Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
The year of developer productivity
By Tucker Callaway, CEO, LogDNA
This year has been unlike any other in many
ways, and yet it feels very familiar. From a business perspective, it feels a
little bit like 2001 when the dot com bubble burst, and a little bit like 2008
when the Great Recession decimated businesses across the globe. In each of
these dark periods, I've watched great businesses and individuals respond with
intention, agility, and grit.
Prediction
1: Efficiency will be the new business tech imperative
As in 2001 and 2008, I see businesses today
taking an honest look at the foundations they're built on. Companies don't have
the luxury of doing things how they've always been done and must make calculated
decisions at every level of the organization. Optimizing for efficiency may
include ditching legacy enterprise products and adopting lightweight SaaS
solutions, moving to the cloud, or rethinking their processes so that they can
shorten their development cycle and bring new products to market faster. Tools
that enable businesses to become more efficient will thrive in 2021.
Prediction
2: Products will be designed for DevOps workflows
There's a difference between taking
superficial steps towards modernization and truly transforming. Although companies have been incrementally improving
how their developers, operations, and security teams work together, many of
them haven't fully embraced a DevOps culture. We hear customers say they need
to optimize their SRE headcount but can't afford to have their developers slow
down as a result of it. This forces organizations to make their developers more
efficient within their existing workflows. For example, companies boost
efficiency by enabling developers to manage their own logs, removing the need
to wait for an SRE to provide the information needed to troubleshoot an
application. In 2021, we're going to see an increase in products designed with
the developer experience in mind that integrate with their existing workflows.
Prediction
3: Innovation will pull us through
This year, forward-thinking companies focused
on what matters most -- the people, the facts, and the future. To survive in
2021, they must continue to test ideas, validate their returns, and be willing
to pivot when things aren't working. For large incumbents, it's very
challenging to be this agile, which creates a massive opportunity for the next
generation of tech companies to be disruptive. Organizations that come through
the challenges of 2020 will be the ones who met necessity with innovation. To
reduce costs they'll replace legacy tools with modern SaaS or Open Source
solutions, to ship products faster they'll rethink their change management
processes, and to move faster they'll break down silos between teams. This
level of innovation is the only way that large companies can compete with
startups born in 2021.
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About the Author
Tucker Callaway is the Chief Executive
Officer of LogDNA. Tucker has more than 20 years of experience in enterprise
software, with an emphasis on developer and DevOps tools. He is responsible for
driving LogDNA's growth across all revenue streams and creating the foundation
for future revenue streams and go-to-market strategies. Tucker joined LogDNA in
January, 2020 as President and CRO and took the torch as CEO six months later.
Prior to LogDNA, Tucker served as CRO of
Sauce Labs and Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Chef. He holds a BA in
Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.