Dominating Trends of Enterprise IT in 2016

Driven by advanced technological innovation such as smartphones and other hand-held devices, the traditional office-space is no more confided to a small cubicle. With increased number of BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices), modern-day enterprises are more connected than before. The culture of BYOD has pushed businesses into the age of customization. These days, most companies view each employee as an individual, a valuable stakeholder in the organization who needs customized tools and solutions to deliver his/her services in an effective manner.

2015 was largely riddled with high-profile hacks and data breaches making several organizations unwilling to compromise with data security and the overall business. However, it is expected that 2016, will be evolutionary for both IT and the vendors. It has become important for the enterprises and vendors to work much harder to provide better functionality, flexibility and intelligence. Additionally, they are also expected to maintain high levels of security by complying with regulations.

• Software vendor lock-in may soon cease to exist
  

With businesses collaborating across multiple services and tools, IT departments are realizing that they need to support the variation to satisfy their end-users and ensure the productivity. Therefore, getting fixed on one service will no longer serve the purpose.

In 2016, technology vendors need to ensure that their technology is properly integrated with other enterprise services, making them available across various apps and solutions. Moreover, we can even expect more number of competing vendors to integrate their services with each other and provide end-users with holistic enterprise solutions. The bottom-line here is that vendor lock-in may near its death by the end of this year, as vendors will be compelled to work together rather than against each another.

• Data Analytics making businesses smarter

In last few years, businesses have realized the importance of valuable insights obtained from analyzing huge and complex data that they either created or captured. Many large enterprises are increasingly adopting Data Analytics and Business Intelligence solutions to gain market-insights from the random information they capture from various sources. However, these tools have largely remained out of reach for several small-businesses due to various reasons.

According to industry experts, in 2016, data analytics will no longer remain a luxury for small-businesses. It will move into the hands of companies irrespective of its size, as a part of the overall file management strategy.

Driven by market demands, cost of file management systems has lowered down. This provides an opportunity to all those small businesses to access and avail its benefits. Companies can choose process management solutions, enabling them to leverage a comprehensive ‘dashboard’. This allows a system-wide analytics, right from content creation to access, via a number of users, devices and applications. Apparently, a variety of vertical markets can also capitalize on this valuable information and provide a higher level of customer support and streamline existing business processes.

• Data protection will be on priority list for CIOs and IT managers
  

New regulation about data privacy, like the EU data protection regulations, is expected to come into force in 2016. This also means that companies must have total control over their corporate data. Those who fail to comply with these regulations may face severe penalties and consequently be subjected to huge fines for not implementing the technology required to maintain control over their data.

In addition to this, we can also expect regulators to set examples of companies that are non-compliant apparently leading to negative publicity. This will result to businesses scaling their data protection systems ensure compliance, and has a data sovereignty strategy.

• Increased demand for data sovereignty leading to increased local data centers
  

With the recent ruling on the now invalid Safe Harbor, along with increasing concerns over data security and privacy may cause data localization. It is expected that it will become a standard practice for several businesses across the Europe. Increasing number of enterprises these days, intend to stay close to their data, in order to maintain complete control and ensure compliance with the existing law.

The demand for local data center storage is believed to rise exponentially. It is more likely that several enterprises will employ a hybrid model for storage and file management. Under this arrangement, some data will reside locally on site, while the rest in a public or private cloud. Apparently, IT departments will need to act quickly to identify solutions to ensure agile deliverables that come with cloud file storage, and its unique storage preferences.