Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Work, workplace, and work tools are all evolving rapidly
By Miguel Valdes Faura, CEO and
co-founder, Bonitasoft
1. Autonomous
business applications will be independent of the development platform - and
each other
In the coming year, we're going to see
technologies emerge that will be able to support business applications running
"free in the wild..."
Digital Process Automation platforms are there
to build, deploy, and run business applications virtually anywhere, any time,
but are they becoming too heavy? What if we can keep the platform but instead
of deploying everything on one server...deploy independent applications that
can literally run anywhere, on any server?
When DPA platforms are able to bundle up each
app with all its resources and with its own runtime, we'll be seeing lighter,
fully autonomous business apps independently deployable anywhere.
In microservices architecture, one fundamental
aspect of all services being independent is that developers can make changes at
any time to update any component, or even replace it with a new one. But not everyone is ready to shift to
microservices architecture, even if they see independent and easy changeout as
a key advantage.
Autonomous apps are coming as an alternative
to full microservices.
2. Business
process data: Better visibility for better decision making
I think nearly everyone is aware of the
importance of data analytics for business, to provide information useful for
making solid business decisions, optimize business operations, and so on. We're
in an era of widely applied process automation too, with many years of
experience in tools such as business process management automation (BPM)
platforms and rapidly deepening experience in robotic process automation (RPA).
Data analytics and process automation taken together is what process analytics
is about: looking into process data to see what we can learn from it and how we
can act on that knowledge.
I expect that we are going to see a rapid
movement towards ways to visualize process
data, that will ultimately help business leaders to better understand what is
going on with their processes and take appropriate action. We already have a
widely used process visualization standard with BPMN2.0 (Business Process
Modeling and Notation), with a mature market ready for process analytics based
on this standard. I expect that we'll begin to see new technologies emerging in
this area, and as innovation often comes from open source development, that's
where we should be watching.
3. Tired: campus
bro culture. Wired: peer recognition
I'm a true believer in "culture eats strategy
for breakfast." Among the many things we all learned from the Covid pandemic
and its effect on the workplace, is that the effective workplace of the future
is not only hybrid remote but intrinsically motivated.
The natural evolution of remote work, based on
trust and autonomy, has been accelerated by the pandemic. Keeping employees
engaged and happy isn't about providing perks, it's about keeping an
employee-centered company culture that recognizes good work and appreciates
individuals.
We're going to see continuing change in how
companies implement both company and peer-to-peer recognition strategies that
will impact how they attract, retain, and support employees.
4. The hybrid
workplace creates the hybrid employee/customer journey
There's something interesting that's newly
emerging from the "hybrid workplace" that combines remote and on-site work: a
hybrid employee-customer journey that integrates both through business
processes. Employees working remotely need the same kind of smooth, painless
and supported experiences that we need to give our customers, and business
applications built on digital process automation platforms are exactly how
business can ensure that everyone involved in critical end-to-end processes has
that best possible experience.
5. What's
keeping IT up at night? Cybersecurity
The workforce of the future, or hybrid
workplace, is having an effect on corporate IT in multiple ways, and
cybersecurity is clearly one of them.
According to a 2021CIO Tech Poll, 65% of
company decision makers responding across multiple industries will increase
spending for cybersecurity in 2022 - and only 1% anticipate decreased spending.
Designing business processes on an
ISO-certified DPA platform allows the tech team to build in security at the
task, service, and process level, for both employees and for customers. We'll
see more focus on how, where and when to enforce cybersecurity in digital
transformation will mean more and better solutions for developers and business
alike.
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About the Author
Miguel Valdes Faura is the CEO and co-founder of Bonitasoft. Miguel leads the charge for Bonitasoft’s mission: to unleash the full potential of development teams to create applications with seamless, engaging and personalized user experiences.
Miguel is a recognized thought leader in the BPM and digital transformation fields and is passionate about open source community building. He is a regular speaker at international conferences sponsored by O’Reilly, Global Expansion Summit and Web Summit and has been featured in media such as Forbes, CNN and Mashable. Miguel received a prestigious CEO World Award in 2014.