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"We\u2019ve all seen the numbers.\u00A0Mobile devices, operating systems, attention, and apps are exploding in a way that is unlike anything the computing world has ever seen.\u00A0And with only one in seven phones a smartphone, there is still massive upside.\r\n\r\nIn the consumer world, these trends are already wreaking havoc, with Facebook in the middle of the storm. \u00A0Mobile-only Instagram may have been on pace to sprint right past Facebook in photo sharing, before Facebook took them out. \u00A0Facebook\u2019s lagging stock price is seen by many as a direct reflection of haziness around how it will make money as its usage shifts to mobile.\r\n\r\nNot content to sit back as the world changes, Facebook seems to be gamely trying to chop up its monolithic web app into lightweight, mobile first ones (Camera+, Messenger).\r\n\r\nBut what does the meteoric rise of mobile mean for the enterprise world? \u00A0I think it can be summarized in one word:\u00A0Deconstruction.\r\n\r\nSo here is the argument.\r\n\r\nEnterprise systems have evolved over the course of decades to be powerful, feature rich systems, optimized for desktop.\u00A0Take Salesforce, for example, a relative new kid on the block in the enterprise world. \u00A0Salesforce\u2019s Sales Cloud documentation boasts 57 top line features, that no doubt house hundreds more sub features.\u00A0And if cloud deployed Salesforce appears complex, one can only imagine the complexity of some of the older enterprise systems that lurk behind the firewall in ERP, CRM, and HRMS.\r\n\r\nIn a desktop-first world, this sort of feature set show-of-force makes perfect sense. It\u2019s a moat against would be competitors (how can any startup match Salesforce feature for feature?), and a nod to the traditional, checkbox based approach to purchasing decisions.\r\nDesktop second\r\nMobile is quite a different beast, however.\u00A0With less real estate and often less bandwidth to work with, mobile tends not to reward feature complexity.\r\n\r\nThis drive towards simplicity gets exacerbated when the cloud enabled self-serve distribution of enterprise software gets thrown into the mix. \u00A0Suddenly, software can be written for, and distributed directly to, small enterprise teams with very specific workflows, without requiring a sales call.\r\n\r\nTogether, the rising tides of mobile and cloud imply that the pendulum of enterprise demand will swing dramatically in favor of simple applications as opposed to complex ones.\r\n\r\nSo is it possible that the hundreds of features that enterprise incumbents have spent decades building and refining have become less of moat, and more of a millstone as the world goes mobile and cloud?\u00A0Perhaps. But like Facebook on the consumer side, don\u2019t expect the enterprise software incumbents to go down without a fight.\r\n\r\nA peek in the app store will show you that Salesforce is already dabbling in deconstruction - check out \u201CLogger,\u201D for instance, an app that exists solely to help salespeople update opportunity records from their phone, with none of the other Salesforce bells and whistles including.\r\n\r\nIn looking at the numbers, it\u2019s hard to argue against the fact that the world is going mobile first, with huge ramifications for software design and development. \u00A0It\u2019s also difficult to debate that existing, feature rich enterprise software will struggle in this mobile-first world.\r\n\r\nAnd if the consumer world is any guide, the enterprise incumbents will soon be in a Facebook style frenzy to reinvent themselves.\r\nThe deconstruction cometh\r\nIt appears that we are on the verge of a massive deconstruction of enterprise software. That systems that were once defined (and valued) by their features and complexity, will soon need to become the opposite - suites of lightweight, mobile first apps that work together to accomplish the task at hand. Put more explicitly, this line of thinking says that the next great CRM application, for example, won\u2019t be a single app at all, but a suite of mobile first apps that carve up and atomize the workflow into mobile optimized tasks.\r\n\r\nSo perhaps the only question that remains is this:\u00A0Who will be the Deconstructors?\u00A0The incumbents as they react to the twin waves of mobile and cloud, or the startups who were architected for the new realities to begin with?\r\n\r\nImage credit: Photodisc / Thinkstock"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/08/the-coming-deconstruction-of-enterprise-software/>