Digital Ramblings - Part 3: How (Tech Enablers)

To recap, for latecomers to this series, we are talking about Digital Transformation and it's critical components...

We have already discussed 'what' digital transformation actually is. With so much being published about digital and transformation, I thought it was important to put the hyperbole aside and call out what being digital actually means to people. We have also discussed 'why' Enterprises are actively driving digital transformation efforts. (what is the size of the prize? Why bother?)

If you want to read my previous blog post -it is here, but if you are a super busy, mega important and time constrained individual (I dragged that out didn't I?), the conclusion that my readership and I settled upon was... dun dun duuuuuuuuun.... 'Speed & Agility'. 

After this bombshell of a conclusion (good olde British sarcasm), I took a week or two to pull some stuff together on the 'How' element and identify the major transformational levers Enterprises have at their disposal to make this kind of thing (digital) happen. There are many levers but in Part 2 of this series, I focused on the people that make up these organisations because they are after all arguably the most important asset in any company and also a rather crucial component to the success of any transformation effort undertaken. I am of course happy to argue discuss with latecomers if you want to skim through that blog too. 

The consensus from my readership was that Enterprises need to be re-organising their talent to support aspirational 'business outcome's' and 'customer experiences' as opposed to maintaining the standard and rather stodgy arrangement they currently that centres people on technology components and silos.

This blog -Part 3- will continue with the 'How' but this time I will mostly ramble on about some of the important and very necessary technology enablers (more architecture actually... but kind of the same thing). After all, it is the tech that is causing all this naughty disruption in the first place right? (Moores law and all that jazz)

Once I have covered the tech bit, I promise I will find some time to drivel on -unabated- about out the process changes that will have to happen if the aforementioned is embraced. However, we have a lot to cover, so.... stuff. 



Technology stuff

What stuff in particular should Enterprises be using to become more digital. Let's discuss the SEVEN big technology trends that are largely contributing to the speed and agility of digital business: (they are not in order of importance, because they all enable one another)

1) Hardware Virtualisation & Software Defined
2) Cloud Services
3) Microservices
4) API connectivity
5) Big Data
6) AI
7) Blockchain

(I am not going to cover them all in this blog - I will spew forth my thoughts until I think this blog is dragging on and save the rest for another post or two.. or three.. who's counting?! 

Moreover, I am not going to focus on the consumer side technologies like Mobile, Social, VR, etc, it is assumed that customers will be using these things and therefore the Enterprise needs to develop their digital services according - they are considerations and channels of engagement)


Hardware Virtualisation & Software Defined
Hardware has become very cheap and rather commoditised thanks to Moore's law. This has been the economic enabler behind the success of virtualisation technologies. Take dumb and standard hardware (lots of it, because its cheap), virtualise it and give it a function using software. It started with servers (mainframe actually...cough....cough.... LPARs) but has made its way into storage and networks too. It is entirely feasible to virtualise the majority of a data centre now.

To be clear -this is not Cloud. Virtualisation absolutely is NOT cloud. Some companies and analysts insist on calling it 'private cloud' but it is not- not really. It is On-Premise IT using virtualisation technologies to simplify and speed up the provisioning of new services and the scaling of existing ones. It's a good step forward and absolutely necessary where on-premise IT is required (security, regulation, etc) but it is NOT cloud. I will explain my bug bare on this in more detail later. 

Cloud Services
Let's be clear on what the cloud is. It is the practice of using other people's computers in other people's data centres to deliver your services. This is the minimum definition and people tend to call these types of offerings 'platform-as-a-service'.

The extreme use case of the cloud is the practice of using other people's services, running on other people's computers that run in other people's data centres. For simplicity, people tend to call this type of offering software-as-a-service. There are many other 'as-a-service' propositions but they effectively amount to the same thing in principle. In essence, if you use computers or computers running software in other people's data centres - you are using the cloud. 

The really important distinction is 'other peoples stuff'. By taking service from the cloud, you do not have to worry about any of the physical considerations such as ACTUAL computer, storage and network capacity - that's the problem of the service provider. As a consumer of cloud, you simply consume these compute commodities and software offerings as a utility and leave all the scaling, capacity and availability issues in someone else's lap. Think about it like taking electricity from the grid - simple.

Now that we are set on the definition of cloud, it is the humble opinion of this blogger that cloud also happens to be the absolute and bonafide way forward for the delivery of compute -at least- and perhaps also software at the point it becomes commoditised.

Why wouldn't you use the cloud? (this is actually a really good question and worthy of comment later, actually, it's quite simple really, so I will cover it now). There are really only two or three reasons not to use the cloud. 

1) Industry Regulations do not allow you to run your services and put your data on someone else's computers.
2) You see a competitive advantage in developing your own software (this would be the reason not to use SaaS - PaaS, on the other hand, would still be complementary to this line of thinking) 
3) Your legacy applications cannot be re-architected (re-imagined) to benefit from cloud and must continue to run as they are because of their criticality to your business (rare but this can happen)

Why you should use the cloud? (if it's obvious by now, please humour the next paragraph OR skip it)

Amazon, Microsoft, Rackspace, IBM and many other niche players are building massive data centres and filling them with more compute and storage than you could shake a stick at (incidentally, if anyone knows the original meaning of this expression, please feel free to comment below). They are absorbing the upfront sunk costs and OPEX of maintaining and scaling these platforms so you can consume their stuff as a utility. Other companies like Salesforce, Concur, Workday, etc, go a step further by absorbing the costs of developing and deploying software applications so you can consume further up the value chain and take an actual business service from them -as a utility. Cool right? You'd be surprised, some people think its a bad idea and spend millions reinventing the wheel so -for example- their employees can submit their expenses (yes, this is a mahoooooossive pain for me personally). 

Ok, I just took a breath and proofread the above, this is turning into a monstrous blog post. I will call it a day here and leave you with a preview of what I will cover in post 4:

Tech Enablers to cover:
1) Hardware Virtualisation & Software Defined DONE
2) Cloud Services DONE
3) Microservices PART 4
4) API connectivity PART 4
5) Big Data probably PART 5 (depending on how much drivel comes out of me about Microservices and APIs)
6) AI - PART 5
6) Blockchain - PART 6

Then it will be a final blog on the boring old process considerations.. with a slightly more interesting (hopefully) conclusion. 

Thanks for Reading,

Chancey

P.S. Carl & I completed the GSR in 1 hour & 40 minutes in these rather impractical Ghostbuster costumes. In the process we raised circa £2400 for the NSPCC. If you wanted to donate and are a little late to the party (I like your style)... here is the link:
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chanceyruns