In the world of technology, change happens fast. Each year, new trends emerge, old trends die and new competitors break onto the scene. The key to success? Being able to ride that wave of change and predict the areas of the industry most ripe for innovation.
Looking out on the months ahead, we asked six Colorado tech leaders to share their predictions about which trends will have the biggest impact on their industries in 2019 — and what they’re doing to stay ahead of the curve.
Beatport made a name for itself as the community for electronic music DJs, producers and fans. Its platform allows users to stream music, download songs to perform live, connect with other artists and music lovers, and stay up to date on the latest from up-and-coming and established musicians alike. Positioned at the forefront of its industry — and never afraid of radical change — Beatport is no stranger to innovation. Director of Infrastructure Sean Sullivan shed some light on the trends he’s watching this year and what his team is doing to stay sharp.
Beatport is working with strategic industry partners to define how the next generation of DJs discover and interact with music.”
What trends within your industry are you tracking in 2019, and how do they apply to your business?
In 2015, we began to see the emergence of technology that would change how amateur and professional DJs discover and play music in bedrooms, parties and clubs. In 2019, the trends are accelerating as digital download sales are on the decline and on-demand services are on the rise. As a digital download store with a focus on DJ culture, Beatport needs to adapt to an ever-evolving marketplace in an extremely competitive vertical.
How is your company moving the needle in this arena?
Beatport recently acquired locker technology enabling offline, encrypted music on demand. Building off of this technology, Beatport is working with strategic industry partners to define how the next generation of DJs discover and interact with music.
SpotX’s video advertising platform helps online publishers, media owners and advertisers buy, sell, analyze and manage their digital ads. In an industry where change is the only constant, SpotX must keep its finger on the pulse of not only the latest trends in digital advertising but also on the ways in which consumers engage with those ads. SVP of Global Marketing Kevin Hunt shared his predictions for the months — and years — to come.
SpotX has always been at the forefront of innovation in video advertising, and I think we’ve set ourselves up for some exciting growth.”
What trends within your industry are you tracking in 2019, and how do they apply to your business?
One thing is always for certain in digital media: There will be change in 2019. Above all, this year will require both media buyers and sellers to be open and flexible with regards to their video advertising strategies, including being ready to comply with new privacy laws as they come to fruition.
The most effective buyers will remain sensitive to shifts in consumer behavior such as the rise of over-the-top (OTT) viewership and the growing resistance to irrelevant or disruptive advertising, while also proactively seeking opportunities to improve targeting and personalize campaigns.
How is your company moving the needle in this arena?
We continue to see more and more opportunities in the OTT space, particularly in live content such as sporting events. Our demand facilitation team has grown significantly and now works with more agencies, DSPs and brands than ever before. These advertisers choose to work with SpotX because of our strong relationship with so many premium publishers in OTT and the expert customer service we deliver. SpotX has always been at the forefront of innovation in video advertising, and I think we’ve set ourselves up for some exciting growth — not just this year, but in the years to come.
When it comes to cybersecurity, third-party service providers are often the greatest source of risk to their customers’ networks. CyberGRX brings transparency to the selection process, helping businesses assess the security of third-party vendors — such as Salesforce, ADP or Aetna — and helping those service providers build trust and confidence in their products. We talked to VP of Marketing Liesl Geier to gain insight into the trends facing the cybersecurity industry and how CyberGRX is leading the charge.
What trends within your industry are you tracking in 2019, and how do they apply to your business?
We expect to see third-party cyber risk continue to gain attention and importance as a cyber security initiative. This will have a variety of implications for both third parties and their customers. Two trends I’m expecting to see as a result are, one, a shift to more accurate and continuous visibility into third-party risk and, two, an increased need to report on third-party risk management activity and risk to C-level teams and the board. Like marketing teams, security teams are being increasingly challenged to measure and report on their business so they can prioritize and optimize their resources and strategies around the areas that need it.
What’s cool about the CyberGRX Exchange is that it isn’t just moving the needle, it’s wiping the slate clean.”
How is your company moving the needle in this arena?
What’s cool about the CyberGRX Exchange is that it isn’t just moving the needle, it’s wiping the slate clean and replacing static and outdated processes with a dynamic and modern approach. Traditionally, organizations used manual and static spreadsheets and/or outside-in surface scans to identify third-party risk. Our Exchange provides them with a more dynamic approach and arms them with validated and structured data as well as proprietary analytics to turn that data into action.
The data is presented in a dashboard format so they can easily identify and share insights around the potential impact and likelihood of a third-party breach (which helps inform their assessment and due diligence strategy) as well as inform their executives and teams on control gaps and residual risk at the individual and ecosystem level (helping them identify and prioritize mitigation efforts).
The CyberGRX Exchange comes with a host of other community benefits — like a shared cost model and the ability to collaborate with the organizations in your ecosystem — but the dynamic data and advanced analytics are true force multipliers for resource-strapped security teams.
Kapost’s content marketing platform provides businesses with tools to help them map out (and implement) their entire content strategies, collaborate across teams and departments, and measure the success of their campaigns. VP of Engineering Chris Willmore gave us a glimpse into his team’s product roadmap for the year and how they hope to share that experience with the broader tech community.
What trends within your industry are you tracking in 2019, and how do they apply to your business?
Speed and flexibility are competitive advantages that every tech company should build into their system. The trends of containerization, micro-services and continuous delivery have been around for a few years and are only gaining steam. Together, the three support Kapost’s goal of minimizing our development friction to better compete and serve customers as they build their content operations.
Speed and flexibility are competitive advantages that every tech company should build into their system.”
How is your company moving the needle in this arena?
Kapost is currently undertaking a massive migration to Kubernetes, aiming for an architecture that efficiently supports a variety of languages (via containers) and clouds. Simultaneously, we’ll aggressively adopt CD through use of Jenkins Pipelines or GitLab CI/CD. We look forward to sharing our experience and helping others tap into these technologies through our engineering blog and speaking at local meetups and conferences.
From casual team lunches to important client meetings, ezCater brings the convenience of an on-demand food ordering app to the world of corporate catering. Companies can set their budget and ordering policies, browse thousands of catering options and user reviews, and then have meals delivered right to their offices. Director of Product Management Don Bell explained how ezCater plans to continue disrupting the corporate catering biz.
What trends within your industry are you tracking in 2019, and how do they apply to your industry?
Catering is a bright spot in the restaurant industry — a $61.5 billion opportunity according to Technomic, and one of the few parts of the industry that’s growing. As the world’s largest online marketplace for business catering, we work with over 60,000 catering partners across the U.S.
Catering is a bright spot in the restaurant industry — a $61.5 billion opportunity... and one of the few parts of the industry that’s growing.”
How is your company moving the needle in this arena?
Historically, there haven’t been many technology solutions out there for restaurant operators to manage the catering function of their businesses. We’re offering and building the right tools for them to grow their businesses and capture their shares of the growing catering market.
ezManage is a complete and API-first catering management platform that helps restaurant operators grow and better profit from their catering business.
ezOrdering enables restaurants to take online catering orders on their own website. While many restaurants already enable consumers to place take-out and delivery orders online, most still take catering orders over the phone.
ezDispatch solves some of the biggest logistical challenges for our partners by providing reliable, professional on-demand delivery for catering orders.
Competitive endurance racing isn’t often considered a particularly techy industry, but with the proliferation of devices like fitness trackers and heart rate monitors, athletes now have access to more data (and technology) than ever before. Athlinks helps athletes gather and understand that data, with a robust database of race information and a community of like-minded athletes with which users can share and celebrate their accomplishments. Given the rapid change in racing technology, VP of Product and Engineering Troy Busot explained what his team will be focused on in 2019.
What trends within your industry are you tracking in 2019, and how do they apply to your business? How is your company moving the needle in this arena?
The two main themes that we at Athlinks are driving in 2019 are openness and fidelity.
Athlinks gathers race data on millions of athletes each year as well as builds the Chronotrack timing hardware and software to help those event participants cross the start and finish lines every day. Being open with our data starts with embracing data privacy and transparency, which helps to ensure that we keep our users in the loop about how our products work to enhance their experiences on race day. Bringing industry insights to light — all while protecting our users’ privacy — is central to our core values. Also, to the extent that it doesn’t diminish our competitive advantages, we are always looking to take an open approach to sharing our technologies with the community at large to help others learn from our experiences and expertise.
We are always looking to take an open approach to sharing our technologies with the community.”
Fidelity refers to the increase in data that is available on race day. With the proliferation of GPS, heartrate, accelerometer and other bits of participant data that is now available, we are building Athlinks to be the perfect vehicle to gather, store, analyze and make sense of that rich information around your athletic achievements. On the Chronotrack side, we are working on several products that will help our customers gather and manage several times the amount of on-course data than they are today as well as share it across other platforms — like training, medical or other complimentary applications — where it can add value to the event and athlete experience.
