Tis The Season for 2014 Predictions

As always happens in December, there has been an outpouring of requests for bylines and interviews on what I thought were the biggest moments for SharePoint and the broader Microsoft space in 2013, and my predictions for 2014. I’ve been fairly transparent on my thoughts around the cloud, and how your business needs may not match the current batch of marketing messaging out there, but overall I am a huge proponent of the cloud, of social collaboration, and of mobility solutions. And I am still very much bullish on the future of SharePoint.

My predictions for 2013 can be found here – let me know how accurate I was. And here are some of my predictions for SharePoint, social tools, and the cloud for 2014:

• We’ll see more and more consumer-based solutions launching with “mobile first” development strategies becoming the norm, with PC and tablet solutions coming later (if at all).
• I think we’ll have a turning point in 2014 where organizations will begin to view mobile apps as a way to enhance, but not replace, their complex enterprise solutions.
• I think there is going to be a shift toward private, single-tenant cloud offerings as organizations look to reap the benefits of cloud, but are wary of the public cloud (multi-tenant offerings) because of real or perceived security issues. I do think that we’ll keep seeing public cloud growth, but primarily in the SMB segment.
• Organizations will make more investment into measuring end user behaviors within their collaboration platforms, and I methods for modifying those behaviors (gamification).
• Companies will simplify their SharePoint requirements in 2014. Many will recognize that in past versions, they over-planned for customizations and integrations, and decide that what they actually need is much more out-of-the-box.
• 2014 will be the year of the hybrid SharePoint environment as organizations look to reduce costs by taking advantage of the cloud, while also getting the most out of the investments they’ve made on prem. It’ll be a governance and administration mess, but organizations will do it anyway, and as a result, Microsoft and the partner ecosystem will step in to address gaping holes in the hybrid story.
• SharePoint 2010 will become the “Windows XP” of the SharePoint world, with many organizations questioning the need to move off of the platform any time soon, as it meets most of their needs. In fact, one of the more common hybrid scenarios will be SharePoint 2010 paired with Office365 for the workloads that can be moved to the cloud.

That’s it. That’s my list. I’m pretty confident in this future. What do you think?