A company’s success in the future is determined by the strategy that it adopts; the strategy here is based on both the current market situation and foreseeing the future market trends. The secret lies in understanding the next trend or finding better ways to do things. Like other areas, in the IT sector too there are certain changes we can foresee.
A lot of preparation goes in so that the company can adapt to the changing situations. The trends that we can expect to see in future are
1. Component based model
In the years to come software development will become more component model based. Hardly any company will do the coding right from scratch. Many small and mid-sized companies will emerge, which will develop components for different functionalities. Bigger companies will integrate these components and customize it to suit the client needs. The challenge for such big companies lies in integrating components developed by various vendors and finally making it work as one single system.
2. More maintenance projects
The software companies in both the service as well as product industry are expected to get more maintenance, integration and migration projects.
With all the development work that has happened in the last decade, maintenance projects will be required to keep them running and changing them along with changing client business requirements.
Integration projects will be executed to merge all the systems working currently as disparate systems. As and when merger and acquisition of companies happen, integration projects will be initiated to merge the companies’ systems.
As ever in order to bring in new features, the software vendors will come up with newer versions of their products. The companies using those software will then need to initiate software upgrade projects and in cases where in a tool switch is being done, migration projects will be executed.
3. Reusability of codes
Object oriented programming and code reusability will gain prominence more than ever. Well defined classes and structures will be created such that the implementation of the functionality can be customized based on different user needs. Usage of this reusable code will definitely shorten development timelines.
4. Virtualization
Virtualization is giving the user virtual access to any system rather than actual one. It may be operating system, storage device, network resource etc.
In this new model the client will not have to maintain the resources neither will he have to invest big money to buy the resources. He will have to pay as and when he uses it.
Thus virtualization will improve scalability and will make availability of resources cheaper.
5. Collaboration Technology
Collaborative software is software which helps people with common goals achieve their objectives.
Email, chat can be said as examples of collaborative technology.
In future as team members will be more geographically distributed, the usage of collaborative technology will become more important.
6. Security
With increasing number of online presence, security threats due to virus, Trojan, spam, hackers etc. will also increase drastically.
Organizations will need to increase their budget for the security of their networks, servers, data recognition and detection etc.
And as people do more online money transactions and provide their credit card, bank account, personal identity information online, they will as well need to increase online security by installing anti-virus, firewall etc.
With such a high demand and need, antivirus companies will grow bigger and make more money. But as with any business with more money will come more companies and more competition.
The new types of threats that will come to picture are
1. Hacking into car computers.
2. Government data attack.
3. Attack on personal accounts through network sites.
7. SAAS
With cloud architecture getting prominence, SAAS or Software as a Service will become more popular in the next decade.
As with SAAS ‘pay per use’ or ‘Pay as you go’ mode of payment, it will become easier for companies to subscribe to softwares without having to buy them or maintain them.
8. Agile and waterfall
Most of the product companies nowadays have adopted agile methodology of working. However, with service companies, a complete agile methodology still may not work. But with the current context it would be more appropriate to implement a combination of Agile and waterfall rather than pure waterfall model.
With continuous change requests and changing requirement scope, it is now very difficult to implement a pure waterfall model. But for maintenance purpose, a thorough documentation is also required at each stage of the lifecycle .And it’s always not possible to have a release every one/two weeks. So following complete agile methodology is also not possible in most cases.
9. Direct to customers
“Direct to Customer” model as started by Michael Dell is more applicable for product and manufacturing companies rather than service companies. This model has given Dell company immense success .In this model, product is manufactured and inventory is maintained on the basis of client demand rather than gut feeling.
10. New employee model
Service companies will start to have more contractual employees. In this model the hires will be on temporary basis depending on project requirement and skill set. Though in India the major percentage will still be permanent employees, the percentage of contractors will certainly increase.
11. Gaming industry
The gaming industry will get even bigger. With hardware price coming down, gaming software will become higher defined. More gaming consoles will start to have wireless controller used as a handheld pointing device that detects movement in three dimensions.
12. BI Industry
There are certain changes that we can expect to see in the Business Intelligence.
1. Information will be required to be provided to the managers, without the managers having any prior knowledge of requirement. Currently with the static reports information is focused to certain KPIs which the managers have provided as requirements. But in future BI will become more exploratory in nature. The managers will discover trends by analyzing their own data.
2. Business Intelligence will become more prescriptive in nature, rather than reportive.It will tell the user what to do next rather than what has happened.
3. In merger of two systems data won’t be physically moved from one place to another, what we call ETL today. With current architecture data is moved from one system to another in a common place to merge the two systems. But with the future architecture a semantic layer will be provided which will give virtual access to all the systems, and it will appear to the user as one integrated system rather than disparate systems.
13. Wireless and hacking
With the advent of smart phones and gadgets and increasing urge of people to stay connected, more number of people will come under wireless connection and more number of people will get Wi-Fi connected. With the growth of portable technology, our cells will eventually become portable internet devices. And as we will connect to the shared Wi-Fi services, our gadgets will become the entry point for hacking attempts.
14. Data Center leasing
There will be the growth of this new market of data center real estate. They will actually lease space for data centers.
15. End of recession
Eventually the coming years will see the end of recession. The IT salary and bonuses will again be on the rise. Although the cost cutting will continue to be the order of the day. The companies will not forget the lesson learned during the economic downturn.
The IT companies will have to come up with new ideas and models to adapt it to the upcoming trends.
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