The Enterprise Magic Crystal Ball – Trends of 2016: Successes or Roadblocks?

[Former Member]

Every year, experts turn to their enterprise magic crystal ball and share their thoughts on predictions they have for the upcoming year. As fun as it is reading about the trends that will be successful in the coming year, we are taking bets on whether many of these will actually pan out. Now that we are a few months into 2016, we thought it would be fun to share our thoughts on predictions that will most likely not happen. Read at your own risk.

1. Big Data will succeed

“Big data, big data, big data,” a phrase that has been repeated frequently in the news for the past YEAR. It seems everyone is predicting that big data will grow even more, but is that the right assumption? Big data is already big, with information already overflowing to the point where people can barely manage it, so how is it supposed to grow bigger? While IDC predicts that big data will grow at a 26.4% compound annual growth rate through 2018, our theory is that the surrounding hype of big data will not succeed and everyone will end up drowning in lakes of big data.

2. Enterprise search will work

Let’s face it: finding emails, documents or files at work is a nightmare. With hundreds of emails flooding your inbox everyday, things are always lost in translation and finding a specific file or email in what seems like a needle in a haystack situation makes one want to pull out all of their hair. According to an IDC whitepaper on productivity, there is a loss of 21.3% in the organization’s productivity when it came to finding documents. Enterprise search is supposed to solve this problem, making it easier for users to find what they need fast. Yet, we still haven’t seen any improvement in this task for the enterprise. In fact, in many cases it is creating more losses than gains.

3. The cloud will increase productivity in the office

Box, Dropbox and Google Drive are household names when it comes to companies turning to cloud storage to help increase productivity in the workplace, especially when it comes to working remotely and with international teams. True, using cloud storage tools helps streamline workflow to make it easier for everyone to come together and communicate on projects simultaneously, but is it helpful when it comes to finding the files? Accessing the data stored in these clouds can sometimes be like hunting for hidden treasure with the amount of files that are being uploaded onto these tools. In a survey taken by CEB, 44% of workers said they didn’t know where to find information in their day-to-day-work. Once again, this is another solution that may look and sound like productivity, but when put to the actual test, does it deliver?

4. BYOD will provide more security and be more successful  

Travel back in time to 2015 – the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) concept is booming in the workplace. In fact, 74% of organizations were already using or planning to allow BYOD in their workflow. Analysts and influencers have predicted that in 2016 the trend will continue and IT will beef up security for BYOD policies by placing restrictions to make BYOD more secure and successful. It’s clear security is essential for any company, but will placing restrictions on users actually be that successful in the long run? With limitations on BYOD, we predict that it may affect workers’ progress and ultimately drive the movement of BYOD backward. In 2016, yes, BYOD will be more secure but not as successful.

There you have it, our predictions on the trends for 2016. We will see how it plays our for the balance of the year. While it may seem like the enterprise environment is on the brink of a new, more productive beginning, we must take a step back and really evaluate how successful many of the new tools will be.