– David Hurwitz, SVP of worldwide marketing with Serena Software, says:
Apps drive most aspects of our modern world, including the enterprise. It has been an incredible year of technology innovation and achievement for enterprise IT, especially so with regards to software development, release and operations. New trends in the space, the emergence of DevOps and the expansion of Orchestrated IT, are just a few of the key themes that have shaped and defined 2012. But as another momentous year comes to a close, many wonder what 2013 will have in store.
The following predictions are based off conversations with technology partners, industry experts and Serena customers worldwide.
Large Enterprises Exploit the Cloud Primarily to Speed Development Cycles
The cloud has emerged as a dominant and powerful software development and deployment platform. In 2013, even the largest and most conservative enterprises will move to the cloud for the development phases of their overall delivery lifecycles. These were the companies that resisted cloud computing in the past. Their use of the cloud will be quite considered, as they will use a hybrid approach, exploiting the public cloud for testing and staging, but a private cloud or on-premise resources for production delivery. Keeping software production instances within private resources supports the enterprise need for security and control.
Help Desk Evolves from Technical Support to Business Support
In 2013, Help Desks will grow in importance from their present position as an IT function into a business support function. This “Business Desk” will handle both traditional technical support along with the non-traditional role of business support. The Business Support Desk will support customer-facing personnel with understanding new marketing offers, product offerings and the exploitation of other app-powered revenue features.
A companion trend is being driven by Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) activity. BYOD, for instance, has created more of a ‘do it yourself help desk’ for office workers since enterprise IT teams have their hands full with more pressing tasks and don’t always have the time for the everyday maintenance issues that BYOD creates.
The Cost of Rework Drives a Rethink of IT Processes
Research firm vokereleased data showing that 40-50 percent of the work IT performs falls in to the rework category, a huge tax on their ability to deliver new functionality. Further validating that claim, one large IT shop reported 17 percent of its total work had to be redone at some point. Better software delivery processes will combine in 2013 to help IT deliver software right the first time, with the large companion benefit that much more software can be delivered by development organizations that are dramatically less burdened by rework.
In the year ahead we predict the increasing ubiquity of online enterprises will force a generational shift in IT, from focusing on the siloed functions within IT to focusing on the competitive goals of the business itself. As the dust settles, we predict businesses will become more agile and that IT’s role will beeven more important. In the long run, IT taking on an expanded role in the business will improve overall earnings performance.
Serena orchestrates IT for enterprise organizations across the end-to-end application delivery lifecycle. IT organizations can coordinate disparate processes, multiple tools and globally distributed teams from initial business request, all the way to final production release. Serena helps IT engage more rapidly and accurately with the business, accelerate globally distributed water-scrum-fall development and deliver applications more frequently into production – all while maintaining enterprise visibility and compliance to corporate and regulatory standards.
About the author:
As SVP of worldwide marketing, David Hurwitz leads Serena’s worldwide marketing initiatives, including product marketing, communications, campaigns, sales readiness and field marketing. Hurwitz has a quarter century of experience in the enterprise software industry, originally as a Silicon Valley software engineer.
