Social, big data and consumerisation of IT will all have an impact on the European software industry, which is expected to witness a growth of 3.1% in 2012, according to International Data Corporation (IDC) predictions for the European software industry.
IDC European Enterprise Applications program manager Bo Lykkegaard said new versions of salesforce automation and customer service applications will feature new social capabilities such as discussion forums, activity streams, follow or subscribe capability, external feeds, alerts, and so on.
"Other enterprise applications, such as business analytics and human capital management applications will be quick to follow but CRM will lead the way," said Lykkegaard.
Other predictions for the European software industry in year 2012, according to the intelligence firm further predictions for 2012 include: transformation of the software: services ratio; third-party buy-in will be crucial to the success of app stores; the earliest European adopters will implement context-aware systems; Microsoft finally gains traction with Azure (but mostly in midmarket); many organisations will adopt multiple hypervisors within their virtualised infrastructure; enterprise architecture projects repositioned on CIOs’ agendas in 2012; and the IT security industry outgrows its niche status as deployment of third-platform technologies and increasing cyberthreats escalate risks.