IDC: Cloud and mobility to continue to dominate in 2015

Analyst looks into its crystal ball and predicts the IT trends of next year

Cloud and enterprise mobility will continue to be the watchwords in the IT industry next year, according to IDC, which has unveiled its 2015 predictions for the markets.

According to the analyst, the number of enterprise applications which are optimised for mobile will quadruple next year, and by 2017, every single customer-facing line-of-business app will be built for mobile-first consumption. On top of this, three quarters of apps used internally will be optimised for mobile too, it said.

IT firms will dedicate a whopping 25 per cent of their software budget to mobile-app development by 2017.

IDC's programme vice president for mobility research John Jackson said companies which tick the box on mobility are most likely to thrive in other areas.

"The benefits from efficiencies and business innovation on the back of this app explosion will transform industries and markets," he said. "At the same time it is clear that the path to broader mobilisation of business processes is still complex.

"Organisations that execute effectively will be positioned to enable innovation across all facets of their business."

But it is not just the mobility trend which is set to steam ahead in 2015, IDC said, adding that cloud computing - and the move to hybrid technologies - will be another key part of the year ahead in IT.

More than 65 per cent of enterprise IT businesses will commit to hybrid cloud before next year is out, it said, adding that this would "vastly drive the rate and pace of change" within the firms.

IDC's SaaS and cloud software researcher Robert Mahowald said: "Digitisation and transformation to virtualised, on-demand provider-based services are driving very rapid internal IT change.

"IT buyers are shifting steadily towards... cloud-first strategies and nearly all are reconsidering their IT best practices to embrace hybrid cloud construction and operations, secure data management, end-to-end governance, updated IT skills, and improved multi-vendor sourcing."