The End of an Application Ice Age #PRGS14

As many of you know, here at Progress we are focused on helping partners and customers spark great ideas and turn them into today’s top enterprise applications. As I walk around the floor this week at our annual conference, Progress Exchange, it’s evident that these sparks are burning brighter than ever. Even bright enough to end the application ice age that we appear to be coming out of as we look at 2015.

Society is reaching a point where technology is no longer a tool at our disposal. It is bound to the core of how we communicate. At Progress Exchange, it’s at the core of the most critical business processes. We are at a tipping point where everyone is empowered by technology and thus, able to push innovation forward at an unprecedented rate, breaking us out of what was previously akin to an ice age. Here at Progress, we see that innovation coming in the form of six major technology trends in 2015:

1. Citizen Developers Unite, IT Responds. IT can’t keep up and it’s not their fault. Businesses are demanding more and the consumerization of IT has raised user expectations. The latest trend to address the issue is citizen developers or the BYOA generation - technically adept business users that understand the business and have enough technical experience to build apps or to effectively participate in the development process. IT will start responding to this trend and leading organizations will help promote this concept by enabling citizen developers to be more self-sufficient in building complex business applications without exacerbating shadow IT.
2. Construction Begins on the Internet of Things Bridge. Organizations will start to deliver on the hype of IoT across a wide array of industries. Initial steps will be taken to assimilate IoT processing into internal and customer facing applications, including increased use of IoT friendly languages like Node.js. While complete ROI success stories will be limited in the short term, organizations that don’t begin planning or modifying their development processes risk falling behind more forward-thinking competitors.
3. Developers Get a 1-2 Punch with Low-code + Agile. While organizations strive to leverage Enterprise Architecture concepts to best manage their application efforts, silos often exist between different development efforts. Even in today’s cloud-based world, organizations often commit to one platform approach. Moving forward, leading organizations will react to the diversity of applications and their mix of developer skill sets by leveraging a combination of development approaches that include both low-code (high-productivity) and agile (high-control). This will allow different skillsets to be applied in an effective and collaborative fashion without the constraints of a one platform approach.
4. Node.js Will Supercharge JavaScript Adoption. JavaScript’s rapid growth will continue and will be buoyed by the success of Node.js on the server side, along with the power of MongoDB. Another key driver will be the adoption of PaaS solutions that allow Node.js developers to focus on developing applications instead of worrying about the deployment, scaling, management and monitoring of Node.js and MongoDB applications. This will parallel the rise of DevOps as it automates key processes and enables small development projects to take off while also providing the infrastructure for large, mission-critical applications. One of the major indicators of this trend will be the release of Node.js 1.0.
5. The Enterprise will Start Drinking from “Data Ponds." Issues with disparate data sources should be solved by now. 2015 will bring the next step in the evolution of data usage. As an increasing number of data streams feed the so-called “data ponds,” the enterprise will take their newfound ability to integrate these data sources and start building business applications that transform the data into actionable insight. This will not only increase the value of that data but it will also incentivize businesses to ensure all of their business critical data is integrated and flowing into the same pond.
6. The Transaction Superhighway - Tech Savvy Consumers Will Begin to Travel in the Retail HOV Lane. 2015 will be the year that tech savvy consumers say goodbye to standing in long lines. The proliferation of online ordering and in-store pickup will continue but the trend will become more widespread as the user experience becomes more streamlined and reliable. Retailers will also start exploring the crossroads of the Internet of Things and predictive analytics to enable “predictive selling.” For example, the connected home will enable certain retailers to break down even more additional road blocks and offer consumers products they may have not realized they needed, such as milk or water filters. With an alert to the consumers phone followed by home delivery, the only action needed from the consumer was to open the alert and press buy.

Are you seeing any more trends out there that I haven’t already mentioned? Catch me at tonight’s PARTY@EXCHANGE to discuss or tweet us at @ProgressSW! Stay tuned to our blog tomorrow morning for a full recap of today’s event as well.