2017 will be a year for digital transformation.
International Data Corporation (IDC), expects that the percentages of enterprises creating advanced digital transformation initiatives over the next five-years will more than double from today’s 22% to nearly 50%.
This will result in the creation of a “DX Economy” by the beginning of next decade. IDC predicts that enterprise spending on cloud services will surpass $500 billion by 2016, more than three times the current level.
Digital transformation has forced enterprises to abandon traditional project portfolio management software and practices. Instead, they must adapt to the wave that is disrupting them with cloud-based tools, visual, social and collaborative project management, and collaboration tech. The rapid advancements in AI technology and Internet of Things (IoT), have caused a significant shift in the nature of projects, forcing organizations to rethink project portfolio management (PPM).
This article attempts to predict how PPM will change over the next five-years. These are the four main themes I believe will dominate PPM in the early part of next decade.
1: Adoption of OpenStack (private cloud) technologies will give rise to a new breed of deployment (“on-premise-on-the-cloud”) for project management solutions
Software as a Service (SaaS), which is a service that provides access from anywhere, anytime, has already revolutionized the nature of enterprise software. It reduces infrastructure costs and speeds up implementation.
Private cloud deployment is becoming more popular as enterprises look at digital transformation as a revenue stream, but also as a way to transform the way they run their businesses.
Open-source technologies like OpenStack offer enterprises a lot more flexibility, control, scalability, and control. OpenStack, for example, can handle different levels of computing, is easy to license, works with standard hardware and has a large global community. It also offers detailed documentation and a vast marketplace for products or services.
It allows enterprises to regain control of IT without the traditional costs and hassles associated with implementation.
This new type of deployment offers enterprises the best of both: cloud-based access and private data. The on-premise-on-private-cloud will, therefore, see increasing demand.
Software providers have already started gearing up for the demand, and, over the next few years, on-premise-on-the-cloud is slated to become the preferred option for businesses globally.
2: The next wave of growth in PPM software will come from emerging economies
At a 12.9% compound annual growth rate, the PPM market is expected to grow from $2.52 Billion in 2015 to $4.63 Billion over the next five-years. PPM market growth is being driven by the rising BYOD trend in businesses, increasing business optimization requirements, the inclination to cloud-based software solutions, and increasing complexity within projects.
North America and Europe will continue to dominate PPM market growth (into the early next decade), however I expect there to be more traction in the developing regions, particularly from the BRIC countries and countries such as Indonesia (infraprojects), Chile (mining project), Turkey (manufacturing/infraprojects), and Vietnam (manufacturing project).
It is important to remember that PPM adoption doesn’t necessarily have a direct relationship to economic factors. Emerging economies will drive greater growth. It can be viewed as an evolutionary aspect that companies will seek to gain value from and get involved in.
3: Software providers will need to address the issue of adoption
PPM is a key priority for enterprises that deal with complex, large-scale projects.