CEO Interview: Lars Bjork, QlikView

What will the software industry look like in 3, 5, even 10 years from now?

Users, particularly business users, are going to be able to make better, more informed decisions  thanks to their software.  The term "user friendly" is going to be table stakes as we'll see a shift in enterprise software, and more broadly in IT, to a very "consumerized" state where people are able to get the information they need more quickly and more efficiently.  Several trends that are emerging today are going to play a critical role in that transformation. Mobility will drive the software industry, especially enterprise software companies, to create more app-like solutions that are visual and easy to use. Cloud based software, whether public, private or hybrid will enhance users' ability to collaborate. And I think open network architectures are going to allow for a much faster pace of innovation throughout the industry that will have a carryover effect into the way companies use software to make decisions and interact with their customers.

That fast paced innovation is going to disrupt a great deal of the software categories we have today. Take what QlikTech is doing in Business Intelligence for example.  Even today people who never used (business intelligence) BI before are now able to afford and understand a solution that helps them on a daily basis. Not just once a week or once a month when reports are run.  So if we're able to redefine the functionality of the solution and redefine the user set, we can redefine the size and type of market we're competing in to serve the largest need.

And what customer demands and business trends will drive changes in software products, how they're developed, and the industry that provides them?

Software companies that take advantage of the "consumerized" environment we're likely to see, will be the disruptors that open up their markets and create new ones.  Over the past 10 years we've witnessed  several changes to enterprise IT, the greatest of which we seem to be witnessing now as our emerging workforce is part of a new generation that expects technology to be always on, always secure, and inherently social. These expectations combined with the proliferation of smart mobile devices are what's driving the consumerization of IT. Employees are expecting their IT organizations to provide the capability for all work to be done on the go, and they expect all of their enterprise tools and applications to be available on the devices they use in their personal lives.

Additionally, when you look at the information and data that is currently stored in databases and in the cloud you'll see an even greater need for transition to anytime, anywhere access and it will need to be available in a variety of forms. All of that data will be the raw materials that drives progress in the next generation. Companies will gain their competitive advantages by how well they use their data and turn it into useful information.  The software companies that win will be the ones that best adapt to this mobile information ecosystem where they either help customers access it, find it, protect it, or make it more useful and actionable.

This interview was published in SIIA's Vision from the Top, a Software Division publication released at All About the Cloud 2011.