Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2016. Read them in this 8th Annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Ramin Sayar, CEO, Sumo Logic
The Next Wave of Digital Business
Over the past few years, we've seen companies like AWS, Airbnb, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Tesla, Twitter and Uber reimagine entire industries, then re-architect new business models to achieve new customer experiences in the form of services via software applications. This movement to the software-centric business model has gone mainstream as companies -- not just tech giants and startups -- are universally recognizing the value in adopting this approach. Traditional companies are reinventing themselves as software companies in order to remain relevant, while product companies are redefining themselves as service companies in order to meet a higher bar for customer engagement and satisfaction.
The continued evolution of software-centric, digital business in 2016 hinges on continuous, faster innovation cycles, and I expect we'll see the following market shifts and C-level priorities emerge:
- Cybersecurity remains top of mind: Corporate network and data breaches will continue to keep the C-suite up at night. With the rise of the software-centric business, adding complexity to IT system environments, CISOs will need to rethink approaches to monitoring, managing and troubleshooting their IT and development environments.
- Extreme architectures: This is a new concept you'll soon start to hear more about. Essentially it does away with Moore's Law, the observation that advancements in software have been closely tied to advancements in the capacity and processing power of microprocessors, which doubles approximately every two years. The most innovative CTOs will push for new, "extreme" architectures to remove traditional IT constraints -- building from the ground-up to harness the processing power of the entire public cloud, as opposed to the latest RISC multiprocessor. For proof, look at AWS and Azure's vast 2015 growth.
- Maturation of DevOps: 2016 will usher in a new era of operational and application changes on a scale that we have not experienced in more than 15 years. Organizations are looking for new tools that break down traditional silos between developers and IT operations teams to innovate continuously and scale as fast as their business. Look no further than the 2015 successes of DevOps tools like Chef, Docker, Puppet and GitHub. In 2016, we'll see the DevOps culture and tools alike spread and embed itself among industries and organizations.
- Demand for a continuous intelligence: Business intelligence, or BI, is the old way of thinking. Thanks to widespread adoption of cloud and mobile, the most promising companies will shift their mindset from "rear-view," on-prem analytics for BI to cloud-based analytics for CI, or "Continuous Intelligence." Continuous Intelligence is using real-time data to anticipate insights to the questions not yet asked. Those unknowns will make the difference between the next generation winners and losers.
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About the Author
As
CEO, Ramin brings 20 years of industry experience as a strategic and
operating leader of both small and large organizations, and has a strong
track record of developing innovative products in both emerging and
mature markets. Ramin joined Sumo Logic from VMware where he formulated
the strategy for and built the industry's leading private cloud
management products. The Cloud Management Business Unit became the
fastest growing business within VMware, with nearly $1 billion in
revenue during his nearly five-year tenure. Previously, Ramin held
executive roles at leading enterprises, including Vice President of
Products and Strategy at HP Software, Senior Director of Products at
Mercury Software, Director of Products and Solutions at TIBCO, Product
Line Marketing Manager at iPlanet Software, and Product Line Marketing
Manager at Netscape. He also serves on the technology and executive
boards of various startup companies. Ramin holds an MBA from San Jose
State University and B.A. from the University of California, Santa
Barbara.
