Today SIIA released “Vision from the Top” — its third annual report on the future of the software and services industry. The publication, unveiled at the SIIA All About the Cloud conference in San Francisco, features insight from 41 CEOs, who discuss opportunities and challenges facing the future of software and services industry. To offer a better understanding of the state of the industry, SIIA also conducted a survey of software and cloud executives and announced the results along with the report.
The survey, which included responses from 37 top executives at software and cloud companies, found that there are expectations for moderate-to-strong technology industry growth in the year ahead. Fifty-seven percent of executives said they expect moderate growth, while 35 percent expect strong growth. When asked to identify whether leading social media platforms are “over-hyped” or “under-hyped” in terms of their usefulness for business, 86 percent said Pinterest is overhyped. LinkedIn and Twitter, however, are more useful, according to the executives, 59 percent of whom said that LinkedIn is under-hyped, while 57 percent said Twitter is under-hyped. Full survey details are available upon request.
Vision from the Top features insight from 41 executives, including: Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO of Red Hat; Rick Nucci, General Manager of Dell Boomi; Matt Ellis CEO of Cloudability; and Larry Cates, President and CEO of Bancroft Technology Group. Each executive answered questions related to where they see business opportunities, public policy concerns, the evolution of business models, international opportunities and more.
Our goal for this book is to provide insights into some of the challenges brought on by these new technology trends and how successful companies are addressing these challenges to continue on a path of solid growth. We also look at how these trends are not only affecting business today, but also what they will mean for the future of our industry. To do this, we took the pulse of SIIA member executives driving innovative technology businesses.
From the insights contained in the 41 entries in the book, I identified four key takeaways:
- Social media continues to redefine and enhance sales and marketing strategies. Social media is now a significant part of the B2C and B2B sales and marketing strategy. In fact, a survey of our CEOs showed that the majority felt social media platforms, LinkedIn and Twitter, were under hyped in business.
- Mobile will continue to change the way we do business. Today’s always-connected workforce expects to be able to carry out all aspects of their business regardless of location. We see more and more companies supporting increased mobile device usage with business applications.
- Companies are using data analytics to gain market share. Just as we see the impact of mobile and social on business, analyzing the data provided by trends like these is increasingly important. Businesses are finally making sense of this explosion of data.
- It is all about efficiency. To keep pace in an increasingly competitive world, businesses need to run as efficient as possible. Mobile allows employees to have access to business processes, customers and prospects, anytime, anywhere. Social allows businesses to track competition, customer and prospect behavior, and increase business collaboration. Data analytics allow companies and organizations to make better business decisions.
The CEO insights can be read here.
Rhianna Collier is VP for the Software Division at SIIA. Follow the Software team on Twitter at @SIIASoftware.