Bimodal IT Is Essential to Successful Application Rationalization

"Application rationalization" is a label that applies to a broad range of initiatives designed to address the cost, risk and inflexibility of existing application portfolios. Although many organizations have recognized for years that they need to rationalize their application portfolios, very few success stories exist. Meanwhile, all of the imperatives that initially drove application rationalization initiatives still remain.
Many application rationalization initiatives failed because they set the wrong targets. A common mistake was to set a target for a reduction in the number of applications. As a result, initiatives focused on eliminating small, inexpensive applications while ignoring the core challenge: the large, complex application portfolio.

When IT organizations avoided that trap and sought to address the core challenge, they eventually recognized that application rationalization is only possible as a byproduct of business process standardization and simplification. However, very few business leaders have been willing to take on the disruptive business transformation required to deliver such process standardization and simplification. Without business leadership, the IT organization has been powerless to rationalize the large, complex application portfolio.
Despite the difficulties, the problems remain. In fact, the imperatives for change become stronger over time — but so do the inhibitors. There is no pain-free, "silver bullet" solution to the challenges inherent in large, complex and aging application portfolios. A radical transformation is necessary. The core of this transformation will be a move to bimodal IT.

http://www.gartner.com/document/3311518?ref=feed  

Weekly Blog 10

Sourcing executives must plan for smart-machine-based services to evolve within 18 to 24 months, and radically impact current or planned infrastructure outsourcing engagements. Smart machine capabilities must be contracted for in order to realize the full benefit of cost optimization enhancements.

Smart machine technology with IT operational automation will impact IT infrastructure services in the next two years. Many types of smart machine technologies exist that will address a number of delivery costs. Labor will be displaced with virtual agents, and the elements of failure will be addressed with predictive tools that eliminate problems before the environment is impacted. However, many organizations will be caught in a contract that will not allow them to take advantage of changes that will drive significantly better services at a much lower cost.

Smart machine functions that drive a more effective speech and text interface will provide additional market disruption, as the cost and quality impact to manage the infrastructure environment could be exponential.

Service levels currently are measures that are reasonable, based on the current use of human interactions and machine errors. With the advent of technology to replace the human factor and provide analytical-based predictive solutions to adjust to machine failure, the need for current levels of service will be replaced by higher levels of service, even to an ultimate point of no disruption. interactions and machine errors. With the advent of technology to replace the human factor and provide analytical-based predictive solutions to adjust to machine failure, the need for current levels of service will be replaced by higher levels of service, even to an ultimate point of no disruption. the need for current levels of service will be replaced by higher levels of service, even to an ultimate point of no disruption.

The cost savings impact will require significant investments in the automation technology. Thus, the benefit of having an automation platform to build off of will go a long way in allowing the market to adopt a standard. However, the standardization has a drawback in that it may take away some of the competitive advantage of the offerings. This resulting radical change in infrastructure service delivery will also produce a dichotomy in the market of the haves and the have-nots. The have-nots potentially will not be able to keep up with price reductions and eventually will be squeezed out of the market.
 the benefit of having an automation platform to build off of will go a long way in allowing the market to adopt a standard. However, the standardization has a drawback in that it may take away some of the competitive advantage of the offerings. This resulting radical change in infrastructure service delivery will also produce a dichotomy in the market of the haves and the have-nots. The have-nots potentially will not be able to keep up with price reductions and eventually will be squeezed out of the market. t it may take away some of the competitive advantage of the offerings. This resulting radical change in infrastructure service delivery will also produce a dichotomy in the market of the haves and the have-nots. The have-nots potentially will not be able to keep up with price reductions and eventually will be squeezed out of the market. lly will not be able to keep up with price reductions and eventually will be squeezed out of the market.
 
 the benefit of having an automation platform to build off of will go a long way in allowing the market to adopt a standard. However, the standardization has a t it may take away some of the competitive advantage of the offerings. This resulting radical change in infrastructure service delivery will also produce a dichotomy in the market of the haves and the have-nots. The
offerings. This resulting radical change in infrastructure service delivery will also produce a dichotomy in the market of the haves and the have-nots. The
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Week 9 - Engage the Business by Developing an Application Strategy Together

Application organizations struggle to keep up with demand from the business, which therefore sees IT as too costly and slow. Simply working through the backlog when there will never be resources to get it all done leaves both sides (the business and IT organization) frustrated. Basically, all application organizations need a prioritization mechanism to ensure the most important work for the enterprise gets done and the "nice to haves" or limited-value work goes to the end of the line.
Application organizations often avoid developing an application strategy, not knowing what one is, let alone what information to consider or what stakeholders to involve. It may be considered an annual IT planning exercise, executed by a small IT team (or worse, mostly outsourced to a consultant) and published to the world. Too often it is focused on technologies, platforms and tools, rather than on the business needs; therefore, it is ignored by the business.
At some point, application organizations wake up and realize they need a strategy. Gartner recently followed up with clients who inquired about application strategy two years ago, and we asked what triggered their decision to create one. Figure 1 shows that the most common reason is that the business is transforming itself and needs to transform the applications that support it.

Some organizations are quick to jump to a narrow strategy based on perceived technical goodness or cost control. How many have selected an ERP vendor for the back office, and then the CIO has issued an edict that all new applications will be bought from this same vendor? These one-size-fits-all strategies do not always meet business needs, creating friction and hampering performance. A thorough evaluation of the business trends and application needs of all stakeholders is required to form a strategy.
To be successful, the process and the participation across business and IT are more important than the output. An application strategy document is mainly a communication vehicle to capture the facts, lay out the options and set a proposed direction for discussions with stakeholders. It must continue to evolve as stakeholders and business strategies change and as new needs surface. An application strategy is simply a step-by-step road map for evolving the application portfolio, processes and organization to meet the strategic needs of the business, while minimizing the cost of building and maintaining the portfolio.
As part of the broader IT strategy, the application strategy must document the business facts and needs that affect application strategy. It also must outline what technical and methodology approaches will be used to deliver applications that meet the business needs, as well as provide the necessary flexibility and agility as the business strategy evolves. It should not be too technical or focus only on IT goals.

Reference
http://www.gartner.com/document/2993628?ref=solrAll&refval=170779361&qid=26bc0a81e487d0ba90e74452030b8975 

Week 8 - Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Strategies

This first Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Strategies takes off from where the "Hype Cycle for Virtualization, 2015" landed. The "hype" for virtualization with hypervisors is diminishing in this increasingly mature market. Rather than fade away, virtualization is being refreshed and reiterated with new bimodal use cases, continuing to abstract software from hardware at the host. Containers and microservices are evolving with Mode 2 technologies and applications that measure the consumption of resources, rather than provision. These are equivalent to a utility company charging for watts used, rather than calculating from volts and amps generated and supplied — creating a more granular resource control model.
The Nexus of Forces, through to the Internet of Things (IoT), is creating a continuous stream of new technologies requiring provisioning and orchestration, where old approaches fall short or are incomplete. The Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Strategies involves software-defined anything (SDx) infrastructures and data centers, which extend to machines, homes, adapters and sensors. This drives big data analytics — in-memory functions driving bigger storage pools and tiers, which, in turn, accelerate the growth of big data.
Infrastructure strategies support new modes of operation for infrastructure and operations (I&O), while accommodating traditional legacy ones. They also track existing mainstream technologies that can be classified as Mode 1, allowing the continuing evolution of Mode 2 (see "Infrastructure Agility Primer for 2016" ), and they encompass all forms of hybrid data center architecture, including private and public infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) cloud platforms.

Business Impact: The use of host-based controls in cloud computing environments is desirable as these can scale automatically as the workloads they are protecting spin up and down. Furthermore, the protection can move with the workload across on-premises and public cloud IaaS in hybrid data center configurations. Although nothing can materially change the balance in securing against system attacks, security control isolation is a worthwhile step forward.


http://www.gartner.com/document/3363317?ref=exploremq 

Week 7 - Using EA to Support a Palette of Business Strategy Approaches

In this week I have read about how EA to support of the Business Strategy Approaches. Enterprise architecture (EA) drives organizational change and transformation and the delivery of business outcomes. But what change and transformation means, and the outcomes being driven, will be different for each organization. Enterprise architecture has a range of tools, models and techniques to suit almost every situation. As organizations pursue different business strategies and outcomes — and often organizations pursue more than one strategy at a time; in different business units, for example — enterprise architecture, including its deliverables and approach, must be tailored to suit the strategy. 

Every organization defines a business strategy based on its environment, its vision for the future and how it views its competitive advantage. From that flow the priorities and business outcomes it pursues. Over the years, there have been many approaches to classifying a business strategy. In this research, we have built on these and our own surveys to identify five common business strategies we see our clients pursue (see Figure 1). Our aim is not to be definitive in categorizing business strategy, but to help enterprise architects think about how to tailor and align their EA practices. We will also identify five different roles EA plays in support of the business strategies.