Think you’ve got mobility sorted? Well Gartner has other ideas – predicting that with devices, bots, things and people converging in a technological mashup, organisations will need to excel at both mainstream mobility and to prepare for the post-app era.
David Willis, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst, presented on this topic at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo running this week in Cape Town.
“The future of mobile will provide ubiquitous services delivered anywhere, by any person or thing, to any person or thing,” said Willis.
“While users are constantly looking for new and compelling app experiences, the importance of apps in delivering services will diminish and the emergence of virtual personal assistants (VPAs) and bots will replace some of the functions performed by apps today. Alternative approaches to interaction and service delivery will arise, and code will move from traditional mobile devices and apps to the cloud.”
Mobile has shifted to ‘business as usual’, with 2.38 billion devices (including PC, tablets, ultramobiles, and mobile phones) forecast to be shipped in 2017 and 342 million wearables sold.
Bring your own device (BYOD) and bring your own application (BYOA) will continue to grow, and become the norm for most organisations.
“Moreover, the arrival of wearables and bring your own ‘thing’ (such as smart kettles, smart power sockets or smart light bulbs) in the workplace will introduce new interaction techniques and new platforms, diluting the need for specific mobile app experiences,” said Willis.
Innovation is occurring not inside the smartphones themselves, but in the way they communicate with other things. Gartner predicts that by 2018, 25 per cent of new mobile apps will talk to Internet of Things (IoT) devices. And this may also drive a longer-term change in delivery mechanisms.
“Through 2018, the app will be the preferred mechanism, because it provides a better experience and allows more sophisticated interactions and data analysis, with low-level networking and background processing,” said Willis. “As new technologies grow in importance as a way to control and interact with things, app interfaces will fade.”
Among the new technologies that may come to the fore in the post-app era are artificial intelligence, natural-language processing and bots integrated into message apps.
Already organisations such as Kore are enabling businesses and consumers to “chat” with users on their messaging platform and evolving APIs so developers can create their own bots. This allows users to chat with organisations to get information, answer questions or transact through messaging or VPAs.
“This means that instead of going into a system and filling out complicated forms with checkboxes, users can ask a bot a question, and it will answer or negotiate on our behalf, based on rules and knowledge in the system,” said Willis. “It will then move to those systems that allow interactions with customers – from marketing to sales.”
Willis said that despite these changes, apps will not go away, but the post-app era will see more data and code stored in the could and less on the device.
“The post-app era will be an evolving process through 2020 and beyond,” he said. “It has, however, already begun, and organisations should prepare for it by being agile and tactical, planning for new skills, assessing the new opportunities created by the post-app era, and developing a digital business strategy that integrates many different technologies.”
Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the world’s most important gathering of CIOs and senior IT leaders, uniting a global community of CIOs with the tools and strategies to help them lead the next generation of IT and achieve business outcomes. Upcoming dates and locations for Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2016 events include:
October 5-7, Tokyo, Japan
October 16-20, Orlando, Florida
October 24-27, Sao Paulo, Brazil
October 24-27, Gold Coast, Australia
November 6-10, Barcelona, Spain
November 15-18, Goa, India.
