Guest author Jesus Rodriguez is the founder of KidoZen.

The last few years have brought a new wave of innovation to enterprise software. From companies like Workday and Zendesk redefining traditional business processes to Slack and Box opening new areas of innovation, the enterprise software space have seen companies rise up to bring innovation to a space that didn’t see a lot of creativity in the previous 30 years. 

The momentum in enterprise software is far from over. The latest technology movements in areas such as augmented reality or drones promise an exciting future for software businesses who primarily serve other businesses.

Cloud computing, mobility, the Internet of Things, and big data are enabling this momentum, as are emerging trends in areas such as 3D printing or augmented reality. They all offer unique opportunities to reimagine enterprise software in the decade to come. 

By thinking about some of the trends that can become foundational to the next generation of enterprise software, I’ve identified some interesting ideas:

• enterprise hardware
• the industrial Internet of Things
• applications powered by the blockchain
• proactive analytics
• 3D printing
• enterprise marketplaces
• domain-specific data science
• augmented reality in industrial settings
• mainstream machine learning
• drone platforms
• next-generation cybersecurity
• platforms for microservices
• the Docker ecosystem
• new application-development platforms for the enterprise

I’m going to explore some of these ideas in more depth—and I’d love to hear your thoughts on these and other promising areas.

Enterprise Hardware

The rapid evolution of smart, connected devices is going to play a role in the next generation of enterprise solutions. While we use software to automate most business processes today, we are starting to see companies leverage smart devices to bring new levels of intelligence into business processes. 

From vertical solutions in industries like transportation, retail, healthcare, and the public sector, to horizontal solutions in areas such as security, payments, and monitoring, we believe hardware is going to become more prominent within large organizations—both on its own and as an adjunct and accelerator to software automation.

The Industrial Internet of Things

The Internet of Things, or IoT, is already having a big impact within businesses. By leveraging smart devices, enterprises will be able to provide new levels of automation and intelligence to industrial solutions. Manufacturing, healthcare, and automotive are some of the industries leading the charge to adopt the Internet of Things. From a market perspective, we should expect to see the emergence of platforms that provide both horizontal and vertical-specific capabilities for adopting IoT in industrial settings.

Blockchain-Powered Applications

Within circles familiar with Bitcoin, blockchain is known as the foundational infrastructure that supports transactions in the cryptocurrency. However, the capabilities of the blockchain are completely independent of Bitcoin. From a functional standpoint, the blockchain provides the foundation to enable decentralized, secure, and trusted data exchange. By focusing on solving a highly complex problem such as decentralized financial transactions, developers of blockchain technologies have created capabilities that are foundational to many mission-critical applications. From vertical[-specific scenarios like electronic voting or trade settlements to next-generation peer-to-peer messaging applications, the blockchain is definitely an interesting trend in the future of enterprise applications.

Domain-Specific Data Science

In the last few years, we have seen the emergence of a series of platforms that have simplified the adoption of machine learning, data analysis, and visualization for large volumes of data. That evolution has allowed businesses to achieve levels of data intelligence that were impossible before. As this trend continues, we believe businesses and other large organizations are going to start tackling more complex data problems in their specific industry. Consequently, data-science platforms are going to shift from horizontal to vertical-specific capabilities. We should expect to see more and more platforms that leverage the power of current data-science platforms and adapt them to specific domains and industries.

Enterprise Marketplaces

Marketplaces like Uber or Airbnb have evolved to become some of the most important private technology companies. The economics of marketplace models scale to levels that were unthinkable before wide adoption of the Internet and smartphones. While startups have implemented these marketplace models in consumer scenarios, enterprises are slowly starting to discover their value. From crowdsourcing the development of applications to building marketplaces for data and analytics, we should expect to see an increase in the number of enterprise-centric marketplace platforms in the next few years.

Augmented Industrial Reality

Augmented reality (AR) platforms like Facebook’s Oculus or Windows Holographic have been at the center of tech news all year. Consumer applications like gaming seem to be the classic scenario for AR platforms. But enterprises can greatly benefit from the advances in AR technologies. AR technologies will drastically change industries like education, construction, healthcare, and manufacturing. Expect to see the evolution of AR platforms focused on specific industries over the next few years.

3D Printing

The mainstream adoption of 3D-printing technologies is rapidly revolutionizing established industries like manufacturing, construction, automotive, and healthcare. As enterprises make 3D printing a mainstream process, the need for platforms that can operate 3D printing at an industrial scale will become more relevant. Expect to see vertical-specific 3D-printing platforms emerge for specific industries.

Proactive Analytics

Over the last few years, data analytics has become one of the fastest-growing areas in enterprise software. However, most of the enhancements in analytics platforms have been focused around simplifying the way we interpret data with richer data visualizations, reports, data governance, and so on. Those traditional models are based on reactive behaviors in which the data analysis is presented to a human who ultimately take some action after interpreting the data. As analytic platforms continue gaining traction in the workplace, we should expect to see a shift from reactive to proactive models where platforms trigger actions based on intelligent machine interpretation of the data.

Mainstream Machine Learning

The commoditization of computing power as well as the evolution of frameworks like Azure ML, AWS ML, Spark, and Scikit Learn have democratized the usage of machine learning in business applications. Despite the rapid evolution of ML platforms, most enterprises still see machine learning as an academic discipline. As ML platforms continue evolving, they are called to experience a mainstream adoption in the enterprise. In the next few years, we should expect to see ML platforms becoming as mainstream in enterprise applications as databases as BI-reports are today.

Platforms For Microservices

At a conceptual level, microservices predicate splitting an application into a series of small, autonomous services that perform atomic operations and can be independently deployed and managed. While microservices can be seen as an architecture style that can be implemented with any service-oriented technology, the fact of the matter is that most enterprises struggle with the effort required to implement solutions built on microservices. As microservices continue gaining popularity, we should expect to see the first generation of platforms focused on the development and management of microservices.

The Docker Ecosystem

Docker is one of the greatest phenomena we’ve seen in the last few years of enterprise software. Rarely have we seen fierce competitors like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, VMWare, and others universally adopt a third-party technology as a foundational piece of their platforms. While Docker is certainly interesting, we believe the platform ecosystem around it could be even more valuable. As enterprises continue to adopt Docker, the need for solutions in areas such as monitoring, security, and deployment automation will become increasingly relevant. Additionally, traditional enterprise applications like as content-management or line-of-business systems will start supporting Docker deployments. The combination of these two trends should make the Docker ecosystem a vibrant source of growth.

Drone Platforms

Unmanned devices capable of flight, more commonly known as drones, are seeing faster adoption by enterprises than consumers—the rare exception in technology’s recent history. Starting with the obvious military and defense scenarios, drones have also seen adoption across such heterogeneous industries as agriculture, energy, and the public sector. With the increasing adoption of drones, the need for horizontal platforms that facilitate common tasks such as monitoring, data transmission, security, and fleet management is becoming more and more evident.

Next-Generation Cybersecurity

In the last few years, cybersecurity has evolved from an enterprise discipline to an element of modern warfare. This industry has seen an explosion in both the variety of technologies and the level of investment deployed. Expect this trend to continue for the next few years and produce a new generation of cybersecurity technologies that will be adopted in the enterprise.

New Application-Development Platforms

The last 15 years of software development in the enterprise have been dominated by two platforms: Java and .Net. While movements like Ruby on Rails and Node.js have increased developer productivity and addressed some of the limitations of Java and .Net, they have failed—so far—to become mainstream in the enterprise. The rise of mobile and big data, which require new programming paradigms, may change that. We think enterprise information-technology departments will soon be ready to adopt new programming platforms that are better equipped to support the architecture of modern software applications. 

Photo by Owen Thomas for ReadWrite

The post 14 Big Opportunities In Enterprise Markets You Should Be Seizing appeared first on ReadWrite.

Guest author Jesus Rodriguez is the CEO and co-founder of KidoZen.

Mobility is one of the most transformational trends in the modern enterprise. Smartphone and tablets have changed how employees fundamentally use their computers, which means the entire notion of enterprise productivity and software development must be rethought. Many companies are on the forefront of the changing enterprise, but as companies catch up, the target moves yet again.

Despite its importance, most organizations still experience tremendous challenges when selecting an enterprise mobile platform. The reason organizations struggle is based on an incredibly simple factor: fragmentation. In order to address these challenges, we believe the enterprise mobile market is heading for a level of consolidation that will produce what we call the third generation enterprise mobile platform.

First Generation: Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms 

The first generation of enterprise mobile solutions, following the launch of the iPhone, were dominated by the mobile enterprise applications platforms (MEAPs). From app design to deployment, MEAPs proposed a one-size-fits-all solution to enterprises, like IT boxes of yore. While the concepts behind MEAPs resonated well with enterprises, the technical implementations proved to be incredibly limited, invasive and cost-prohibitive for organizations looking to deliver modern mobile experiences. 

Second Generation: Innovation And Chaos

After the failure of the MEAPs, the market witnessed an explosion of new technologies that sought to address some of the limitations of the MEAPs. As a result, the market became extremely fragmented with dozens of solutions providing different and specialized capabilities of an enterprise mobile solution including: 

• Mobile app development.
• Mobile backend-as-a-service.
• Mobile app testing.
• Mobile app performance monitoring.
• Mobile app distribution.
• Mobile app management.
• Mobile device management.

While the current level of innovation in the enterprise mobile ecosystem clearly benefits enterprises, it also creates a significant challenge from the technology-selection standpoint, most companies need to select four or five vendors in order to assemble a complete mobile solution.

Coming Next: Consolidation & Emergence Of Third Generation Mobile Platform 

The increasing fragmentation of the enterprise mobile technology ecosystem combined with the need of enterprises to embrace end-to-end solutions and the commoditization of the mobile device management (MDM) market are signaling an inevitable level of consolidation in the enterprise mobile space. We believe this market consolidation will create a new group of more complete enterprise mobile platforms that fully leverage best-in-class innovations in the space while avoiding the constraints of the traditional MEAPs. Agile, easy-to-integrate platforms. We refer to the group of platforms that will emerge from this consolidation as third generation enterprise mobile platforms.

The third generation enterprise mobile platform will combine solutions from various categories of today’s enterprise mobile ecosystem into a more compact mobile stack. In that sense, we easily envision an enterprise mobile platform that combines  mobile backend-as-a-service,  mobile app performance monitoring and mobile app testing offerings. From the technology standpoint, third generation enterprise mobile platforms are likely to leverage innovations of modern enterprise mobile stacks, such as cloud delivery models or cross-platform development, while maintaining the right levels of openness and simplicity to allow the continuous evolution of its value proposition. This approach highly contrasts with the path followed by first generation mobile platforms such as the MEAPs.

The emergence of third generation enterprise mobile platforms will not only be important for enterprise customers but for the entire enterprise mobile market. From today’s completely fragmented ecosystem, third generation enterprise mobile platforms will signal to the market which platform categories can survive as standalone offerings and which ones will become features of bigger platforms. While we can’t know for sure the capabilities of the third generation mobile platform, there is one certainty: the third generation mobile platform will be the first iteration of the platforms that will eventually dominate the enterprise mobile world. 

The post The Emergence Of The Third Generation Enterprise Mobile Platform appeared first on ReadWrite.

Guest author Jesus Rodriguez is the CEO and co-founder of KidoZen.

It has taken more than five years, but the first phase of integrating mobile into enterprises is almost over. 

Enterprise mobility is evolving. The first generation of enterprise mobile solutions focused on the management of mobile devices (MDM), enabling traditional email applications and the occasional custom mobile app. It is time to take the next step. A new generation of mobile technologies is helping enterprises to reimagine entire business processes from a mobile-centric standpoint. This movement is starting to be known in the industry as “the mobile-first enterprise.” 

This is an attractive concept for most organizations. But, building the mobile-first enterprise is far from an easy endeavor. Based on our experience, this type of transformational movement is a long-term process that requires various foundational components from both the technological and organizational standpoint.

What are the elements that can help to enable the mobile-first enterprise? Some of the ideas listed below might help.

BYOD Is An Enabler, Not The End Goal

The “bring your own device” movement has become a catalyst to the evolution of enterprise mobility solutions. Empowering employees to use their own tablets and smartphones for work-related activities has become a core characteristic of the modern enterprise. 

However, most organizations are still building the required security, management and compliance infrastructure to enable a BYOD environment. To evolve, organizations must realize that BYOD by itself is just a starting point to build the mobile-first enterprise. Not the end result. 

Enabling mobile-first enterprise applications and business processes that access corporate data from personal devices in a secure and efficient manner is the true end goal of the mobile-first enterprise. 

Beyond MDM

Mobile Device Management (MDM) has been at the center of the first generation of enterprise mobile. The ability to manage and secure smartphones/tablets has been seen as a key element of any enterprise mobile infrastructure. Consequently, in recent years, the market is experiencing an explosion on the number of MDM technologies claiming to be the silver bullet to enable an enterprise mobile infrastructure.

Managing connected devices is not enough to implement mobile-first enterprise applications. Expanding beyond MDM and focusing on managing the enterprise mobile applications and the corresponding business data in your infrastructure are, arguably, more relevant capabilities to enable the mobile-first enterprise. 

Contextualizing and Mobilizing Business Data

One of the holy grails of enterprise mobile infrastructure is to enable mobile applications to leverage data hosted in corporate business systems. It may be conceptually trivial, but the process of mobilizing business data can be extremely challenging.

In order to enable a mobile-first enterprise experience, organizations need to build the infrastructure to contextualize business data so that it can be effectively consumed on enterprise mobile applications. While technologically challenging, building the infrastructure to effectively mobilize data from corporate systems can drastically simplify the experience of incrementally building enterprise mobile applications. 

Mobilizing Existing Business Processes

Some of the most successful organizations are the ones that have been able to redefine existing business processes using a mobile-first approach. In this model, traditional business capabilities – enabled via a desktop experience – will be simplified and redesigned for smartphones or tablets in order to provide an optimal productivity experience. 

Creating Mobile-First Business Processes

In addition, enterprises are starting to create new business processes to enable new business capabilities using a mobile-first paradigm. Mobile point-of-sale (POS) or mobile customer relationship management (CRM) systems are some of the best examples of mobile-first business processes being enabled in today’s enterprises. This type of mobile-centric business capabilities is a key element in the DNA of the mobile-first enterprise and helps organizations achieve greater differentiation and agility in the current mobile economy. 

Leverage Mobile-First Business Apps

The previous sections have highlighted the importance of building the infrastructure to implement new enterprise mobile apps as an essential element to enable the mobile-first enterprise. Equally important, is for organizations to invest in the infrastructure required to adopt domain-specific mobile business apps available in the marketplace. 

As the adoption of mobile technologies increases in the enterprise, we are starting to witness a new generation of mobile-first business apps that are redefining both horizontal and vertical business capabilities. Enabling the infrastructure to adopt those new mobile business apps in an efficient, secure approach tailored to your enterprise can improve the journey to the mobile-first enterprise.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Enabling The Mobile-First Enterprise appeared first on ReadWrite.