Tag: application development

Sell Digital Services, Not Apps Rationalization | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

April 1, 2015

After coming back from Nasscom and discussing the inflection change coming to the services industry, I’ve observed a lot of service providers preparing for the shift – especially the apps providers. But I see them making a mistake: putting too much emphasis on apps rationalization and rearchitecting.

It’s not that apps rationalization and rearchitecting isn’t happening. But providers are justifying it as a necessary step for digital readiness, advising clients that they need to do this if they are looking into a digital agenda. I know of a few situations where it was necessary, but I believe those instances will be the exception rather than the rule.

Here’s the issue: If you go to market and emphasize apps rationalization and rearchitecting, you’ll likely end up in – at best – an interesting conversation without sufficient sales coming out of it, for the following reasons.

  • First, for the most part, you don’t have to rearchitect the client’s legacy systems to run a digital agenda, at least not with where the digital agenda currently is. You have to interface the apps, too. So you end up making unsubstantiated, incredible claims.
  • Second, in a world where business stakeholders have greater influence, they don’t want to spend their money and time on rearchitecting old functionality; they want new functionality. They are impatient to get to the benefits of changing their customer experience, and they are far less willing to listen to proposals that involve enduring long timeframes. They expect that their digital revolution will happen quickly, but rearchitecture is a long, three- to five-year journey.
  • Third, rearchitecting doesn’t fit in with the CIO’s agenda; CIOs are trying to rebuild their relevance to their business. It also doesn’t play to the business stakeholders’ agenda.

It’s just not what organizations are buying right now, and it will confuse and slow down your sales process. So my advice is to be very careful about pushing apps rationalization and rearchitecting linked to a digital agenda. I’m not saying that customers won’t ask for it, but it’s likely that they’re really asking for just a connection into digital.

A better story might be:“Let’s drive your digital agenda and connect that back to the apps.”

I think a lot of providers are not resonating with their clients and not getting the kind of growth because they are confusing clients on this issue of apps rationalization and rearchitecting. This may change. But this is my belief about where the market is right now. We’ll keep our eye on it.

Old Wine in Old Wineskins | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

March 23, 2015

A famous teaching of Jesus explains that it’s a mistake to pour new wine into old wineskins because it will burst the skins and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. New wine belongs in new wineskins. I think we’re seeing this principle playing out in technology – where the consequences are profound.

New wine expands and grows fast; so it requires a supple, pliant container to allow for that expansion. Old wine is stable and mature; it does better in a stable, consistent environment.

For the most part, now that the cloud experiment is over, we see that new technologies and functionalities have many of the properties of new wine. They are effervescent, change continually, move quickly and often rely on heavy iteration. They constantly expand and change. They are best suited for new architectures such as cloud infrastructure and SaaS services. New technologies also have new requirements; thus, they require new structures, new and more flexible governance vehicles to allow them to capture their full value.

Legacy applications, the systems of records in which enterprises have invested hundreds of millions of dollars, are mature and were designed for their traditional environments, which tightly govern change. They are in data centers that have the requisite management support and requisite talent pools.

The services industry is starting to recognize the profound truth of the new and old wineskins: At this point in time, legacy applications are best left in their old, original containers where they can continue to operate in a mature fashion. Old applications or systems of record need to remain in their existing frameworks or architectures. They should be changed only slowly. Furthermore, new functionalities and technologies need to go into new wineskins, or architectures, that allow for and encourage agility and other attributes that support evolving change.

Photo credit: Flickr

Enterprise Technology 2015: Heavier Apps, More PaaS, Troubled Security… and more | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

January 6, 2015

As enterprises freshen their technology mandate for 2015, they stand at the cusp of a multi-dimensional interplay of agility, flexibility, and rising security considerations. Beyond the usual SMAC stack, enterprises are also grappling with challenges to the status quo in terms of faster application development, automated IT operations, the Internet of Things, and process fragmentation.

Following are five technology trends that rose to the top of our list for the important role they will play in enterprise technology in 2015.

    1. Mobile Apps – Will Need a RethinkThe IBM-Apple partnership to tackle enterprise mobility is a significant development that validates our earlier hypothesis. However, the enterprise apps now require a rethink. These apps were conceived to be “light weight” and easy to use, focused on a specific range of capabilities. But, due to increased adoption and constant demand for additional functionality, enterprises are going against this fundamental tenet by coding in multiple features that are making mobile apps heavy and difficult to use. Yet, this same “overhead bulk” has become compulsory to provide features such as analytics across apps usage, offline access, and cloud collaboration that help enterprises perform meaningful tasks. In 2015, enterprises will need to walk a fine line between honoring the basic principles of mobile apps and the persistent demand for increased functionality.
    2. PaaS – The Needle Will Move FurtherWhile Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) has been touted as the “next wave” since its inception, it never fulfilled its purported potential of adding meaningful value. However, enterprise technology may see that change in 2015 given the push from leading vendors such as Microsoft (Azure), IBM (Bluemix), Red Hat (OpenShift), Salesforce (Salesforce1), and AWS (Elastic Beanstalk). The PaaS business case will be enhanced by IaaS providers offering “PaaS-like” features (which is already happening), as well as PaaS platforms getting integrated with IaaS (e.g., the recent partnership between Apprenda and Piston Cloud). Although we do not believe PaaS will become the face of the cloud, we indeed expect 2015 to push its adoption within enterprises.
    3. Cyber Security and Open Source – Conundrum Won’t be SolvedThe Sony hacking scandal reiterated the importance of enterprise security – which is often taken lightly as compared to most cool next-gen initiatives – and has turned cyber security into a top priority for 2015. However, with the proliferation of Open Source Software (OSS) in enterprises, this “insecure” perception will surge. Enterprises are aggressively looking toward OSS with a host of next-generation technology areas such as cloud (OpenStack), Big Data (Hadoop), mobility, IT operations automation (Chef, Puppet), and content management (Drupal, Joomla!). With marquee B2C corporations such as Netflix, Samsung, and Facebook already having undertaken major, well-publicized OSS initiatives, other traditional enterprises will be pushed hard, despite a concern for security. Google teaming up with Samsung to include Knox (additional enterprise security features) to make Android more appealing for the enterprise is a step in answering this conundrum. However, it won’t be solved in 2015.
    4. Battle for Container Supremacy – Docker Will be ChallengedApplication development is getting a relook within enterprises with increased interest in container technology. Docker, the poster child for containers, whose open platform helps developers to build, ship, and run distributed applications, was rocketed in 2014 with competition from CoreOS. While Docker container technology is now supported by most platforms such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and VMware, its shortcomings are becoming visible. Developers believe Docker “replaces” virtualization but provides limited platform-type support, and its containers are becoming resource intensive. Moreover, given Docker’s early foray into container management, it will be pitted against the might of Google Kubernet and AWS, as well as nimble players such as Giant Swarm. This may dilute Docker’s focus on developing next-generation container technology, leaving an ample field for competitors to exploit.
    5. Analytics – Focus Will be on Bread and ButterWith millions of dollars invested in data analytics initiatives, 2015 will make enterprises reassess the opportunity cost and value of data. While tools such as Hadoop and NoSQL have greatly reduced the entry barriers to analytics, they have witnessed middling adoption. Enterprises still have a long way to go to embed analytics in their existing processes. Therefore, despite the Internet of Things and wearable devices taking off and generating more machine data for organizations to tap into, these new initiatives will not be an immediate priority for 2015. In 2015, enterprises will get their analytics act together to focus on existing processes, consolidation, rationalization, and targeted spending, with data management, governance, and security taking priority.

Danish physicist and Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr once commented that, “prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” So, please join us out on the limb. What are your predictions for 2015 enterprise technology?

Digital Enterprise Iceberg | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

July 9, 2014

We all understand the power of digital — it enables us to change the way we interact with our customers, employees, vendors and governments. Getting interactions right with those stakeholder groups gives us powerful strategic advantages. However, the digital world is like an iceberg, and we tend to see only the tip. Below the water is a mass of ice that can sink digital outcomes just as it sunk the Titanic.

Companies that can change their stakeholder conversations in a meaningful way can change the game, changing the competitive landscape almost overnight, reaping enormous wealth. Wal-Mart and Interstate Battery achieved this outcome when they changed their supply chains. And Amazon, Google and H&R Block completely changed the game in their markets.

So what’s the problem? 

The business stakeholders see the tip of the iceberg. But the CIOs recognize that 90 percent of the expenses are below the surface and initially can’t be seen.

Digital iceberg

What we’re finding at Everest Group is that when companies switch to the digital world — such as creating a mobile app as a new way of communicating with Millennials about insurance offerings — there are huge pull-through implications on the rest of the organization.

For example, the company’s vendor systems may not be set up to interface to the new mobile app. Sure, the digital product enables the company to be able to spot new customers as they emerge. But the company needs to change its organizational systems to move into this instantaneous world so that the company can react quickly enough to take advantage of these opportunities or operate in a way that is digitally friendly in this new world.

We’ve all been through the experiences of the impact of the portion of iceberg under the water … such as the half promise when we’ve visited a website or used a mobile app to find we can only go part of the way. We get frustrated when the promise isn’t fulfilled.

As the figure above illustrates, many companies find a huge body of work that is not obvious when they start down the digital path. Although it looks like the cost and time required for launching a mobile app is small, the cost of getting to a great customer experience is high because it often requires huge amounts of infrastructure, application changes and organizational change to live in the new world.

In addition to the cost and time, there are other business risks in the iceberg portion below the water. And aligning the organization so it can operate at digital time requires significant effort and change management tactics. We tend to operate from committees. But in the digital world, that takes too long; it must be instantaneous.

Finally, providers need to venture into this new digital world while they still maintain the old world, thus increasing their investments in services capabilities. There are significant costs involved in dealing with the risks in the part of the iceberg hidden under the water.

Rethinking Outsourced Application Development and Testing | Gaining Altitude in the Cloud

February 5, 2014

The cloud revolution is breaking down walls surrounding existing outsourcing arrangements. In fact, the business case for some outsourced workloads crumbles in light of opportunities in the cloud. In a traditional data center or IT outsourced infrastructure model, you pay for the capacity 24/7; but in a cloud environment, you pay only for what you use.

By moving workloads to a cloud environment, we estimate that an organization would end up paying approximately 25-50 percent of the cost for the current 24/7 model.

Those economics are stunning.

Our analysis suggests that about 50 percent of current outsourced workloads have the capability to move to the cloud easily. That doesn’t mean that they will be moved. But they are intermittent workloads, so they can be turned off and on and thus easily moved to a variable pricing model such as the cloud. They also don’t have the same security and compliance cloud constraints as production workloads.

That doesn’t mean they will be moved. It just means they have the capability to be moved without significant disruption or a large investment to replatform them.

The diagram below shows the workloads that we think will migrate to the cloud.

Enterprise cloud migration is coming in waves

We believe the first to head for the cloud environment will be the application development and testing environments as this work is intermittent and ideal for the pay-per-use model. Considering that application development and testing comprise 20-25 percent of most outsourced IT infrastructure workloads, we believe the compelling underlying economics of the cloud model will drive these workloads out of their current environments quite quickly.

An enterprise with an IT infrastructure outsourcing contract very likely will want to migrate some workloads out of that environment into a next-generation model such as the cloud. It just makes sense to capture the savings. And in most outsourcing contracts, the customer has the freedom to reduce the outsourced workload by 30 percent before incurring penalties.

We see this as a big opportunity.

It’s also a potential threat.

Is MAM MAD? The Confusing World of Mobile Apps | Gaining Altitude in the Cloud

December 12, 2013

Just as today’s enterprises are becoming accustomed to Mobile Application Development (MAD) and Mobile Device Management (MDM)…bam! They are realizing there is one more critical part of the story: Mobile Application Management (MAM). Unfortunately, while most organizations have established IT security and management policies to support mobile devices via a MDM solution, they’ve started to believe they don’t need to manage mobile apps, erroneously thinking that securing the devices is sufficient.

It seems the ease of consuming consumer-oriented mobile apps from public stores, e.g., Apple iOS, Blackberry World, Google Play, Windows Store, etc.,  has made buyers believe it will be just as easy within enterprises. But this is far from the truth. Organizations must have a mobile application development, distribution, maintenance, and support program to effectively cater to the business user’s requirements for mobile apps.

A MAM strategy goes way beyond securing data on mobile devices and deploying an access policy. MAM is about adopting a comprehensive lifecycle management for mobile apps (developing, distributing, maintaining, and retiring).

There are five foundational dimensions of an effective MAM strategy:

 

With enterprise mobility expanding its horizons and becoming pervasive, organizations can no longer avoid managing their mobile app portfolio. Yet, it is becoming increasingly common to see “mobile app sprawl” where enterprises have multiple mobile apps, but no mobile app strategy. So, how should they approach it? Major providers of MDM solutions such as AirWatch, Apperian, Good Technology, IBM, SAP, and Symantec also support mobile application management. All the mobile application development platform providers, such as Antenna, Appcelerator, Dojo, Kony, IBM, Microstrategy, Netbiscuits, and SAP, do as well. Therefore, enterprise buyers will typically deploy one of these solutions, assuming it is the only required foundation of their “mobile apps” strategy. This is where they confuse device management and application development with comprehensive application lifecycle management.

To add to the confusion and angst in a mobile apps environment, organizations face substantial challenges with development and distribution of mobile apps, and technology providers’ aggressive marketing and high decibel sales efforts continue unabated. For example, despite earlier investments in BYOD initiatives, per the assumption that MDM solutions would help them manage these, some buyers are now having second thoughts. Moving to rework their BYOD strategy, these buyers have become further indecisive and apprehensive about investing in MAD and MAM platforms. Moreover, there is a growing debate around whether buyers really need MDM, or whether MAM will suffice.

Given so many complexities and the rapidly changing environment, buyers need to closely watch the mobility space to create a coherent mobile strategy. None of them want mobility to end up in the same siloed and fragmented state as did traditional technologies adopted within their organizations.

If you are implementing a mobile application development and management strategy, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] to share your experiences, good or bad.

Video: PEAK Matrix Assessment of Enterprise Cloud Service Providers | Gaining Altitude in the Cloud

November 12, 2013

Everest Group Performance | Experience | Ability | Knowledge (PEAK) Matrix™ provides a detailed assessment on the service provider landscape in a given market. In this video, Practice Director Chirajeet Sengupta outlines the positioning of cloud application and infrastructure service providers on the PEAK Matrix.

Download the preview of the report referenced in this video
Learn more about PEAK Matrix
Learn more about Cloud Vista™ research

KISS Your Mobile Apps | Gaining Altitude in the Cloud

October 21, 2013

“We want to create comprehensive mobile apps that mirror the functionality of traditional applications.” Every time I hear an organization say that, I think about a mobile application or strategy that is fast forwarding toward a grand failure.

Why? There is a simple answer. No one wants, or can actually use, a mobile app that is like that. Traditional applications have so many features and complexities that, if “mobilized,” will significantly degrade the overall design, code quality, user interfaces, and user experience. These applications typically offer many functionalities that consumers are neither aware of nor use.  Unfortunately, the market is fast approaching a state of “fat client native mobile apps” in which we could see a further divergence of users’ core requirements and developers’ fanciful creations. Indeed, even in the typical mobile apps that connect to a cloud or hosted application, developers are unable to grasp the real requirements of the end-user.

The reality is that mobile applications must have their sanity intact and offer functionalities that users will actually consume.

While designing mobile applications, developers and architects need to remove their traditional approach and segregate the functionalities into “must-have,” “should-have,” “good-to-have,” and “may-have.” But they must always keep top of mind that a must-have functionality for traditional access could be a “may-have” for mobile devices. Therefore, they need to see the application landscape through a different lens before deciding which functionalities should fall under which bracket. It goes without saying that this exercise must be performed from an end-user perspective.

Given that mobile apps is still a growing area with lots of yet to be answered questions, organizations need to be careful in adopting a mobile application strategy. It should, at bare minimum, address the following:

  • Relevant functionalities: Only the core features of an application should be available on its mobile avatar (at least to begin with). Once end-users are comfortable and there is an increase in demand for more functionality, newer features may be added. Moreover, the definition of “core features” on mobile may be very different than that for the desktops
  • Minimum learning curve: End-users need to comprehend, appreciate, and start liking a mobile application in a very short time (say two-five minutes). Beyond that, the chances of them looking at it again are very low

Successful mobile applications

  • Functioning features: When a mobile application is dependent on another system, data connectivity to the systems must be functional or performance will be hindered and the user experience spoiled
  • Easy to use: While this is an old horse in application development, the importance of ease of usage increases manifold with mobile platforms. Developers should focus not only on different mobile OSs, form factors, etc., but also on the intuitiveness of the interfaces and easy availability of key features (e.g., search).

While all the above may appear to be very generic and obvious, it’s not…believe me. I am seeing various buyer organizations struggling with evangelizing the adoption of, and technology provider’s inability to create, meaningful mobile apps. And in the meantime, they’re investing millions of dollars that are not delivering the returns.

Therefore, the crux of a successful enterprise mobile apps strategy is to KISS it…or, Keep it Simple and Sane!

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