Topic 1: Digital Disruption

When we hear “Digital Disruption” we tend to think of emergent companies who’ve made big waves in mature markets — Uber, Airbnb and Peloton come to mind as examples of companies who’ve turned their respective markets on their heads. These companies created new digital experiences to cultivate exponential growth in users and revenue by taking a customer-centric approach (Agarwal, 2020).

But how can other businesses make their own transformational impact? By coming up with new ways of creating exceptional customer experiences; creating new business models, products or services; or finding ways to drastically improve operational efficiencies, both small and midsized businesses can win the digital transformation game (Carlson, 2014).

Easier said than done. However, it’s never been easier for companies to build a foundational enterprise technology stack that is able to deliver solutions that are resilient, flexible and maintainable. Organizations which focus on enabling a stack with these three foundational pieces in place will be well-positioned to deliver disruptive experiences within their industry:

Microservices
Microservices are a self-contained piece of business functionality with a clear interface. A microservice architecture decomposes large applications – with all the functionality built-in – into smaller, purpose-driven services that communicate with each other through common REST APIs (Singh, et al, 2020). Therefore it allows organizations developing software to grow fast, and big, as well as use off the shelf services easier.

Packaged Business Capabilities (PBCs)
The next level of maturity after microservices, PBCs are encapsulated software components that represent a well-defined business capability. These are components that can stand on its own but are also the building blocks of larger application suites, all of which are connected via microservices. Some examples in your enterprise may include an ecommerce shopping cart, an identity provider (login/registration) or a site search provider, among others.

When intelligently assembled, PCBs allow an architect to choose from an assortment of capabilities to quickly compose an integrated, best-in-class solution using the best parts of their ecommerce, CRM and other cloud-based software providers.

Clicks, Not Code
Finally, focus on solutions that can be enabled using “clicks, not code” — another way of describing configurable applications which doesn’t require heavy customization or custom-built software. Not only will you not be dependent on slow moving IT resources to deliver solutions, but you’ll also be able to improve adoption within the business since these capabilities can be easily configured by business users to drive value more quickly.

Conclusion
With these building blocks in place, companies will be able to leverage their ecosystem of solutions to deliver best-of-breed capabilities which can combine to produce disruptive experiences, or at the very least deliver faster value to their businesses.

Composable Solutions

Building Blocks of the Enterprise Stack (Above)
Source: Natis, Y. Feb 11, 2020. Strategic Architecture Roadmap for Composable Enterprise Applications. Gartner. https://www.gartner.com/document/3996845?ref=solrAll&refval=291687894

References:

Agarwal, N. (Feb 14, 2020). Digital Disruption: Beyond Big Names And Budgets. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/02/14/digital-disruption-beyond-big-names-and-budgets%E2%80%AF/?sh=3df1c6978075

Carlson, L. (Sept. 18, 2014). 4 ways Docker fundamentally changes application development. InfoWorld. https://www.infoworld.com/article/2607128/4-ways-docker-fundamentally-changes-application-development.html

Singh, A., O’Neill, Mark (July 31, 2020). Hype Cycle for Application Architecture and Development, 2020. Gartner. https://www.gartner.com/document/3988288?ref=solrAll&refval=291687894&toggle=1

Companies have migrated to their stack to the cloud for many of its obvious benefits, including improved scale and agility, helping architects deliver business-first, composable enterprise applications. Another key benefit of the cloud is better security.

When a company with enterprise scale is running tens if not hundreds of applications, they would be heavily burdened by having to provide and monitor security for all of them. Instead, by leveraging the security capabilities of its cloud providers who are often better resourced to carefully monitor the security of their own applications, companies do not need to invest their own limited IT resources on security and can instead focus on holding their vendors accountable for security and any arising security issues.

Additional benefits include:

Cloud-based Security Monitoring Tools
Companies who have adopted cloud best-practices, including implementing microservices, have experienced enhanced security by building an infrastructure that can monitor interactions, manage traffic flow among other security benefits (Thomas, et al. ,October 2019). These user-friendly tools allow business users to monitor security activities and don’t require developers or code-level involvement.

According to a survey by RapidScale, a provider of cloud-based security solutions, 94% of businesses reported they saw an improvement in security after switching to the cloud.

Patch Management
Security patches need to be frequently applied to software applications. Because of this, patch management can be a tedious task for IT admins. And since not all small to medium-sized businesses have the resources to carry out this task, it can eventually put their systems and data at risk (Dennis, 2018). Cloud-based companies have the teams and resources in place to perform these tasks on behalf of their clients.

References:

Thomas, Natis, O’Neill (October 28, 2019). Top 3 Trends in Application Architecture That Enable Digital Business. Gartner. https://www.gartner.com/document/3970797?ref=solrAll&refval=291687894

Dennis, Jeff (June 25, 2018). Three unbeatable security advantages of cloud-based solutions for your business. CloudTech. https://cloudcomputing-news.net/news/2018/jun/25/three-unbeatable-security-advantages-cloud-based-solutions-your-business/