Data-driven modular and digital businesses
According to ASG Technologies’ SVP and APAC GM, one trend that will continue to benefit businesses is the hybrid cloud approach. he said, “There was a huge growth of cloud adoption last year, mainly because of the need for remote work. However, not every organisation needs to – or should – move entirely to the cloud.” Praveen talks to Enterprise IT News about what he means.
EITN: Can you share about the trends that businesses should follow in 2021?
Praveen: One trend that will continue to benefit businesses is the hybrid cloud approach. There was a huge growth of cloud adoption last year, mainly because of the need for remote work. However, not every organisation needs to – or should – move entirely to the cloud. Firms still have mission-critical processes and sensitive information they may choose to manage on-premises while cloud solutions continue to mature. This drives many enterprises to adopt a hybrid approach that leverages the best of all worlds – including on-premises infrastructure, private cloud services and public cloud. Organisations that deploy a hybrid model also have a lower total cost of ownership than their all-cloud counterparts – and any savings are valuable in a resilience-oriented world.
Embracing composability is another trend that businesses should learn to adapt to this year. Some companies had a head start on composability in 2021, taking remote work as a prominent example. Applying the concept of composability across the entire organisation isn’t a simple feat, but companies can start by making business modular and digital, with emphasis on the latter. Part of adaptability is enabling leaders to quickly make data-driven decisions. Providing access to data, as well as data democratisation, makes sure data gets into the hands of leaders when they need it.
CIOs and IT leaders will continue to identify that DevOps will help reshape culture, processes and technology to support a responsive business. Mainframe can’t be an afterthought in DevOps and digital transformation journey. DevOps can and should be applied to the mainframe as a critical pillar for resilience.
Another trend that should persist is the evolving role of CIOs who now have the goal of ensuring alignment of IT with business needs and demands. That alignment demand still remains, but achieving it will now push CIOs to both evangelize and coach the organisation through change. Employees need to understand what’s changing and why, and more importantly they need to understand “what’s in it for them.” CIOs that can arm the organisation to answer those questions for their employees will accelerate their firm’s path to become a responsive business.
EITN: What are composable business models? Please give examples of this.
Praveen: The pandemic highlighted vulnerabilities in business models that for years focused on efficiency. Organisations that were once efficient suddenly became fragile when they needed to be flexible. Businesses that were smart pivoted to a more modular setup, creating a composable business. Organisations prepared for one type of future, but now must plan for multiple futures.
Gartner analysts said that composable business means architecting for resilience and accepting that disruptive change is the norm. It supports a business that exploits the disruptions digital technology brings by making things modular – mixing and matching business functions to orchestrate the proper outcomes. It supports a business that senses – or discovers – when change needs to happen; and then uses autonomous business units to respond creatively.
The Gartner report cited for example, a Chinese appliance manufacturer pivoted from making dishwashers and wine coolers to distributing critical medical equipment during the pandemic. The company flexed beyond its core competencies, listened to what customers needed at the time and used its platform to move from an idea to a product launch.
EITN: What is the role of DevOps to enable composable business models?
Praveen: DevOps adoption has been on the rise for several years, but it’s still far from reaching its full potential. The reputation of DevOps has been closely tied to digital native companies or hot startups – many of which are not investing in the mainframe – but that sells the DevOps approach short. DevOps can and should be applied to the mainframe as a critical pillar for resilience, which is an important pillar of composable business models.
The mainframe’s role in supporting mission-critical business applications in recent years has only grown for firms in financial services, insurance, and public sectors. Ignore those mission-critical business applications and you put the organisation at increased risk of failing to respond to the next big change.
EITN: Would something like composable business models require participation from business users as well? And also decision makers of strategy? How do you involve them in the process, if at all?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, most CIOs leveraged their organisations’ existing digital investments, and some CIOs accelerated their digital strategies by investing in some of the three composable building blocks, according to Gartner. Hence, the strategic decision to use composable business model is mainly within the scope of CIOs and IT leaders.
The mainframe’s role in supporting mission-critical business applications in recent years has only grown for firms in financial services, insurance, and public sectors. Ignore those mission-critical business applications and you put the organisation at increased risk of failing to respond to the next big change.
EITN: How does the CIO drive the composable business model during these uncertain times?
Praveen: To ensure their organisations were resilient, many CIOs also applied at least one of the four critical principles of composability, gaining more speed through discovery, greater agility through modularity, better leadership through orchestration, and resilience through autonomy.