We all agree that Technology is changing faster than ever. Applications, Data and Infrastructure are becoming increasingly interconnected. Worldwide there is now a renewed interest from organisations to reassess their IT stack.
Welcome to Boundary-less systems. A world where people, machines, consumers, et al interconnect.
Sounds fancy when you read it.
With rapid advancements in technology, application landscapes need to scale alongside. As technology evolves, so must systems. Machine Learning and AI are now powering humongous amounts of data. Computing power has quadrupled
Data is now easily accessible than ever. This leads to renewed focus on security and trust. The boundaries between applications and infrastructure are disappearing
But not everyone is ready for this. Enterprises are still reliant on their legacy applications that are not designed to scale at this rate. And thus, the constant need to automate, optimise and modernise.
So, what do such Enterprises do to get to Boundary-less systems?
Break down the “barriers”
Build a series of modular components that can be used as business needs evolves. The advantage is that it reduces the dependency with legacy applications and acts as a medium between in-house/on-prem and cloud/digital systems. Integrations should be tight.
“Cloud-first” should be on the radar
Cloud is the beginning of a journey. And the journey needs continuous innovation at scale. Boundary-less becomes a reality here
Design, Disrupt, Develop
The three Ds. Why is Change Management always a challenge? It is because the designs and frameworks are not scalable. Thus, lot of time and investments go into “managing” the “change”.
Always design to scale and be flexible. Interoperability should be the key driving force
Stop “patchwork”
It is not easy to play catch up with Technology. Many legacy applications are not designed to keep up. And thus, many organisations shy away from being early adopters. They are content with patching their applications with the hope that it will support new businesses-at-scale. What is often overlooked is that the underlying technology may not be game in helping them scale
Organisations must have a roadmap for Application Modernisation. Building flexible, human-centric systems is now more necessary than ever.
Keep your Talent pool relevant
Investing in the talent-pool is a must. Continuous learning programs should allow people to adopt quickly. Organisations have the constant challenge of having a “technology-obsolete” workforce. This is a key differentiation. And thus, the large organisations find competition from new entrants whose workforce is future ready
Organisations must get to a point where their workforce seamlessly integrate infrastructure, development tools, programming languages, and machine learning, along with understanding the business landscape.
Outdated Talent strategies should be shown the door.
Continuous learning either via classroom or virtual mediums is the key
Don’t lose sight of the “Human” element
Technology advancements are becoming human centric. Designs are becoming intuitive and is tightly aligned to human behaviour and responses to applications and systems. Keeping it simple is the new mantra.
Don’t design for problems. Design for people
The trick is to adapt technology to humans and not humans to technology. Personalisation cannot be overlooked anymore
What next?
Boundary-less systems are the future. Be an early adopter. Overcome the common pitfalls earlier than later.
What are your thoughts?
References
- Accessible PDF Accenture-Future-Systems-2018-Full-Report
- A Vision for the Future of Systems — Microsoft Research
- The future of system architecture | CIO
- Opinion: Erasing tech boundaries for better business
Article by : Devarajan Mukkai Chief Development & Delivery officer at Forsys Inc