The Year of the Vertical

I woke up this morning to press releases from NetSuite and Infor from the annual National Retail Federation show in New York, announcing new retail customers and investments. It is a rapidly changing industry with omni-channel options, mobile pays and beacons in stores, same day delivery and many other innovations.

Last week at the Detroit Auto Show, Ford announced an app which has elements of GM’s OnStar, Uber, Apple Pay – way more than feature/functions in their F-150s or Fusions it is about “how to make consumers’ lives easier during those 900-plus hours a year they spend in a vehicle moving between home, work, school and social events.”  Cheap gas and cheap interest rates helped make 2015 the best year ever for US car sales, but it is an industry in dynamic change with crossovers, autonomous driving, electric batteries, shared rides and many other conflicting trends. 

At the Salesforce Analyst Summit a couple of weeks ago, there was plenty of discussion of their industry extensions via partners like Veeva for pharma and Vlocity for telcos.

As CES was winding down I passed through Las Vegas and met some executives who talked about MiC2025 – China’s vision for next-gen manufacturing and shop floors, their response to Germany’s Industrie 4.0 and GE’s Industrial Internet.

As I continue my book research I am talking to executives in accounting, advertising, agriculture, banking, energy, education, healthcare, legal and many others on the impact of automation on their sectors.

And we are only in the middle of January. I am looking forward to events like Oracle Industry Connect and others which focus on technology trends in various verticals. I am also projecting several more industry announcements from software and outsourcing vendors this year.  

The Chinese will welcome the Year of the Monkey in a couple of weeks. In the enterprise apps market, I think it would be more appropriate to call it the year of the vertical.