The latest PricewaterhouseCoopers Technology Forecast for
2003-2005 has identified two important trends that will steer the
work of IT leaders: companies are looking to make informed
decisions; and there is a need for real-time
responsiveness.
PricewaterhouseCoopers highlighted a number of technologies that
have key roles to play in helping businesses meet these
requirements:
CRM
The use of customer relationship management software will continue
to grow but companies will pursue smaller and more focused
implementations that deal with specific tasks. As a result, CRM
functionality will take longer to deploy. Partner relationship
management modules will be added to CRM suites to help enterprises
automate the process of interacting with their distributors and
resellers.
Business intelligence
Business intelligence software and analytics will increasingly
become embedded in other applications and firms will integrate
their business intelligence and collaborative applications.
Analytics functions will be performed during, not before,
transactions. Business intelligence applications that relay
information to users, for example via digital dashboards, will
become more common.
Collaborative computing
Sales of collaboration tools will continue to grow at double-digit
rates and collaborative features will be included in more
enterprise applications. Collaborative platforms aimed at specific
sectors and business processes will emerge. However, the next major
jump in collaborative systems will come through integration with
enterprise resource planning systems. Hosted web-based
collaboration services will also continue to grow and instant
messaging will find increasing acceptance in the enterprise.
Enterprise application integration
Loosely coupled integration will be the preferred method of linking
applications because it shields each participating application from
the technical details of the others. This will evolve into wrapping
existing applications in web services interfaces.
Web services are set to become an important part of the business
integration toolkit, both internally and externally. More companies
will offer public web services. However, web services standards and
infrastructure must be supplemented with trading agreements and
non-repudiation before web services can be widely used in B2B
commerce.
Software architectures
Enterprises implementing software suites will tend to use bundled
integration tools, and the falling cost of integrating modules from
different suppliers will make it less attractive to deploy suites
from single suppliers. Businesses will make increasing use of
bundled online analytical processing capabilities, as opposed to
standalone datawarehouses.
Application servers will be the primary execution environment for
application development, deployment and integration, with Microsoft
.net and J2EE remaining viable alternatives. XML web services have
a significant role to play in moving data between different IT
systems. However, it is unlikely that any currently proposed web
services business process specifications will be widely accepted
before 2004.