Predictions For 2020: Informatica

At the rate at which technology changes, it is difficult to predict what will happen two years down the line, let alone in 2020. However, there are some indicators highlighting the direction that the technology world is moving.

In 2013, businesses – many of whom initially plunged into social media without a business purpose – will take a step back as they are not seeing proportionate results. They will now look at what they actually want out of social media and look at different ways to use it to engage with their customers rather than being careless about it.

The hype and buzz around Big Data will also slow down. However, it will become more accessible to the masses instead of being dependent on a scarce group of data scientists. In this scenario, data quality will start to matter again.

Data will also become borderless – and it will roam everywhere. Data will be present in different applications, inside and outside firewalls, in social networks and the World Wide Web and in enterprise systems, on mobile devices and in mainframes. Technologies are evolving to wrangle this data no matter where it roams.

Shadow IT governance - Cloud applications are often adopted by shadow IT in business functions precisely because they’re so easy to use and businesses don’t want IT to slow them down. But as critical data and business processes are now shifting to cloud, IT must find ways to enforce some governance (e.g. providing centralised cloud-based data integration services to cloud apps) without squashing business agility.

Big Data and the infrastructure needed to support it will become more consolidated. In order to expedite time to ‘Big Data Value’, IT will lean towards prepackaged solutions that can be plugged in, loaded with data, and ready to present to business users without the added drain on already overstressed resources.

Organisations and departments will continue to seek alternative cloud-based solutions to address business challenges. With its proven value-proposition and undeniable economic benefit, IT will be forced to modify and adapt its security policies and enforcement model to support this shift of data moving of premises.

The industry will see an increased adoption of data governance initiatives as enterprises look beyond just technology to solve data inefficiencies. People and processes will become an integrated major theme in 2013 – giving rise to more templatised frameworks for how to effectively implement data governance.

Organisations will increasingly use B2Bi software to create and deliver new business solutions. Not just for cost cutting and increasing process efficiency but to capitalise on new business opportunities. As vendors offer software as a service and platform as a service, integration and B2B partner and data management will be core components of these offerings.

Organisations will continue to prioritise cost cutting and IT operations streamlining initiatives. Even though the promise of Big Data is driving innovation and inspiring new application development, CIOs and CFOs will be working closer together to strike the right balance between where to invest and where to spend less.