Other Considerations
Although we have covered the four main areas of Next Generation IT solutions, there are three other key elements to consider: Open Source, Mobility and As a Service. Let’s tackle each of these to help complete the picture.
In the past, Open Source was viewed as something that looked interesting, but when it came to mainstream production, commercial applications won the battle in terms of support and ownership. Since the commercial products came with support and maintenance contracts, we had the proverbial “throat to choke” if something went wrong. However, the open source world started to make its mark over 12 years ago with the introduction of the Linux operating system. Although it took 4-5 years to establish, we would now consider Linux as one of the preferred operating systems for data centres and application hosting. If we leap frog to today, we are seeing a range of open source products hitting the market and being considered for key production-based workloads. One of the main areas is around Big Data and the introduction of Hadoop, developed out of Yahoo and matured through the Internet Service Providers. This open source product has revolutionised business analytics. With open source products like Hadoop, the risk of feeling disconnected from the developer / product owner or having no real support framework is now mitigated by vendors providing third-party consulting support for your implementations. So you have the look and feel of a commercial product with the flexibility and resources of a crowdsource-developed open source product.
Mobility is a key feature today for any application. How you push data and information to your workforce is critical to productivity. At the same time, collecting data from the mobile workforce is beneficial to business operations. Enabling people to have access to systems securely and quickly means that the workforce can always be online and can operate at, or close to, 100% of their in-office productivity. As business applications enable the mobile workforce to access sales data, ERP and CRM systems, we should also consider pushing information about system operations and threat analysis so that events can be handled pro-actively versus reactively.
As a Service can be nicely aligned to cloud delivery models. The reason for raising the As a Service factor is its valuable purchase model and innovation potential. Traditional purchase models are good for businesses with large Capex budgets, but these are few and far between nowadays. And even the Capex-rich business are still looking to spend wisely and have a more predictable commercial model. The As a Service model allows businesses to buy defined services at an agreed-upon unit rate, charged on a consumption or allocation basis, typically with minimum volume and time commitments. Once over the minimum levels, organisations can flex up and down their usage to meet the peaks and troughs of the business. An example is retailers who need to increase their online ordering systems during the holiday season. With a traditional Capex model the retail organisation would have to purchase IT systems to handle the highest utilisation rate; therefore, during quiet times (i.e., non-holiday seasons) the systems would be underutilised. The As a Service model frees up funds for the organisation to spend on new, innovative solutions that drive the business forward rather than maintain the status quo.
Conclusion: Hybrid Stacks and The Art of the Possible
There is no single solution stack that will address all your needs. Understanding this will allow you to think about each layer and what is needed to provide the right hosting platform, the right security and management services, and the right application delivery and development frameworks to meet the needs of the business process or question you are trying to resolve. The fact is, you will have a hybrid solution stack that combines public and private cloud solutions. Where possible, migrating to new, more agile platforms will provide future proofing and enable easier integration with other solutions. This makes good business sense, as every business must focus on maximizing the value of its applications and data, whether held internally or externally.
We started out by asking: What is Next Generation IT? Next Generation IT may be the latest buzz word, but what is new today is old tomorrow. That said, we can define Next Generation IT by focusing on some key areas:
- The adoption of Cloud technologies and services is pivotal to Next Generation IT, whether for infrastructure, platform or business application services.
- Cyber Security is always a threat. Ensure that the solutions and services you buy or build provide adequate levels of protection for your business and your clients.
- To help businesses make better decisions, the ability to mine and query a wide variety of Big Data is critical to achieving better insight into business operations and direction.
- Mobility should be a consideration across your application landscape, enabling the workforce and client base to operate from any location and feel connected to the business. This is essential in today’s world.
- In order to achieve these business gains, enterprises must move forward with Application Modernisation, which should be treated as a driver of business change.
When taking on this journey, work with system integrators and service providers who can work with confidence across public and private cloud services, are able to operate from the Business Process layer to the Infrastructure layer, and can consider the service management and security wrappers that are needed. As open source products mature, consider them as a way to avoid vendor lock-in, which is key to having a more flexible and agile future. Above all, talk to your business not about the restrictions of legacy ball-and-chain infrastructure but about the art of the possible with Next Generation IT solutions.
Link to Part 1