How to achieve Digital Transformation with DevOps, ALM Solutions, Alpha Teams and Automation Tools

Concurrent Multi-modal Development Value Proposition: Digital Transformation with DevOps, ALM Solutions – Alpha Teams and Automation Tools

By Akshay Sharma, Technical Advisor, Kovair Software, Former Sr. Analyst, Gartner Research

What does Digital Transformation involve?

A change in thinking, processes/methods/tools with the encouragement of innovation and new business models, incorporating digitization of assets leading to newer workflows/metrics and an increased use of technology to improve the experience of your organization’s employees, customers, suppliers, partners and stakeholders…

Digital Transformation must also include all aspects of an organization’s IT infrastructure and other operational technologies that typically are disconnected and siloed. To be truly effective and provide optimal results from digital transformation, an organization’s information technology and operational technology must be connected and be fully integrated, with holistic thinking.

How do we get there?

The silos of the past and silos of future-oriented skunk-works teams need to be broken down, as retraining, and newer teams need to be cross-functional, between the legacy ALM (application lifecycle management) Process-based world to a newer Real-time Event-Driven world with Adaptive and DevOps-styles of solutions. A Culture of Collaboration should be the norm:

? Organizing Cross-Functional Teams with CIO/CTO members and CMO teams for development of Programmable Business Programs looking at all the processes, methods and tools, and looking at what can be hyper-converged, hyper-connected, automated, virtualized, and IoT-enabled,

? Leveraging next-gen Orchestration Frameworks for Services and Infrastructure using API Middleware, Agile development tools, Low or No-Code principles leveraging frameworks, virtualization solutions in the cloud, newer Software Bus middleware with adaptors to 3rd-party systems, with Real-time Diagnostics and Analytics to drive change.

As we transition, soon it will be evident that legacy communications infrastructure will become virtualized as cyberphysical infrastructure, security transitions into trust with privacy maintained, and software-defined networks become autonomous, hyperconverged networks.

Source: neXt Curve

But what about the teams? We need newer Alpha Organizations, according to neXt Curve:

“What is the Alpha Organization? It’s an organization that is Adaptable, Agile, Efficient, and Innovative.

Adaptable is the ability for an organization to adjust to new conditions.

Agile is the ability for an organization to move with speed and coordination – often including a change in direction – in response to changing conditions and emerging opportunities in the market environment.

Efficient is the ability of an organization to identify, target, pursue and realize competitive advantage and counter threats with economic efficacy.

Innovative is the ability of an organization to design new solutions.

Enter Automation and SDx-based technologies… Software Defined Everything, with Autonomous, Hyperconverged Networks !

Software-defined networking (SDN) technology is an approach in networking leveraging cloud computing concepts that facilitates agile and programmable networks, while Software-defined everything technology leverages these same software-defined concepts and applies them to the entire system: radio interfaces being programmable, data center compute and storage being elastic supporting newer network slicing concepts, and cloud-brokering concepts, while the applications platforms become more agile, virtual and user-configurable, ideally with zero-touch provisioning, preferably with AI and Closed Loop Automation.

Enter the Hybrid Cloud !

According to neXt Curve’s webinar with IBM, Hybrid Clouds will soon appear:

• Hybrid clouds will create a technology convergence platform that combines IoT data and cognitive computing as necessary bridging private on-prem enterprise clouds, to public megaplex clouds, soon with hybrid clouds in newer carriers, as providers of Edge Computing Clouds. These platforms will be open, scalable, and will support newer concepts of Cloud-Brokering whereby workloads are spun up and down as-needed, and be programmable allowing for newer agile services.

Connecting the dots with APIs, Data Lakes, Software Busses

Source: Kovair

The creation of broad IT transformation strategies needs to be coupled with a culture of organizational improvement with newer tools, API middleware, and platforms from vendors like Kovair, and others. Employing DevOps, with IT analytics, and IoT-enablement to measure and diagnose deployments quickly will help to speed change and deliver new products and services within existing business and technology processes, ideally with cybersecurity and resiliency maintained. Exploration should occur of newer Robotics Process Automation, newer hybrid clouds from on-prem to the megaplexes but also newer hybrid Edge Computing clouds to be offered by 5G carriers, to newer IoT-enabled solutions, to potentially newer business models and newer processes, such as AIOps.

The Value Proposition of Concurrent Multi-modal IT Development:

• Increased collaboration between legacy and next-gen teams becoming one team that is supportive and enables innovation
• Integrated workflow automation for ALM and DevOps solutions, for dynamic launching of solutions: App middleware, IoT analytics, Rules Escalations, etc., all in real-time
• Newer dashboards for analytics: with IoT devices, but application and network analytics as well
• Enhanced traceability of all development, test as well as tracing across applications, networks and endpoint devices, ideally with resiliency and quality of experience maintained,
• Increased productivity by leveraging automation, APIs, s/w bus connectors, and better KPIs/metrics shared across ALM/DevOps teams
• Integrated Security and Privacy controls are holistically engineered within the solutions
• Moving from silo’ed IT within boxes, servers, and appliances, to cloud-based offerings where it’s all “as-a-Service” enabling IT to become a value center,
• Moving towards Intent-based solutions leveraging predictive analytics, closed-loop automation and enabling AIOps to soon occur.

Implications for Business Leaders:

CIOs and CTOs of solutions providers embarking on Digital Transformation projects should explore IoT-based technologies along with DevOps-based solutions as they re-vector their legacy solutions to newer hybrid cloud datacenters offering newer services: IoT applications, AI-based offerings, and newer lower-latency Edge Computing applications like AIOps and Robotics Process Automation.

The New Agile, Power-Efficient Datacenter Business!

·      DevOps-based technologies will transform the way Industries manage their business- with holistic savings integrated within all datacenter types in the Cloud continuum from the Megaplex, to the hybrid Edge Computing carrier clouds, to the enterprise server clouds.

A new Agile, Hybrid Alpha organization  will occur that not only is agile, adaptable, and scalable, but has increased productivities. Ideally, this is an organization for newer innovations, as well as being more efficient in resources, but can dynamically move workloads between domains, while maintaining high levels of quality of experience, and ensuring savings through operational efficiencies, with holistic Cybersecurity maintained throughout.

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