digital transformation - expectations
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Digital Transformation – Expectations from IT
Today, we live most of our lives in the digital world.
Our universe, seems to revolve around our mobility
devices and knowingly or unknowingly, we have
come to expect much more from technology in all
our interactions. No matter where we are, our lives
as responsible family members, employees, business
partners, clients, investors or even as ordinary
citizens depend a great deal on being connected.
The lines separating our personal and professional
lives are disappearing and so are our expectations
from the applications we use at home and at work.
With all this exposure to the digital world, we now
expect a much richer experience from the
applications / systems we interact with at work and
at home. Very simply, we expect to be always
connected and have access to applications that have
an iPad like user interface, a Google like response
and an Amazon like predictive intelligence. This
creates an enormous demand on extant Enterprise,
Commerce and Government IT systems that were
not designed to cater to these expectations. They
were largely designed to work with just a few,
structured, internal data sources and processes
having simple user interfaces, using well defined,
mainly static data structures.
A practical example of how this would appear in real
life would be to look at a salesperson, new to an
account preparing for her first meeting with the
client. In addition to looking up the customer
database for historical information pertaining to
contracts, sales and customer service; she would
also research the client’s contact/s on social media
platforms like Facebook and Linkedin and also news
and other public sources of information.
To support the above as a standard process, we
require seamless integration of the organization’s
data with social media and other public sources of
information, in short Big Data. It must be noted
however, that data available within the
organizations firewall is mostly structured, whereas,
data beyond the firewall is mostly unstructured. In
order to bring about this level of integration, the
organization would need to think about its
information architecture, security framework and
network infrastructure because working seamlessly
with heaps of rapidly changing, rich data comprising
text, voice, image and video within and mainly
outside the enterprise (firewall) is the new normal.
Influenced by Facebook, Whatsapp, Angry Birds and
other popular apps, we have now come to expect a
similar user experience from all applications. We call
this the gamification of the user interface which fits
in with the new social paradigm.
Delivering such applications calls for a very diverse
skill set. At the very least, we are talking of people
with imagination and the ability to deliver that
imagined paradigm as a workable system. We need
to get accustomed to working with a new set of
professionals, UX (user experience) designers, who
are trained to make applications simple and
engaging but have a very different working style and
ethic.
In the context of a digital world that is always-on and
working; 24*7 mission critical takes on a new
meaning. Robustness and ‘never fail’ is assumed, it is
not an option. This requires a very different kind of
architecture, something that is high performance,
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Digital Transformation – Expectations from IT
yet robust and easy to change/maintain with near
zero/minimal down time (maintenance included). In
this environment, we need agility to deliver changes
in hours not days and definitely not weeks. Further,
in terms of response times, most transactional
systems are designed for a 1 ~ 3 second response.
This is just not good enough in an always connected,
high data velocity world. The expectation therefore
is that the infrastructure is resilient, high
performance and adaptable. The ability to provision
infrastructure, be it bandwidth, storage or compute,
on-demand, makes the cloud an attractive
proposition when planning digital initiatives.
As we embark on our Digital Transformation journey,
expect that extant IT systems will at some time
become too difficult or too expensive to run. This is
the natural outcome of the process of technological
advancement. While there is a large segment of the
industry devoted to keeping obsolete systems
running, this is sub-optimal. Over the years, legacy
systems lose their agility and at some point in time,
system agility or the lack of it will determine what
the business can do and how fast and how well it
responds to its customers.
There are two aspects of Technology obsolescence
that one must prepare for, Platform and Application
obsolescence. Both are equally harmful to business.
While platform obsolescence cannot be prevented
on account of the improvements in Technology and
the vendors’ sunset programs, its impact can be
reduced by looking for early warnings. One way of
doing this is to maintain a deep relationship with the
vendors, down to visiting their labs and interacting
with their engineering staff. Another way is to
evaluate the vendor’s response to application
modernization initiatives.
Application obsolescence can be the outcome of
Platform obsolescence but it can also be the result of
an organization outgrowing their applications over a
period of time. This becomes all the more critical
when planning a high impact transition like Digital
Transformation which has a direct bearing on
business processes and calls for deep integration and
support for new data sources and data types. That
being said, migrating from one application to
another is a leap of faith. But, we still have to do it
since the risks of not migrating are even greater.
Finally, Digital Transformation across the
organization is greatly enhanced by enabling a
single, integrated view of the enterprise. Enterprises
have all too often looked at Technology as a number
of ‘fit for purpose solutions‘, rather than Enterprise
wide strategic assets that need to work seamlessly
with each other. For Digital Transformation to
permeate right through an organization it calls for a
fully integrated, single view of the Enterprise both
internally and externally. Therefore, in preparing to
embark on the Digital Transformation journey, it
would help to take stock and understand the future
state of the Enterprise from the following four
perspectives: business, application, data or
information and infrastructure and ensure they are
orchestrated to deliver the symphony.
To summarize, in our experience, when preparing to
embark on the Digital Transformation journey, it is
important that we are well prepared to meet both
implicit and explicit expectations viz.
• 24*7 availability, split second response and a
much richer user experience
• Agility to respond superfast to rapidly evolving
business models and changes that impact the
business environment
• Capability to integrate enterprise data with
social media and other public sources of
information, in short leverage Big Data
• In meeting the above expectations, Extant IT
systems will at some time become too difficult
or too expensive to run so plan for Platform and
Application obsolescence
• Finally, Digital Transformation across the
enterprise is greatly enhanced by enabling a
single, integrated view of the enterprise calling
for careful attention to architecture
No matter where we are on the Digital
Transformation journey, awareness and preparation
can go a long way in satisfying our users and
effectively managing the time and costs associated
with its implementation.
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