Business Database Trends 2016 – What's Around the Corner?

The new year has begun, and this is a good time to look forward and try to see what the day to come is bearing for us. As since the area of my interests includes business data management, naturally, I'm focusing on business database trends that will intensify or emerge in 2016.

So here is my top of digital business trends in data management field.

1. Faster migration of business database to the cloud

Hosted databases have been around for years now (take TeamDesk, Zoho, Caspio, QuickBase, etc.), but for business moving a database to the Web still is more a trend than a conventional solution. Two major obstacles that halt transition process are the security concerns and cloud costs. Therefore, only 37% of U.S. small businesses have fully adopted cloud computing, according to Forbes. On the other hand, digital commerce trends demonstrate that cloud solutions will evidently become more secure, and the technology will be getting cheaper. Due to this, the number of businesses that will move their databases online is expected to reach 78% by 2020.

2. Shifting database for business to mobile

Moving to the Web will naturally trigger discovering new ways to access and work with data over smartphones and tablets. The reason for this is that today 80% of mobile devices owners use them to surf the Internet. And the role of mobile computing is increasing exponentially. And I bet that one of the most important trends in mobile - when it comes to databases – will be creating a reliable application that will function properly even when a network connection is unavailable.

3. Merging different database standards, e.g. SQL and NoSQL

Today's business environment is getting more and more data-heavy, and this data comes in a huge variety of forms that SQL is not always able to handle. Hybrid SQL-NoSQL database solutions combine the advantage of being compatible with many SQL applications and providing the scalability of NoSQL ones. Some steps to bridging SQL and NoSQL have already been made (NuoDB, Clustrix, VoltDB, etc.), but this is still the grey technology area where the biggest breakthroughs are yet to be made.

4. Managing, analyzing business sensors data in real time and converting it into 'Clean Data.'

Soon web-connected sensors will be inside all kinds of items around you. They will provide companies with all kinds of information about their customers, employees, and operations in real time. Furthermore, developers will be paying lots of attention to improving current and creating new ways of real-time data analysis to make better use of constantly incoming data (like Informatica does). From my point of view, the most likely outcome of these efforts will be transforming Big Data into Clear Data – the sorted data sets ready to be used like the out-of-the-box product.

5. Automated decision-making

Today data and analytics are just tools for decision-makers. But this will inevitably change in foreseeable future. It already is changing. The first step here was made quite some time ago with data-driven predictions and/or forecasting under specific conditions. My guess is that automated data-driven decision-making will be the next big step in database software for business development (check'em out: SAS, FICO, Scorto).

So to make the most of your online database software, keep an eye on the latest digital business trends we've marked out. The future may be much closer than you expect :)