Crystal balls and tea leaves have been in heavy use of late; as IT industry prognosticators prepare their predications for the year ahead.
With so much innovation in the tech space, there is certainly no shortage of material for trends lists. The temptation, though, is to overhype the future, while understating the present. Trends take time to progress through the stages of adoption — often taking longer than many expect.
The year ahead will certainly feature its share of surprises, but realistically, it will be one of momentum and continuation, as incremental advancements in a number of areas make their mark on the IT industry and broader economy.
To balance the future and the present, CompTIA’s IT Industry Outlook 2014 provides key trends to watch, as well as the anti-trends; factors that may get overlooked, taken for granted or viewed as counter to prevailing hype.
At a macro level, businesses have adopted or have been exposed to a wide range of new technologies over the past two years. The importance of information technology to business success has never been greater. Consequently, IT will continue its transition from supporting tool to strategic driver. With progress along the learning curve, many will get closer to achieving a core competency in technology.
The deepening integration of cloud and mobility into businesses of all sizes will lead to wider benefits as well as a new set of issues to contend with. One signal of increasing maturity in the cloud space is the growing intensity of competition, which has cloud service and SaaS providers looking for new ways to differentiate and capture market share. A similar scenario continues to unfold in the mobility category, with a diverse array of devices and apps flooding the market. Data, the digital currency imparting value across devices and applications, will be a key area of focus in the C-suite. Those not quite ready for an ambitious big data initiative will look to achieve incremental “small data” successes.
Persistent economic uncertainty, shifts in customer buying patterns, and the growing everything-as-a-servic” approach to IT will force ever-greater levels of introspection throughout the channel. With so much emphasis on full-scale business transformation as the next channel imperative, it’s sometimes forgotten that change isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. Also under the microscope is the concept of the trusted adviser. With new segments of buyers, increasingly outside of the IT department, as well as the emerging millennial generation, channel partners will need to rethink their customer relationships.
It doesn’t stop there, though. Solution providers and other types of channel partners face a new set of questions when it comes to their relationship with vendors and distributors.
For more details on these and other trends, CompTIA members can access the full IT Industry Outlook 2014 report at no charge in the member resource area of CompTIA.org.
