Bigger Solutions with Smaller Devices

FountainBlue’s February 12 VIP Roundtable on the ‘Bigger Solutions with Smaller Devices’ topic included executives representing a wide breadth of backgrounds and perspectives, but they agreed on many things.

• Hardware will continue to become smaller while gathering a wider assortment and larger amount of data real-time. Software will become bigger to optimize functionality and performance around the data and ensure its ongoing usefulness for all stakeholders.
• The Future of Work will be remote, and hardware and software options need to fit the functionality, accessibility and security requirements of the (internal and external) customers. 
• Optimizing managed services will help enterprise IT departments focus on the employee needs and the employee experience, rather than on the infrastructure functionality like privacy, security and access.
• Enterprises need to proactively update and integrate all in-house and partner solutions, especially legacy solutions, to ensure their ongoing usability, performance and security. Reactively responding to issues could waste a lot of time and money and reflect poorly on the corporate brand.
• Enterprise and government infrastructure must be enablers of the hardware and software functionality adopted by staff and citizens, and this infrastructure must be upgraded to meet the ongoing needs of these customers.
• The functionality will expand with the demands of the customers, demands of the market. Form factors such as the body or a car offer guardrails for the range of solutions created – they must fit the user/target! But the connectedness between the solutions and the functions themselves can be more adaptable and fluid. 
• Solutions may become much more complex, but users still want the solutions to be easy to use and customers expect a great immersive experience.

Below are some opportunities in this space.

• As we provide more software functionality into smaller form factors, the phone and other ubiquitous devices must provide even greater functionality – including healthcare monitoring applications, decision-making of real-world devices and equipment based on real-time reporting, and other functionality. This is particularly true with the roll-out of 5G.
• There will be an increasingly HUGE appetite for optimized hardware and software solutions which are high-performing, scalable, true-to-spec, and even self-monitoring/self-correcting. 
• We will all continue to develop hardware solutions which are flexible, small and sleek, with a shape and size that would fit the target destination. 
• Individual hardware solutions will be integrated with multiple software solutions to optimize functionality, usability, and form factor. 

The bottom line is that the hardware will get smaller, the software will get more integrated, more scalable, more versatile.

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