Another seismic shift in the industry is the massive customization of software by end users, or what makes a software solution “sticky.”

The next wave of “sticky” – which has been called “insights as a service” or “cognitive computing” – will show customers both the best practices and results of their own work, as the software becomes capable of analyzing past results, giving an organization more actionable insights to make better informed decisions.

Imagine software as a highway. The focus used to be on making sure different roads connected; now it’s on the individual cars with the global positioning systems always on.  In other words, software needs to progress from showing customers information about what they’re doing to acting on that information. And the more information that software can provide to the customer about its own results, and optional routes they can take to improve results, the more it increases its value by the nature of having more data and more from which to learn.

In today’s on-demand world, where technology has become an integral part of nearly everyone’s life, it’s not surprising that the new IT customer is an employee who wants to buy the software she needs, when she needs it, and without having to go through the procurement process. Given the immense advancements in personal technology over the last decade, it also stands to reason that this customer will continue to demand more capabilities from enterprise software. With a broader selection of highly educated users, software vendors and solution providers must keep up with these changing tides.