Why Today’s Applications Need “The Five D’s”

There’s something odd about any talk of “dimensions” today, because the number is almost never “three.” It’s four or five or six or even ten. Even the term “3-D”, while still extremely apropos for movies, feels almost charmingly quaint. The same goes for applications. There used to be only two dimensions to them—user and interface—but that was before customers started expecting way more than just information on the weather or how their stock investments are doing. Indeed, if they are going to satisfy in the year 2018 and beyond, today’s apps need “The Five D’s”:

1. Relevancy

Your applications need to be highly relevant to their users, which means being contextual to both their historical and real-time behaviors. This means customer 360—taking into account everything a user is doing and has done—all clicks, likes, accounts, subscriptions, travel plans, etc…—to form an up-to-the-minute profile able to generate meaningful real-time interactions.

2. Availability

Today’s customers have very little patience and almost zero tolerance for downtime, which means your apps needs to be available 100% of the time. No exceptions. No questions asked.

3. Responsiveness

Likewise, your apps need to be instantly responsive if they are going to keep their users’ attention. This mean real-time responsiveness.

4. Accessibility

Your apps need to be able to handle a widely distributed (geographically) user base and need to be able to scale easily so that they can remain accessible to this user base even in high-traffic times.

5. Engagement

Your apps need to keep their users constantly engaged in the moment or they will fail to maintain your user base. All of the above make for world-class, game-changing applications that create customer loyalty and build revenue. But the other side is the back end—the data platform your apps are built on. How will you be able to build these kinds of applications without ripping and replace legacy tech or breaking your bank?