We are on the cusp of an upheaval in software applications for businesses that will put billions of dollars of IT spending up for grabs. A new generation of “data-first” applications will give companies a distinct advantage over competitors still using the prior generation of services.

The history of business technology shows that changes in application architectures spawn transformations in technology infrastructure and vice versa. Microservices and cloud-native infrastructure are the latest example of this Digital Dialectic at work.

As the New Year approaches, the team here at Wing has highlighted some of the most important trends we think will shape the enterprise tech landscape in 2016. 

Gaurav Garg, one of Wing's co-founders, gives his thoughts on the importance of creating local innovation ecosystems that are self-reinforcing.

Enterprise messaging services are starting to turn themselves into broader-based platforms. This is creating a new set of opportunities for startups that develop applications which can be embedded in the new communication tools.

Countless initiatives to integrate technology into the physical retail environment have failed over the years. Most of these did not work because they failed to tangibly help customers do precisely what they came to a store to do--discover and experience products. That is why we are excited to announce Wing's investment in Oak Labs. Oak combines the best of the consumer web with physical retail, creating a seamless in-store experience that customers want to use.

Machine learning is behind everything from successful online recommendation engines to systems that foil credit card fraud. Now it is being used to frustrate hackers too.

Earlier this year Peter Wagner and I highlighted the opportunity to create more "authentically mobile" applications for the enterprise. Some recent news shows that businesses are starting to experiment with applications that leverage more fully the strengths of mobile platforms.

I am a former Product Manager. So is my co-founder Gaurav. Our experience as Product Managers imprinted us early on with a deep appreciation for product / market fit. We came to believe that it is the heart of strategy, the sine qua non of startup success.

Jut plays a key role in Data-First operations. It is an Operations Data Hub, where the data being generated by your infrastructure, applications and users is collected and made available for holistic analysis and visualization. If you believe my argument about operations data becoming a critical strategic asset in the new software-centric enterprise, then this is an important role indeed. The more your company lives and dies by its software, the more it will benefit from Jut.

The Snowflake team has brought focus, and a very fresh approach, to reinventing the data warehouse. It had a unique starting point: founders Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes and Marcin Zukowski had helped lead the prior generation of data warehousing developments.

Mohit Aron, Cohesity's founder, is leading a firm that will transform the way in which companies manage, store and learn from their data. Wing first invested in Cohesity in 2013 and we are proud to be part of its latest financing round.

Instart Logic tackles the challenges of application delivery in a world with exploding mobile usage and cloud applications. The company recently raised a substantial financing round, so it’s a good time for me to explain how I got involved with Instart as an investor and board member, and why Wing Venture Capital continues to invest and stay closely involved with the company.

The ascendance of mobile devices, cloud computing and big data is having a profound impact on the lives of workers. Yet many of the business applications that run on their smartphones and tablets still fail miserably to take advantage of this revolutionary shift. Even services that tout themselves as “mobile first” often fall short of delivering novel functionality that boosts productivity and profit.

“Machine intelligence” is a topic that’s gotten a lot of press recently, from CNN predicting that robots will take your job, to Elon Musk’s concern that robots may take over the world. All of this begs the question: what is machine intelligence? (Machine learning and artificial intelligence are more or less synonyms for machine intelligence, at least for the purposes of this discussion.)