By John Aisien and Nikfar Khaleeli of Blue Cedar

5G, Mobile App Dev, No-Code and DevSecOps

Software and mobile application development will continue to be huge priorities for enterprises going into 2020, but both have traditionally been moving targets in terms of management and security maintenance. Below is what we can expect to see in 2020 as enterprises continue to innovate and look to deploy initiatives within the space:

The BYOD and CYOD trends enterprises have adopted will be met with employee pushback as increased regulations and growing privacy concerns continue to raise awareness about inefficient device security. 

67% of employees report using a personal device at work to some degree. As enterprises continue to adopt a BYOD (bring your own device) or a CYOD (choose your own device) strategy for their employees, there will be continued push pack from employees who are required to relinquish control over their mobile devices and the private data stored on them. As the stakes for privacy management become higher and higher from endless breaches (54% higher in 2019 alone) and increased regulations, like GDPR and CCPA, we'll see enterprises deploy more effective means of privacy control for its employee's personal devices (like application-specific security, as opposed to only device-level). This will mitigate privacy invasion for employees and enable tighter vulnerability controls for the enterprise, all while still providing necessary corporate data and accessibility to the end-user via the mobile device of their choice.

5G will bring about a new era of true edge compute capabilities that call for equally sophisticated security. 

5G is expected to have 1.1 billion device connections by 2025. This rise and widespread deployment of 5G will facilitate an era of true edge compute power. Enterprises will leverage 5G's speed and agility and the mobile nature of edge devices to store and access sensitive corporate data from any location. With that evolution will be an integral need for better, more efficient edge device security that can withstand the next generation of computational power and is capable of managing and protecting mobile devices at the edge.

The low-code trend will be overrun by no-code solutions that enable citizen developers and allow highly skilled IT professionals to focus on larger issues at hand. 

Low-code solutions will become less attractive as full no-code solutions continue to surface and enable developers to focus less on rote, repeatable problems (like SaaS vendors enabling customers to make extensions on their platforms or automated security integration) and more on sophisticated projects that are not able to be automated. As no-code solutions empower more citizen developers to automate some of those simpler problems, we will see a new generation of software innovation emerge as high-value developers narrow in on the more complex issues that burden the broader technology ecosystem. - Nikfar Khaleeli, VP of Products at Blue Cedar

DevSecOps will shift left as enterprises prioritize security and employee privacy. 

A reported 53% of online users are currently more concerned about their online privacy compared to a year ago. With heightened privacy concerns, there will be an increased focus on addressing both corporate security and user privacy concerns much earlier in the development cycle. Dev teams will start investigating tech that provides granular controls that address both security and privacy, such as app level security. In parallel, teams will also investigate how to automate security integration into the development lifecycle. Cybersecurity programming skills are in short supply and there is no cost-effective way for teams to address the growing dev demands through solely manual coding. Having security automatically integrated addresses the mundane nature of certain repeatable processes, freeing up developer time. More importantly, automation that brings in security tech early in the lifecycle allows the entire solution to be tested at once, again saving dev cycles. If security isn't shifted left (i.e., brought into the dev cycle early) testing will have to be repeated once security is added in. - Nikfar Khaleeli, VP of Products at Blue Cedar

About the Authors

John Aisien, Co-Founder & CEO of Blue Cedar

John Aisien is the Co-Founder CEO of Blue Cedar. He brings a wealth of relevant experience as a successful software product and go-to-market executive, with stints running multiple functions in emerging, high-growth & in large enterprise software firms. Most recently, John was Chief Operating Officer at Mocana, responsible for its mobile business, which he led the spin out of, to found Blue Cedar. Prior to that, he ran Global Outbound Product Management for Oracle's Fusion Middleware business. He also ran product, marketing and business development for Thor, a leading pioneer in identity management, which was acquired by Oracle.

Nikfar Khaleeli, vice-president of product at Blue Cedar

Nikfar Khaleeli is vice-president of product at Blue Cedar, leading mobile app integration platform. He is  a collaborative, results-driven marketing leader who has built high-impact marketing teams and successfully launched multiple enterprise products. Experienced across multiple marketing disciplines including product marketing, brand awareness, demand generation, digital marketing, marketing operations and analyst relations. Nikfar has a strong record of creating differentiated positioning and accelerating customer demand for cybersecurity, enterprise mobility, cloud/SaaS, and IoT/embedded systems technologies.