There are three things that I think can make the enterprise application a livelier place even as they are made more useful and productive. In no particular order, they are video, maps and Indian languages.
Video
Video, they say, is going to be the big media for the future. There is enough data to say that the production and consumption, particularly short ones has gone through the roof. The youtube explosion apart, Facebook, twitter and other social platforms are also giving a big push to video. You can now not only get good video downloads on the mobile, but also shoot good quality videos using the mobile.
Now where is the enterprise when it comes to video? Other than the traditional training videos, CEO interviews and marketing promotions, are there any areas in which the enterprise can leverage video? I still do not have full answers on how video can become fully integrated into enterprise applications. But I am sure that someone will crack that bit fairly soon.
Maps
Wherever possible, Enterprise systems should integrate maps. I am not talking about just logistics systems. Be it marketing or sales, social interactions or customer relations, maps add a huge layer of intelligence to your enterprise, when you layer information on maps. It suddenly deepens understanding and provides new meanings.
What was once complex, and known as GIS has now become easy web services, with multiple sources from where you can integrate maps into your applications.
Languages
India is a country of many languages, of two national languages and twenty two official languages. Our workforces are multi cultural and multilingual. Social platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter today offer this capability and so do mobile phones. In other words, users have become used to and even expect language choices when using compute devices. A good example of this is Facebook. On Facebook, we have seen that user engagement goes up manifold when the language is a an Indian languages as compared to when the language is English.
It is time that enterprise applications reflect this reality and turn multilingual and offer the choice of interface language to the user.
Even while we keep implementing BI and Analytics, and Hadoop and Hana and BlueMix, we need to look at the user who is in front of the application and make his experience more engaging and fruitful
