The Future of Applications

IT is increasingly seen as an essential business enabler as well as value creator + competitive advantage creator. In doing so one of the most important service blocks of IT is applications life cycle management. Within application life cycle management the IT divisions generally use various frameworks and technology platforms to achieve the desired results. The well known ones are,

1. Rational Unified Process (RUP) for requirements management
2. PRINCE2 / PM BOK for project management
3. ITIL for service management
4. Waterfall method for application SDLC
5. Agile development for agile way of applications management
6. SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) for modular/component development and making them available as loosely coupled to be used as service

In the area of technology platform there is a vast list. Some of the heavily used ones are,

1. Microsoft .Net
2. Android
3. Apple iOS
4. Java/J2EE
5. MS SQL/MY SQL
6. Oracle
7. Many more…

On the other side we have seen the increase is standard out of box applications that we use day in and day out to get our daily activities done. A few examples of the same are,

1. Microsoft Office Suite
2. SAP (with needed customizations)
3. Microsoft Sharepoint
4. CA Clarity Tool
5. HP Open View Service Desk Tool
6. Many more…

The latest trend shows a start in applications turning more and more out of the box for day 2 day activities and collaboration needs. More and more business starting with individuals, small & medium enterprises are going towards using standard out of the box applications to keep their appls maintenance and development costs under control. The MNCs (Multi Nationals) have started moving towards the same for the so called Utility applications.

The advantages seen in using standard out of the box applications are,

1. No internal development and maintenance team required
2. The standard functionality ensures easy upgrades and updates
3. Market standards are adhered to much easily
4. License costs benefits due to volume
5. Easier user training with standard vendor provided training materials
6. Easier acquisition on boarding to One company standard appls

The disadvantages to be handled are,

1. The standard appls vendor’s existence in market. If the vendor is small can be easily take over/go bankrupt
2. No control over how fast the issues & changes reported will be resolved and in which release
3. Very tight control on changes/customizations, all has to be within the boundary of what the standard appls environment allows
4. License costs year over year can increase/ License model can change for major releases
5. Data migration from other systems to standard systems could be very time consuming, complex and costly

The applications future continues to evolve and we already see many businesses moving in the standard out of the box applications for their day to day activities and collaboration needs. It is slowly moving towards adaptation of “Software as a Service”, pay for use model.