Adoption of the cloud continues to accelerate, giving businesses an opportunity to harness this technology. Like every year, technology will move quickly, and organizations need to stay on top of trends to make the most of how cloud computing will shift.
With that in mind, here are several key trends that will define the market in 2015:
1. Mobile
Mobile has been the buzzword in business for years now. However, 2014 was the year business-ready mobile productivity applications finally began emerging on the scene. Salesforce released Salesforce1 late in 2013, Microsoft finally released its Office suite on iOS, Apple partnered with IBM to bring their productivity applications to iOS, and we at Cirrus Insight launched our iPad and iPhone apps in June. The new year promises to see more enterprise-grade productivity applications come to mobile, and with them we will see a transformation in how we conduct business.
2. Integrations
As adoption of cloud platforms continues to proliferate, the challenge is how to connect the silos so that data and intelligence can be universally accessible across the organization. As a result, solutions that emphasize being open with robust APIs will thrive, while those that try to create walled gardens will wither.
3. Analytics
As we continue to collect and consolidate more of our data in the cloud, the challenge is how to make sense of it all. Recognizing this challenge, Salesforce announced its Wave Salesforce Analytics Cloud at this year's Dreamforce. The next year promises to see more solutions released that help companies make sense of the enormous amounts of data that are being collected in the cloud.
4. Big data
Big data has been another phrase making headlines for years, and 2015 promises to be the year big data comes to the SMB market. The same needs that are driving innovations in analytics will drive the adoption of big data solutions to help businesses not just visualize their data, but also make that data actionable and drive business processes and decisions. Predictive analytics will transform all stages of the sales process, from lead scoring to nurturing, all the way to customer retention.
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