With a variety of different cloud-based applications making their mark in the enterprise software market, it looks like this industry is in for some accelerated growth. Efficiency improvements from enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) deployments have prompted roughly 70 percent of businesses to prepare heavy investments in cloud-based enterprise platforms over the next three years.
Because of increasing affordability, scalability, and return on investment (ROI), smaller businesses are starting to adopt enterprise platforms, pushing the growth of apps like ERP and CRM platforms to a level it has never reached before. It is expected that 78 percent of small businesses will fully adopt cloud-based enterprise apps by 2020 compared to today’s paltry 37 percent.
The steady uptake of business apps is beginning to create exciting new trends. Let’s look at a few of them.
Increased Automation
Cloud-based enterprise application services like Panaya are taking off amid the keen interest in automating business processes with big data inputs. For enterprises, it will no longer be viable to go through the trouble of manually implementing enterprise updates and upgrades each time a new enhancement package is available.
Automation impacts productivity by streamlining processes. This makes tasks and projects easier to manage and, as a result, less costly. With scale, automation has an even bigger impact, especially when it comes to big enterprises that have complex data and process structures. The efficiency and productivity returns from automating business processes are a particularly strong incentive for adoption.
Cloud Platforms Are a Clear Winner
As the cloud refocuses resources from costly infrastructure investments onto operational expenditure, businesses are becoming keen on gaining the cost advantages. Much of this investment is going to be in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) implementations, which are seeing an increase in overall total cloud workload, up from 41% projected to 59% in 2018. From $13.5 billion back in 2011, the SaaS market is expected to grow by 243 percent to $32.8 billion by that time.
The increase in demand for SaaS solutions has also spurred a large revenue stream for many startup companies. Today, developers reach the $50 million milestone much earlier than in 1998, according to Tomasz Tunguz, a venture capitalist at Redpoint who has compiled various analyses of the market’s evolution over time.
IoT Makes Its Way Forward, Dragging Wearables Along
Given the distributed nature of cloud computing, applications are beginning to fit into smaller spaces. The Internet of Things (IoT) phenomenon has received a significant amount of attention for the useful applications in various industries around the world. The market is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31.72 percent by 2019. The relevance of IoT in freight tracking and any other business application that requires sensors has created the conditions for new business models to flourish, giving rise to creative means of acquiring, processing and analyzing data.
Wearables are also catching up, albeit more modestly. In this year, only one percent of all wearables shipped were destined for workplaces. By 2020, this number is expected to increase to 17 percent. The effects of this phenomenon are numerous, from enhanced workplace monitoring to higher productivity, as a result of the convenience offered by these devices on their own.
Cloud Applications are Complicating IT Security
While the cloud makes connectivity more convenient, it also comes with privacy and security risks. Because users – and even businesses –are surrendering privacy to third parties, there is a concern among business owners and IT professionals that employees may be inappropriately using data or resources.
Half of all organizations in the last 12 months have had at least one security incident, a trend expected to continue unless businesses start taking an improved approach to data security. Costs are beginning to reach astronomical levels, with the cost of data breaches reaching an average of $3.8 million per incident, up from $3.5 million one year ago.
The worrying increase in both the frequency and cost of data breaches has to do with the poor access control and data protection found in “vanilla” cloud applications adopted by a majority of businesses, especially startups, “solopreneurships” and small businesses. As a response, using solutions like Skyfence.com coupled with very prudent data access policies and procedures could help reduce this trend considerably. This particular platform provides IT departments the added control to ensure sensitive data is not intentionally or inadvertently leaked on public cloud.
Conclusion
The enterprise application market is on a path to fast and sustainable growth. Businesses can leverage these platforms in optimizing their operations for improved efficiency and productivity. Automation, enhanced security, and a move to cloud-based solutions will help improve agility, thus enabling companies to likewise focus on attaining their business goals.