Industry roundup: Business software future and regulations

Here’s another roundup of interesting articles which managed to stand out in our regular following of the industry.

P2P and Video in the workplace?

ReadWriteEnterprise provides us with a glimpse of the future when they summarize a report which finds that p2p and video usage of corporate bandwidth is on the increase. What this means in practical terms? That employees on the company time and network participate in file-sharing activities and watch video increasingly more.

In other words, two of the most characteristic consumer-like activities are taking place at work – and nobody can really be sure they’re about work. In fact, most rush to assume it’s not and suggest IT admins ‘protect’ the companies’ resources and its employees.

We think that the new means of conveying information should be included in the way a company works and embraced to make it a better and more effective workplace. And although not many services exist currently to ‘consumerize’ p2p and video for the company, we expect such services are just around the corner.

Mission Critical SaaS – why not?

The all-around interesting CloudPro blog has had two posts with interesting insights in the past 10 days or so. The first identifies – based on a report by a VC fund – the trend even for mission critical businesses to move to the cloud: 50% of those asked agree the cloud is appropriate for such tasks. Issues that play an important role in deciding to move ahead with transitioning to the cloud are scalability, flexibility, security, regulations’ compliance and vendor lock-in.

When talking about going to the cloud most of the respondents meant Software-as-a-Service and when talking about mission critical functions they mean none other than plain old e-commerce functionality. So if you’re worried that you may lose traffic and money from your e-shop by adopting a cloud solution, just remember that most of your peers are positive about taking the plunge.

Business software and the cloud shaping the way we’ll work

The second post although less factual provides insights about the future business software trends straight from the mouths of analysts and stakeholders in the industry. Some of the points we liked:

• 3/4 of employees use their own devices to complete work tasks. This means employees are more likely to use their phone to message a colleague rather than the corporate intranet.
• The combination of consumer & cloud technologies will revolutionize the way they work – some argue to the point of negating a need to have a physical office
• Notions of change for the office does not mean no company HQ anymore – instead it means new rules for handling decentralized workers.
• The most important issue to tackle is company data security – which can be addressed by storing everything in a central, distributed, cloud-accessed location.
• “Value comes from face-to-face conversation in a room. CIOs must work out where they can use digital technologies to add value, rather than to think about how systems can be used to replace human interaction.”

Regulation matters

ZDNet addresses another topic which may be of importance to most companies – and in particular small businesses. When considering moving to the cloud and no matter how small your business is, you have to take into account how well the new solution will abide by laws and regulations by the government and other bodies.

That’s especially true if you’re in a heavily regulated industry (such as food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, military etc). Whatsmore, when it comes to cloud solutions for companies that need to track resources across different countries, the problem becomes considerably complex.

Questions that may arise vary but examples include things like what measures are in place with regards to security? Must your data be stored in a specific geography? How can the change to the new system be ensured to not cause any service compromise?

All these and more are issues that need to be addressed professionally and as such, unless you’re up to the job, a consultant should be hired to help you with evaluating your business software – especially one with relevant experience – to ensure the necessary requirements are met.