The top 10 strategic
technology trends for Indian companies in 2014 include:
Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics
The BI, analytics and performance management segment is the
hottest software market in India, fueled by IT prioritization and expanding
business buying centers. A competitive business environment and economic
conditions are also forcing enterprises in India to focus on using fact based
decision-making tools to rationalize costs and time for businesses. Enterprises
in India will continue to use BI to be transformative in their approach.
Mobility Solutions
Mobility in enterprise has created a huge opportunity for IT
leaders to reduce costs, increase productivity and enable smooth business
transactions. Swift growth in the prevalence of mobile devices, a decline in
their price, and falling data plan costs have the potential to completely
transform some business models. Organizations in India are beginning to
leverage more personal interactions with greater reach and are also looking to
evaluate mobile platforms as a delivery mechanism to provide an integrated view
of multiple proprietary and publicly available datasets to help drive better
real-time decisions.
Cloud Computing
Although still in its infancy in India and other emerging
markets, cloud adoption is increasing. Led by infrastructure-as-a-service
engagements in the data center, disaster recovery and storage areas, there is a
broad range of providers that target large organizations as well as SMBs. This
fast growing adoption by a diverse range of organizations has catalyzed
providers to invest in high quality data centers and innovative cloud
infrastructures, as well as a portfolio of cloud-related offerings such as
security, communications and managed services.
Social Media and Computing
Social media in India has seen exponential growth in the recent
past with enterprises using it for customer support and customers using it to
offer opinions. A growing number of enterprises used social media to connect
with their customers and for marketing campaigns in 2013 and social media is
playing a pivotal role in Indian politics with the government and political parties
increasingly using it to connect with citizens. Much of this growth can be
attributed to increasing Internet penetration - which reached 198 million users
(including mobile) as of June 2013 - making India one of the three most
connected countries in the world.
Machine to Machine (M2M)
The M2M market in India is in a nascent stage but growing
rapidly. Indian enterprises driven by demands to improve agility and
productivity are evaluating the use of M2M-enabled solutions. Among the early
adopters are verticals like utilities, automotive, financial services and
transport, with other like healthcare and manufacturing following closely. The
success of these projects is expected to result in broad-based deployments of
M2M as an integral component of workflow automation.
Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD)
In India, server-based computing, which is also referred as
"hosted shared desktop" or "terminal services," is seeing
more adoption. More than 80 percent of desktop virtualization implementations
are based on HVD. Organizations are only looking at desktop virtualization from
the point of cost requirement, and they overlook other benefits such as full
data backup, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) support, extended hardware life
cycles, security, compliance and anytime-anywhere access.
Personal Cloud
Adoption of cloud computing in India is currently limited to the
private cloud. Organizations are focused on protecting their applications
located in enterprise app stores, as well as the content on employees' personal
devices used at work. Tablets are becoming the first-choice user device and
this form factor's explosion is creating device ubiquity. Users are creating
their own personal digital ecosystems with their own sets of apps, games and
media. Content is starting to shift to the cloud but, in the future, the cloud
will become the primary storage for personal content, and local versions of the
content will exist only as staged or cached elements.
The Internet of Things (IoT)
In its early phase of development, enterprises are experimenting
with the IoT across a range of sectors, applications, business models and
technologies in an attempt to unlock its value. The IoT delivers tangible value
to enterprises through the ability to better utilize remote assets and creates
business cases in three key areas - operational technology (OT), digital supply
chain and customer interaction.
Collaboration Technologies
Collaboration technologies (otherwise known as workflow
management or team collaboration) consist broadly of - real-time electronic
meetings, content delivery, desktop and application sharing, text chat, group
document markup with electronic whiteboarding, security and remote control.
More advanced features include integrated voice over IP, file sharing,
videoconferencing, content archiving, media streaming, feedback and polling.
Real-time collaboration technologies not included in the Web conferencing
category include instant messaging and stand-alone audio conferencing.
3D Printing
In India interest levels in 3D printing are slowly picking up
and this is reflected in the increased presence of providers in the 3D printing
space. Because of the country's large population base, high volumes and low
cost requirements, 3D printing is expected to take off rapidly and
revolutionize industries as diverse as aerospace, consumer goods, healthcare,
retail, manufacturing and the military. 3D printing has the potential to
radically transform design, manufacturing and the supply chain model in India.
Source: Gartner
Spending on software as a service (SaaS) will total $220 million
in 2014, growing 33.2 percent from last year.