Sencha CEO Art Landro Provides His 2016 Predictions

We recently visited with Sencha CEO Art Landro as part of our series of articles on 2016 industry predictions. Sencha is a provider of products and services that provide a modular platform for managing the lifecycle of web applications.

Prior to serving as CEP for Sencha, Landro was the CEO of Cordys (acquired by OpenText in 2013) and President of MontaVista Software. He also has led sales and services organizations in the Asia Pacific/Japan territory with Documentum, Cadence, and General DataComm, living in the region for over 12 years. He served 5 years of active duty in the US Air Force and 22 years in the Air Force Reserves, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel.

ADM: Tablet sales may be dropping as a whole, but in the enterprise they seem to be growing stronger than ever, why is that? Will it continue in 2016?

Landro: Productive enterprise mobilization is contingent on distributed and remote workers being able to perform complex operations on smaller screens. In the next year, we’ll see the continued growth of tablet devices, enabling enterprises to deploy cross-platform mobile solutions that help mobile workers transition back and forth between a desktop environment and a mobile device. 

They will  expect to use the same applications with the same power, look and feel, to perform their tasks and manage and visualize massive amounts of data no matter what the screen size.

ADM: What industries are poised to adopt web application technology in 2016?

Landro: In our conversations with enterprise customers, we consistently hear that they’re using our web application platform to help them deliver on their application requirements in the face of fragmented mobile devices, form factors, platforms and operating systems. 

Among our customers, we’re seeing increased web-based mobilization in industries with workers such as emergency responders, retail sales staff, service technicians, factory managers, and energy/utility engineers.

ADM: The application development environment is becoming more complex and companies are under tighter deadlines. To meet these demands, what can companies do to provide their development teams with the proper tools and resources they need to meet productivity goals?

Landro: Research in 2015 showed that the application environment is becoming more complex, with tighter timelines. Yet companies are not meeting that higher level of sophistication with increased investments in their development teams.

In 2016, therefore, productivity goals will force developer and IT teams to standardize on a single platform to streamline and evolve the development of complex business applications. This requires taking an end-to-end approach to the design, development, deployment and management of these applications for multiple devices, platforms and browsers. 

ADM: As application technologies and demands change, how can developers and IT teams better work together in 2016?

Landro: Enterprise developers have a great deal of influence in determining the back-end and front-end technologies that support the applications they are developing. But often, application development processes are managed as individual “code-and-go” software projects - putting together the framework and building the application at the same time.

In 2016, to be able to meet productivity enhancements, developers and IT teams will have to work together and treat application development as a software product rather than a siloed software project, deploying a more long-term and holistic approach to the process. 

ADM: How will the continued explosion of the Internet of Things impact enterprises ability to harness the growing amount of data, even on mobile devices?  

Landro: In 2016, the continued explosion of connected sensors, wearables and devices will force enterprises to find powerful yet easy solutions that enable users to visualize large sets of complex data on mobile devices so they can derive critical insight. 

Lines of Business will need to collaborate closely with their application development teams to develop and push applications to a growing number of users and devices on different platforms with different screen sizes. 

ADM: What other IoT-related challenges do you anticipate in the realm of mobile applications?

Landro: With IoT, there will be a growing requirement among users to organize and visualize all incoming data from connected devices with “multiple nested dashboards,” which will allow rapid decision-making for everything from real-time actions in tactical situations to strategic analysis and reporting to ensure accurate insight into competitiveness and viability. 

ADM: Any other thoughts that you’d like to share regarding the application development industry in 2016? 

Landro: In 2015, we celebrated the one year anniversary of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) declaring the HTML5 standard complete. It was a significant milestone in the history of the Internet and enterprise application development. Millions of developers and users have already standardized on HTML5 for the development of their applications as it is meets the demands for a seamless and superior user experience across all devices and screens. As enterprises continue to move toward a mobile-first strategy, HTML5 solutions are becoming the cross-platform standard, and the W3C declaration clearly validates that trend.