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against challenger brands who are moving in to seize the market . It ’ s clear that business leaders recognise the threat ; almost half ( 45 per cent ) of respondents from the Digital Transformation Index study fear their business will become obsolete within the next three to five years and 78 per cent consider digital start-ups a significant threat , either now or in the future .
These challenger brands are agile and innovative thanks to a total absence of legacy infrastructure to hold them back . In many cases , they can swiftly disrupt established business models through increased speed to market , better services , lower prices and greater convenience for customers .
A coordinated response
Businesses are responding in a fragmented manner , in some cases with departments going ‘ rogue ’ with third party and other cloud investments to bridge the gap when IT is unable to deliver . For many , this is a false economy and a non-starter , resulting in greater cost , risk and complexity in the long term . Rather , when asked about their future investment priorities to ensure success in the digital era , nearly threequarters agreed that there is a need to prioritise centralised technology strategy . Key to this is infrastructure modernisation and the development of a strong software development capability . This will be vital in allowing IT to deliver on rapid changes in the overall business strategy required to keep pace with customer needs .
A new back end for a new digital era
Fine tuning the back end infrastructure requires three crucial steps .
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Step one is to modernise the infrastructure , as quickly as possible . This will mean evolving the infrastructure to deliver the resource for any need , on-premise or in the cloud , and enabling greater mobility of applications in a ‘ software defined ’ manner . So , when you need to move that legacy application from one physical resource to another , all that ’ s needed is a few clicks in the management application , not a months-long , resource intensive development cycle . The same applies to meeting expansion needs as data growth continues to outstrip expectations .
Step two involves automating service delivery to drive efficiency . Incredibly , in an era when buying a public cloud service can happen in five minutes with a credit card and a web browser , IT resource allocation in many enterprises is accompanied by paper based approval processes that can take many weeks . These are processes that should be handled by automated software and organisational policy . You want to create a web application for testing purposes ? Fine , we ’ ll put you in the cloud scratchbox . You want to scale it to production ? No problem , policy says it can live here . It contains critical customer data ? OK , well , then it lives in the on-premise resource to allow us to comply with data protection regulations . In effect , businesses should aim to apply the core features of a public cloud experience to their existing IT environments within the data centre – but with all the governance and security their manual processes are currently enforcing handled intelligently by the infrastructure .
Finally , step three is to transform the entire operational model and structure of IT within the organisation . IT should operate
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IT should operate as a service provider , with well defined costs , service levels and transparency to the business . |
as a service provider , with well defined costs , service levels and transparency to the business . It should also act as a consultant and trusted adviser , helping the lines of business unlock further innovation and efficiency through a clear understanding of how technology could be applied to solving business problems .
Infrastructure transformation is only part of the story
Having the most agile back end infrastructure base in the world will count for nothing if you haven ’ t also undergone a change in the way you deliver applications . The emergence of DevOps teams and chief digital officers , amongst other things , is symptomatic of the wider digital transformation that needs to happen in lock-step with the IT infrastructure transformation . Similarly , security transformation is key : Governance and security processes in a world of AI and Big Data applications are very different to traditional enterprise security . Critically , the workforce needs to transform as well – to make use of these new applications to really drive the business forward .
Moving from today ’ s platforms to tomorrow ’ s technologies
Most organisations are well on the path with this transformation , having taken steps to automate some of their infrastructure , or creating a parallel infrastructure to support development teams as they try to accelerate their digital transformation . For those that have been delaying or putting off the more complex changes , there ’ s no longer the luxury of time . New start-ups join the market every day , and for enterprises to move ahead , they can ’ t be held back by their back end .
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April 2017 | 17 |