The sales of our solutions in the cloud have doubled in the last year, which speaks volumes. It is mostly attributable to the decline in bandwidth costs, which has underscored the uptake of cloud in the last year. A cloud solution can be tailored to meet the needs and pockets of the user, which makes it adaptable to suit the needs of the organisation.
A trend that will certainly continue to stamp its presence into 2013 is the demand for connected services, especially around service, sales and stock. The days of spending hours to compile data and to debug excel formulas are numbered. Clients want to know what their key performance indicators (KPIs) are at the touch of a button and with a host of cloud-enabled Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions you literally need an Internet connection and a laptop, tablet, PC or smart phone to review your performance. Slick and easy to use is the name of the game and that is why the uptake of applications for mobility has mushroomed.
Many vendors with modern architecture have easily adapted to the new challenges of mobility, but not all software is architected to allow for a rapid response to changing market conditions and that is something that the industry will need to work on in 2013.
Mobility will continue to gain traction well into 2013, in addition to the uptake of solutions in the cloud from both a consumer and enterprise point of view. Devices, applications and social media are revolutionising the way that we communicate and it will have far-reaching effects on the South African IT industry going forward.
