Personal Cloud Services Expected to Rise in 2013

2013 is expected to see a rise in such things as personal cloud services and fit-for-purpose apps for IT, according to a Progress Software executive.

During this year, IT organizations can expect to see a rise in simple and intuitive personal cloud services and fit-for-purpose applications at the expense of more full-featured and complex apps, according to an executive at Progress Software.

John Goodson, senior vice president of the product development group at Progress, which produces software that simplifies and enables the development and deployment of business applications, made this prediction and others on the application development front recently. He said he expects 2013 to bring a rise in the creation of personalized services and challenges for large–scale integration companies.

Goodson said developers need to “keep it simple.” He noted that “if it is fully featured and complex it isn’t ripe for adoption.” Goodson said there is a reason consumer cloud adoption is happening at such a rapid pace – specialization and ease-of-use. Look for the enterprise to pick up on this trend next year as their traditional mid- and back-office applications are up for “renewal,” he said. Enterprises will look for more purpose-built single-function applications rather than the more complex, rigid offerings of yesteryear, he added.

“Applications are getting smaller, more targeted and there are many more of them being used across multiple devices,” Goodson told eWEEK. “If the typical office worker used about five applications a day to get their job done before, now they're using as many as 50 for various, individual functions. Evernote is a good example. It's a simple, single-purpose application that just takes notes, and it does it really well. Dropbox is another great example. It does a great job of storing/sharing files, but that's it. End-users no longer have the appetite for applications that are multi-functional. They are willing to access more, if it allows them to be more efficient and productive. Plus, they are accessing them via mobile devices in addition to the traditional desktop applications.

Meanwhile, Goodson predicts that large scale integration will suffer, as one unexpected casualty of the increased adoption rate of cloud services is that large-scale integration companies will no longer be able to keep up with the vast amounts of information that IT teams need to integrate. Look instead for targeted, purpose-built integration services to become the order of the day, he said.

Regarding personal cloud services, Goodson predicts that enterprises will begin tailoring applications to the needs of individual end-users to maximize productivity. 2013 is the year that personalized services targeted at enterprise users become the rule, not the exception, he said.