTM, to improve your UX and involve UX
from beginning of projects, B2B, continuous delivery, increased quality and
performance, have IT and Business work together for real.
Node.js
It’s
very interesting to see Node.js spreading like a grass fire. How much further
will it grow or will it slow down then when the novelty has worn off? I find it
very interesting to see how much it will grow within the classical back-end area
and within large scale enterprise environments. (see seperate blog post “Will
Node.js conquer the world of large scale enterprise systems?” http://mandusengman.blogspot.se/2014/01/will-node.html )
BI
Data
is very valuable and business has started to understand how important BI is to
make data useful. BI is the eyes and ears of your business; without BI how can
you tell if your investments, features or campaigns are doing good or bad? I
remember working in companies when BI wasn’t even a known name,
less than six years ago. Since then BI has been one of the fastest growing
areas within IT and makes today a considerable part of every company where IT
is business critical. For a Genuine Consulting company like Netlight, where challenges
and opportunities of our clients completely rules what we’re actually doing,
one can confirm that BI is an important area where players are investing
heavily.
The
main challenges and investment areas are typically: How to get real business value
out of your Big Data? To get your real-time BI running. Use your customer data
better to customize the user experience and improve sales. Another common
challenge is that many players are suffering from too much data. All data is saved,
relevant as well as non-relevant which makes easy access and intuitive presentation
of the relevant data challenging.
Operational Intelligence
Operational
Intelligence is about full-stack
profiling and real time monitoring of relevant areas of your IT environment. To
really see and understand what is happening under the hood, in real time. Preferably
you have defined dashboards for every relevant perspective. The dashboards show
business and tech KPIs together and tell you how your business is doing. Server
memory utilization, CPU utilization, latencies, logins, registrations and
deposits - from all of your distributed servers together in one dashboard
easily overviewed. This will provide you with very valuable information for
both IT and Business and it inspires both sides to take greater responsibilities and better work together.
Also
see blog post “Troubleshooting critical issues (bugs, latencies, mem
leaks, configuration issues...) in your delivered big IT project without
full-stack profiling and real time monitoring – it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack” http://mandusengman.blogspot.se/2014/01/troubleshootingcritical-issues-bugs.html
IT
as part of your business
Over
and over again we learn the same lesson; today whenever IT is business
critical, we see the increased complexity of IT and the increased market
competition. In order to be successful we must integrate our business knowledge
with our IT knowledge. IT and business must work together. So often one see the
tech-driven company where IT makes too much business decisions. Or the
traditional and mature company where business makes too much IT decisions.
Both situations will lead to less prosperous business.
The
main challenges are your culture, the typical we-and-they mindset between IT
and Business but also lack of competence, understanding and interest by CEOs
and upper management about IT and IT capabilities.
So if IT is business critical, then business and IT
must work together.
Mobile first
Mobile
first is a very important mobile strategy and when you think about it very
obvious philosophy and mindset to have. We all understand that mobile is a big
part of the future web. The usage of mobile devices will continue to grow as
the devices become smarter and speed of mobile networks increase most rapidly.
But also, when developing for mobile devices and you focus on user experience,
it is quite different from developing for the traditional web, due to the
constraints of mobile devices. When developing for mobile devices all but the
very core must be left out. All focus should be on business critical content,
smooth and intuitive interaction design and light weight pages with the shortest possible page load. That is a user experience tailored for the mobile user.
So by having
a mobile first-mindset you will certify that you always begin and prioritize to focus on the core. Preferably you will base your development on a responsive platform in
order to minimize the number of different platforms and code bases required to support all relevant
screen resolutions. Then as a second step you can expand the core base you have
with additional features and whistles and bells to compose the user experience
you want for the full web.
Current
main challenges and opportunities we see are typically: To integrate ads and
keep the good user experience for mobile i.e. ads interleaving. To build your
business around the built-in mobile standard player with small opportunities to
do something great. To handle multiple platforms and code bases throughout the
development process, i.e. throughout design, architecture, development,
testing, deployment, maintenance and IT operations.
Second screen
A big
hype but still fairly small business value. The idea is great; to provide
relevant on-the-side information on the tablet as you’re enjoying the main
event on TV. Unfortunately all good implementations are still sorely missing on
the market. The main challenges here, I believe, are to come up with a good
technical solution AND to mix it with good editorial content that complements
the main event and really lifts the user experience and provides true extra
value - that the customer is willing to pay for.
A
completely different but interesting implementation of second screen usage is
the ChromeCast supported by more and more providers and apps, see http://www.google.com/intl/sv/chrome/devices/chromecast/.
(SVT, Swedish National Television, recently
released their beta http://blogg.svt.se/testbild/2014/03/nytt-om-svt-play-7-chromecast/)
Programming for kids
Programming
is a highly useful skill to learn. It’s very problem-solving oriented and
creative since it’s based on small building blocks that put together can create
very complex structures; like Lego for your mind, where only the sky is the
limit of your imagination. And of course it’s so much fun, both for parents
teaching and for the kids learning and creating. So of course we should teach
our kids programming languages as we do with speaking languages, math and
geography. Not before long I’m sure our kids will create amazing programs and
apps outside our imagination.
There
are many new initiatives within the field and there are several great
easy-to-use apps on the market.
Social Media
Social
media continues to grow and seems to be here to stay for real, or what do you
think? ;-) But the same questions always remain; for the Social Media players how
to charge the end-users and for the “outside” players how to grow my business
using Social Media. Within Social Media we see the very tough ongoing
competition about who will be THE
player taking ownership of your full user-communication-lifecycle-experience
including your digital passport and identity for global use.
Equality
We
need a more equal IT industry to evolve and to improve. We always need a good
mix of individuals, backgrounds, experience and gender, of course, to
complement each other and delivery the best possible. We also need to attract
more women to choose the IT path, from school and onwards in their working
life. If not done, so much invaluable knowledge, engagement and experience will
be lost in favor of other industries leaving the IT industry as the biggest looser.
Lately many players have understood this; the big potential and win for all if
improved. And a lot is happening, but fast enough?
Online Payments and Mobile Payments
To
pay for your merchandises on the web is no longer a fear amongst people and the
business of e-commerce is growing explosively. The user pattern of shopping
have changed radically lately. From only buying appliances and books on the web, nowadays
we tend to buy anything, like groceries, clothes and plants.
Some
of the major challenges are typically; How to make money out of my online
business, cross all channels (web, mobile, tablet…)? How to make payment an
intuitive and natural part of my e-commerce, completely tailor-made for my users
and their needs. And at the same time cater for security and an affordable
technical solution. Here as well the Mobil First philosophy applies as a
relevant part to success.
Mobile
payments i.e. mobile as your wallet in the traditional world of retail is a
concept we’ve been fighting for long, all since the beginning of the IT-era
together with WAP and the Dot-com bubble. It’s very easy in mind; just sweep
your phone for any purchase in any store. The huge challenge lies in the number
involved players and from different parts of the value chain to agree upon a
standard (merchants, POS providers, smartphone providers, mobile network
operators, payment providers).
What do you think and what have we missed? I'm always very eager to hear your thoughts.
Follow me on Twitter - @mandus_engman
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