Contributed article by Mark Settle, CIO, BMC Software

Consumerization of IT Driving Significant Change

The continued consumerization of IT is presenting countless challenges and opportunities for IT. BYOD, data integration and cloud computing are just a few. As we look to 2014, here are some of the changes I see developing throughout the year.

Enterprise App Stores: The Candy Crush Model

As companies increasingly implement enterprise app stores to support employees on tablet and mobile devices, they must determine their policies for developing, securing and provisioning this content. As you might expect, many companies implement a top-down approach for delivering apps they believe employees will find useful. However this approach carries the risk of offering content that lacks the stickiness to drive maximum usage.

As more employees become adept at application development, I believe a sandbox approach to offering apps is the best way forward. When companies offer an enterprise store to which anyone can post apps that meet a certain criteria, the most relevant and useful will become adopted, thereby creating a Candy Crush model that fosters maximum usage.

With that in mind, I believe that 2014 will see companies loosen the reins on their app policies, delivering tools that help employees better perform.

Big Data: Data Gets Some Integrity

2014 will show that the database analysts were right all along. The proliferation of platforms, devices and applications offer tremendous big data opportunities and still, confounding challenges. Delivering customer, employee and company data to, and securing information from users in the field, both accurately and effectively remains a huge opportunity for most companies. Having the ability to intelligently and accurately analyze this abundance of data: the Holy Grail.

As IT continues to put a great deal of emphasis around the end-user experience, the database analysts, who have been espousing the fundamentals of integrity for decades, will rule the day, making 2014 the year of data integrity.

Cloud Innovation Skeptics. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet

Let's face it. The Cloud has taken a lot of heat lately. While some still espouse the power of the Cloud as an epic panacea, others deride with talk of cloud-washing, security problems and service outages. So what's next for the Cloud, amongst those who predict Cloud is dead and those who believe it will change the world? 

While the Cloud may not be perfect today, I am hard-pressed to think of a technology that is. And at the same time, a new flock of developers are currently becoming masters at design and filling the cloud skills gap. Today, more applications than ever are being written as native cloud apps from the onset. Further, as platform-as-a-service becomes the new normal, platform developers will come more cloud savvy, and platform engineering will become more sophisticated.

So if you're someone who thinks we are seeing a cloud innovation plateau today, I believe it will soon be interrupted by an influx of sophisticated offerings, making 2014 a year of great cloud progress and adoption. In short, the best for Cloud is yet to come. 

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