Hubspan’s 2011 Top 5 Cloud and Integration Predictions
Posted by Margaret Dawson on November 15, 2010
It’s that time of year again, where we all look forward and wonder what will be the key trends in the coming year. And while it may be more fun to ponder how quickly the entire SGU Season 2 will be out on bluray – I’m talking about predictions closer to home, specifically around cloud computing, and our world, B2B Integration.
So, Hubspan has put together our top five predictions for cloud computing and business integration for 2011, based on insights gathered from IT industry thought leaders, analysts and enterprise customers, as well as our own experience and incredible foresight.
In the Integration area, we expect companies to keep placing a greater emphasis on exchanging real-time, event-driven data that enables greater business agility, and for message size and transactional volume to continue to increase. With the economic recovery taking its time, you will need to maintain strong customer relationships in 2011, as you don’t want to give your customers a reason to look around – and integration is very sticky! Finally, 2011 will see further “integration” and intersection across related technologies, including business intelligence and integration, as well as BPM, SOA and other related areas.
On the cloud front, I think people will finally stop buying the cloud and go back to buying the solution (yes, my personal bailiwick), and cloud vendors will cooperate more around security (don’t expect a standard, but you will see more cooperation).
Below are the formal five predictions. You can expect to see us blogging on each of these over the coming weeks and months.
1. Companies will stop buying the cloud and start buying the solution. In 2011, buyers will go back to basics and focus first on solving a business problem, then finding a good solution, cloud or otherwise.
2. BI x 2: Convergence of business integration and business intelligence.
These two just make sense together, like peanut butter and chocolate, and this will be the year we’ll see more vendors looking to bundle business intelligence into their solutions so customers can benefit from event-driven intelligence.
3. Cloud vendors will unite to address security.
Okay, unite might be a bit strong, but in fairness, we are already seeing this with the Cloud Security Alliance and other partnerships across vendor communities. In the next year, we’ll see a heightened focus from cloud vendors on SLAs, best practices and compliance that will help customers overcome their concerns about security and let them focus on the business challenge (see #1).
4. Doing business the “Customer’s Way” becomes a necessity for growth.
To do business the customer’s way, companies must focus on customer needs, adapt to customer resources, and provide value that will impact customer bottom lines without forcing them to change the way they currently do business. In 2011, companies will “get” this as the economic recovery drags on and will look for solutions that help achieve greater retention and revenue from existing customers.
5. B2B becomes business critical.
Okay, this one might be self-serving, since we are a B2B integration provider, but the inflection point is happening, and I’m not the only one to proclaim that “b2b is hot again“! We expect to see more convergence and M&A activity in this space and increased demand for B2B integration solutions, especially those that add greater capability around business process, application integration, SOA, and other synergistic technologies.
Tags: B2B Integration, Cloud Computing, Cloud Security Alliance, customer integration
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