Over the past few years, one thing has become certain: the cloud is here to stay. This nascent technology has seen rapid, multiple waves of innovation and big bets, and vendors are trying to outdo each other in convincing customers on their vision of what an IT cloud should be. The lack of a unified view extends to the other side as well: a recent survey pointed out that only 16% of customers had a well-defined cloud strategy.

However, certain broad contours are emerging. The hybrid cloud model seems to present the best balance of security, data integrity and reliability. In the absence of an established and trusted cloud broker, internal IT has to fulfill the roles of integrating several clouds that could be across public providers, as well as internal private cloud deployments.

While today, most applications on the cloud are commodity applications such as messaging, collaboration, CRM and HR applications, the momentum on adoption and usage is growing exponentially and we will gradually see core applications and multiple interfaces being deployed on the cloud. As the shift from peripheral to core applications takes place, enterprises need to deploy a scalable hybrid cloud infrastructure that will accommodate growing demands without compromising business agendas and priorities.

More than two-thirds of enterprises are today evaluating or implementing Unified Communications (UC) in some shape or form. However, this fragmented approach has also been the reason why UC has never really lived up to its game changing reputation. Many organizations possess the various components from multiple vendors. However, the lack of an integrated UC framework means that integration, usability and interoperability issues have come in the way of realizing the grand vision of uber-connectivity.

Across the enterprise, proliferation of personal computing devices such as smart phones and tablets have caused a fundamental rethink in how LoB applications need to be deployed, and UC is no exception to this. The need for control and granular access to business information necessitates that mobile devices also need to be part of the UC infrastructure. Today's competitive marketplace demands a high level of agility and attention to customer requirements. Exceeding customer and partner expectations, while at the same time optimizing on costs and resources – this is exactly where unified communications can play a pivotal role.

According to Deloitte, the traditional, silo driven IT infrastructure, built on an inside-out model is undergoing a fundamental shift. Increasing demands for flexibility and agility mean that organizations need to be able to leverage outside capabilities even more than ever. Thus the traditional IT infrastructure, based on ‘need to own’ is giving way to a ‘need to share’ solution architecture. This means that data and systems be encapsulated for outside consumption. Outside-in, and not inside-out is becoming the standard.

Platform modernization and transformation offers the greatest scope for helping an organization achieve business agility, as well as for cost reduction and efficiencies. IT platforms needs to be scalable and flexible to accommodate business continuity plans, as well as support compliance and regulatory demands, both current and future. The future lies in adopting a service based strategy to serve internal and external demands.

Today, business models are changing as fast as companies can innovate. The empowered customer is connected and informed. Gen Y employees are not content with traditional collaboration tools such as email. Starting as a technology that enabled individuals to share and connect with people important to them, social media has today found two major areas of application within the enterprise: One, it has opened new vistas in enabling businesses to engage intimately with their customers. Two, it has enabled knowledge workers in an enterprise to ideate better, collaborate in real time and speed up decision making. Social collaboration is rapidly redefining the way people and businesses communicate. Today, social media is an integral part of any organization's communication strategy, evident by the rapidly increasing trends of CxOs communicating with the public and employees through various social media forum. The focus is on thus on two fronts: internal; where organizations leverage social media such as wikis, blogs and corporate social networks to encourage and improve employee interaction. Within an organization, social computing can drive innovation and creativity. The other is external, where organizations harness the power of social computing to foster brand value and boost customer satisfaction.

A traditional area of IT complexity and angst has been managing the desktop OS and applications. Even with multiple deployment and management tools, this has always consumed a disproportionate amount of IT budget. Add to this the recent trend of BYOD, which has evoked mixed emotions within the enterprise. On one hand, it provides employees with a familiar interface, boosting productivity.

On the other, it throws several challenges such as data security, control and compliance at internal IT. The solution to these pains would be an on-demand application delivery solution that enables applications to be virtualized, centralized, managed in the datacenter and delivered as a service to users anywhere on any device. The traditional methodology of application deployment has many drawbacks, and is prone to management, security and performance issues. Today, along with desktop and application virtualization, technologies such as application accelerators, application firewalls, secure remote access, WAN optimization and performance monitoring are changing the landscape in terms of application delivery.

A recent Forrester study has recommended a two-fold approach to raise the bar for application delivery in tune with today's business demands:

• Make application delivery a strategic priority
• Designate key application delivery owners across IT, which has the simple goal of allowing any user, anywhere in the network to connect to any application with the best possible user experience and the right level of security

Powerful and omnipresent personal computing devices have not just altered the work-life balance, they have also shaken the foundations of enterprise IT, built on the premise of a standardized infrastructure with centralized control. Along with the cloud, the advent of personal devices has taken away much of internal IT’s rigorous control, and it is entirely possible to purchase and run business applications in the cloud without involving IT. It is not in the overall interests of the organization to ban such deployment, as they are frequently initiated by the most innovative and connected employees. Frequently, such adoption has improved business processes and connect with customers.

The numbers are overwhelming – globally, almost 40% of information workers use a personal application or cloud service to get their work done, according to Forrester. Thus, the right way forward would be to provide employees with the freedom to use personal devices, but within a non-restrictive framework that ensures that the organization’s information security and compliance policies are not compromised.