Looking to 2014

2013 has been a year of major developments in the enterprise, so I thought it’d be worth putting together a few predictions for 2014. With cloud computing and BYOD both taking off in businesses after years of hype, over the next 12 months I think these trends will continue to drive further innovations and we can expect to hear more about Bring Your Own Network – or Bring Your Own Anything – as the lines between consumer and business technology continue to blur. These will put real pressure on network managers and anyone working in IT for large businesses as maintaining security, speed and reliability become ever more important.

2014 will also see an explosion of XaaS markets as Software as a Service (SaaS) is already too broad and must now support sub-categorisation with clearer definitions. For example, Disaster Recovery (DRaaS), Security (SECaaS), Management (MaaS) have already been defined and we can expect to see further granularity of definitions appearing over the next 12 months.

EMEA, in general, has been slow to adopt cloud computing, with concerns about security and regulatory compliance coming up again and again. However, with the growing popularity of cloud-based financial services like TEMENOS T24 showing how it can be done safely, we should expect this to now change.

In terms of Software Defined Networks (SDN), volumes have been written about it in 2013, but in 2014 we will finally start to see it breaking into the mainstream – with more pilot projects maturing into production environments and an increased interest in the technology from a more diverse customer base. 2014 could very well be the year of Software Defined Anything (Application Services, Datacentres, Storage, etc.)

In conclusion, 2014 is set to be another exciting year for the enterprise, with lots of developments in cloud and SDN. We will see businesses becoming more innovative in the ways they work, which will bring it’s challenges, but will revolutionise the way we work forever.