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Digital Transformation is changing the way old and new businesses work. And this is true for all industry verticals. 

So, how does it affect the system integrator (SI) and service provider (SP) markets?

As with any transformation, Digital Transformation introduces change and managing change has always been difficult. But, as we will see, having a strategy and an execution plan will prove to be the new business frontier for System Integrators and Service Providers.

It all begins with an A-ha moment. Sometime back, we were talking with a testing SP, and discussing the potential ways in which Digital Transformation driven by DevOps would help them create new markets and new business models. While discussing the Service Virtualization technology, a key for DevOps, we explained how it could help reduce defects and help with better testing and hence better software. “So, it can work for Performance Testing?” was a follow up. And our answer was “Yes, why not!”

For many of us, the idea of a Jetson-esque connected world has been little more than a pipe dream over the past several decades. But now that dream is quickly becoming a reality, as the Internet of Things looks set to hit escape velocity in 2016 and beyond. 

“Market opportunity for big data technologies and services will grow to nearly $41 billion by 2018. And a huge part of this opportunity will be owned by Hadoop.”

Yet with the IoT rapidly growing and becoming a normal part of our day-to-day lives, the amount of data that is now being transmitted ad collected is unprecedented in human history. In fact, according to CA Technologies, the market opportunity will be owned by Hadoop.

When a ship carrying Syrian refugees sank off the coast of Lesbos on October 28, 2015, the world saw a desperate need and overwhelming sadness and tragedy. It was a mounting geopolitical crisis – and, if the many thousands of volunteers were any indicator, the world wanted to help.

Lesbos is a symbol of the opportunity and challenge in front of us today. On one hand, thanks to online news, people became immediately aware of the crisis unfolding, and many were spurred to action. On the other hand, not all of that potential help was realized. Government and charitable resources weren't activated to their fullest capacity, people's skills weren't adequately deployed, and the crisis continues to mount.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, often called Industry 4.0, is imminent. We are living through a pace of technology advances like never before, and in this new era, contextual machines and materials, powered by software that connected by application programming interfaces (APIs), will drive change at an unprecedented level. For a moment, let's consider a world in which all of that breakthrough technology is maximized. Where the skills of our diverse global population are used to their maximum efficiency. And where governments operate without friction.

Stephen Miles, CA Technologies' Asia Pacific & Japan chief technology officer, said the study looked at how businesses were surviving disruption, leading change and winning in the current application economy. 

"In today's application economy, digital transformation has become pervasive in every aspect of business," Miles said. "Across Asia Pacific and Japan, organisations are increasingly leveraging modern technology and communications to transform one or more key aspects of the business to achieve a state of digital readiness."

"Applications are becoming the primary modes for consumers to connect with businesses," he said. "With a high device penetration rate and rising smartphone subscriptions, the region is well-poised to leverage the application economy."

 In a new report, Gartner evaluated the vendor's CA Project and Portfolio Management (CA PPM), the first solution of its kind with a data warehouse that centralises individual IT portfolios to give management greater insight. 

In the report, IIPA vendors were evaluated on two main criteria: an ability to execute and completeness of vision.

According to Gartner, “Leading products aggressively strive to integrate the planned execution of change to the IT footprint in response to the needs https://channellife.co.nz/story/gartner-recognises-ca-technologies-magic-quadrant-leader/ of the business, using portfolio management as a foundation.

With software now squarely at the center of the business, organizations are digitally transforming by embracing agile practices and new technologies that deliver innovations to market quickly and securely.

“Businesses are facing greater urgency to commit to their digital transformation journey in a bid to stay ahead of the competition in today’s application economy. Across Asia Pacific, businesses will need to embrace agile practices to keep pace with evolving market demands,” said Kenneth Arredondo, President & General Manager, Asia Pacific & Japan, CA Technologies.

CA predicts five major trends will feature prominently in the way business and IT are run, apps are developed, and data is managed

In a recent study conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services and sponsored by CA Technologies, researchers identify specific actions being taken or considered by businesses to compete more effectively. It also provides insight into how radically business models are likely to change.

“Across Asia Pacific and Japan, organizations are increasingly leveraging modern technology and communications to transform one or more key aspects of the business to achieve a state of digital readiness,” said Stephen Miles, chief technology officer, Asia Pacific & Japan of CA Technologies.  

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Disruption and the importance of software

Nearly half (44%) of respondents expect their industries to experience significant digital disruption over the next three years; more than a fifth (22%) say that significant disruption has already taken place.  Of note, greater than half (58%) expect that their business model in three years will be “radically” different from what it was three years ago.  Recognizing the pervasiveness and pace of change, about two-thirds (66%) of respondents expressed the view that their companies’ future depends on the quality of their software. 

While there are a number of causes of disruption, changes in customer behavior and expectations was the driver most frequently cited by survey participants (46%).  The next most cited driver is disruptive new competitors (25%), which underscores the importance of constantly recognizing and adapting to new trends in order to stay relevant.

From recent conversations I have been having, it is clear that DevOps is top of mind for many. Out of the 40 or so customers I have spoken with recently, the overwhelming majority brought up DevOps during our conversation. They believe they ought to do DevOps, but they wanted me to help them define it and point the best way to get started.

From my experience, many claim to be “doing DevOps,” but when you drill in, you’ll find wildly varying degrees of what this means. If a team is doing anything at all within the larger DevOps value chain, such as testing their software, they often believe they’re doing DevOps.

Our latest survey on the implementation of DevOps points out how easy it is for companies to say they’re doing DevOps but how difficult it is to do DevOps effectively. There’s widespread agreement among the respondents on all the different things that should get done, but very few people are making significant progress in most of them. If you ask about specific DevOps success factors, very few people are doing them.

Penned by Otto Berkes, Chief Technology Officer at CA Technologies, the predictions relate to container proliferation, agile security, analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain technology.

According to Berkes, IoT is a high-potential technology and is at a very young stage. He said as IoT moves mainstream in 2016, the “identity of things” will gain importance – the “identity” of a device and any data flow to it must be confirmed and trusted.

He added that the development of IoT sensors and smart devices and their interaction with us in critical areas, such as the healthcare and automotive industries, will help simplify and improve customer experiences.

Coming to the topic of blockchain technology, Berkes said that it was a key word in many startups two years ago. He said that the technology is poised for renewal, particularly when the predicted increase in IoT is taken into account along with the need to engage securely among devices and have a record of those engagements.

Increasing complexity with the cloud

“The threat landscape will continue to become more complex. Cyberattacks will target the weakest links like apps and users, and the movement to the cloud will add on to the complexity,” said Mohan Veloo, VP of Technology, Asia Pacific, F5 Networks.

Kenneth Arredondo, President & General Manager, Asia Pacific & Japan, CA Technologies predicted that “agile security” will be up front and centre in an organization. “Security can no longer be an afterthought. It has to be baked into every aspect of application design, development and deployment. Accelerating development cycles means security must be in on the ground floor of any project or development process. Today’s breach rates, financial impact and board- level attention will demand security’s starring role,” he added.

Increasing complexity with the cloud

“The threat landscape will continue to become more complex. Cyberattacks will target the weakest links like apps and users, and the movement to the cloud will add on to the complexity,” said Mohan Veloo, VP of Technology, Asia Pacific, F5 Networks.

Kenneth Arredondo, President & General Manager, Asia Pacific & Japan, CA Technologies predicted that “agile security” will be up front and centre in an organization. “Security can no longer be an afterthought. It has to be baked into every aspect of application design, development and deployment. Accelerating development cycles means security must be in on the ground floor of any project or development process. Today’s breach rates, financial impact and board- level attention will demand security’s starring role,” he added.

- See more at: http://www.convergenceasia.com/story/2016-trends-security#sthash.zbJgNkuf.dpuf

Increasing complexity with the cloud

“The threat landscape will continue to become more complex. Cyberattacks will target the weakest links like apps and users, and the movement to the cloud will add on to the complexity,” said Mohan Veloo, VP of Technology, Asia Pacific, F5 Networks.

Kenneth Arredondo, President & General Manager, Asia Pacific & Japan, CA Technologies predicted that “agile security” will be up front and centre in an organization. “Security can no longer be an afterthought. It has to be baked into every aspect of application design, development and deployment. Accelerating development cycles means security must be in on the ground floor of any project or development process. Today’s breach rates, financial impact and board- level attention will demand security’s starring role,” he added.

- See more at: http://www.convergenceasia.com/story/2016-trends-security#sthash.zbJgNkuf.dpuf

Increasing complexity with the cloud

“The threat landscape will continue to become more complex. Cyberattacks will target the weakest links like apps and users, and the movement to the cloud will add on to the complexity,” said Mohan Veloo, VP of Technology, Asia Pacific, F5 Networks.

Kenneth Arredondo, President & General Manager, Asia Pacific & Japan, CA Technologies predicted that “agile security” will be up front and centre in an organization. “Security can no longer be an afterthought. It has to be baked into every aspect of application design, development and deployment. Accelerating development cycles means security must be in on the ground floor of any project or development process. Today’s breach rates, financial impact and board- level attention will demand security’s starring role,” he added.

- See more at: http://www.convergenceasia.com/story/2016-trends-security#sthash.zbJgNkuf.dpuf

DevOps seems to be the hot methodology of the day, but how far along has it come in organizations? Well, let's just say many DevOps efforts are still works in progress.

Photo: HubSpot

The survey of 1,442 senior IT and business executives, released by CA Technologies, finds only 20 percent of organizations that have attempted to implement DevOps have fully deployed it, the survey finds. But it's well worth the additional effort. The research also found that these "advanced" DevOps adopters were more likely to report that their digital initiatives contributed to competitiveness, customer retention and top- and bottom-line results.

In DevOps, the creativity and pace of developers is coordinated -- and automated as much as possible -- with the demanding testing, QA and release schedules overseen by operations people. Thus, an effective DevOps effort requires cultural change -- with the right mix of education, skills, collaboration, enablers and controls.

4. Mainframes Are Cool Again
The latest surveys from CA Technologies, SyncSort and others show the mainframe enjoying a renaissance. As a transaction platform, there's nothing finer than a z13 from IBM for handling the starburst of transactions generated by every idiot with a smartphone ordering widgets from an app. And there is no more affordable way to host hundreds or thousands of virtual machines (VMs) than to use the platform that is, by definition, a cloud that can allocate and deallocate resources to applications and VMs with agility, resiliency and dependability. The only stumbling block in IBM's story is where the smart folks are going to come from to operate the big iron. But that might be a problem confronting x86 server environments even before it becomes an issue in the mainframe world.

There you go. Safe predictions, all. And, like a broken watch, they're likely to be correct at least a couple of times a year. Have a safe and happy 2016.

As my article on CA from a few months ago explained, Berkes is one of the drivers of CA’s own transformation – but that fact alone doesn’t qualify him as a digital influencer. In fact, Berkes brings some serious digital cred to the table, as one of the founders of Microsoft MSFT +3.85%’s Xbox video game empire as well as a progenitor of the HBO GO streaming video service.

Following Berkes’ path from Microsoft to HBO and on to CA provides a fascinating study in how to build digital influence among today’s software-driven enterprises.

At this moment there are over two million apps available for download, and as many as 60,000 new apps added per month (link is external). But with countless new additions and tremendous growth expected over the years, thousands of applications are also being removed (link is external) to never return – entering the app graveyard.

Applications have evolved to become more than just games and social networking tools used solely for enjoyment. People now depend on countless applications on a daily basis. From banking to airline apps and fitness trackers to GPS, it’s safe to say applications have become a necessity to many. As a result of this shift, businesses now depend on a successful app to build brand loyalty and increase revenue – where those whose apps fail become irrelevant. The average cost to build a typical consumer app is $50,000 - $150,000 (link is external) – money you don’t want to lose. So in this highly competitive marketplace, what can you do to ensure that your app doesn’t end up in the app graveyard?

Know Your End Users

Most apps are abandoned because they ultimately fail to meet the users’ needs. Understanding what your users want is an essential factor to success. While this is no secret, it is still a place where many apps tend to fall short. Consumer feedback needs to be taken into account regularly and with that, continuous improvements should be made.

If an app hasn’t been updated in months, it’s highly likely that users have already discovered the next best thing, leaving your app in the dust – and the cost to your business can be detrimental. Not only do you lose existing customers, you risk losing potential new customers as well.

While that may be true, it’s hard to argue that success wouldn’t be easier to achieve with executive support and having the whole organization working together in harmony toward the same objectives.

Rally Software–now part of CA–developed the Big Room Planning approach to foster broader support and cooperation:

Many organizations—or even teams within organizations—are attempting to embrace DevOps. The operational and strategic advantages of DevOps over traditional business methodologies make it a virtual business imperative. One of the prevailing ideas about DevOps is that it’s about a culture shift more than tools and principles—and a big part of that culture shift is making sure everyone is on the same page.

Rally Software—which was acquired by CA in May of 2015—provides software and services to help customers succeed with Agile development. One of the main components of the services side is to educate customers about the importance of working in harmony and guiding customers through a process called Big Room Planning. DevOps is a natural extension of Agile development principles to the rest of the business, so Big Room Planning can be an effective tool for DevOps just as it is for Agile development planning.

In the wake of Volkswagen’s latest revelations surrounding its diesel emissions scandal, in which defeat devices and software were used to bypass environmental regulations, some are focusing on the negatives associated with software. Now phony emissions results have joined Internet bullying and electronic identity theft on the ever-expanding list of digital plagues that are corroding modern society. Yet that’s only a small part of the story. The bigger story is the remarkable degree to which software has become central to our lives and an important part of the global economy.

In today’s application economy, software runs everything from giant enterprises to our smartphones. It has upended the world of travel. The way we bank has undergone a complete overhaul as digital channels have begun to dominate the market. Teller windows and bricks-and-mortar travel agencies are becoming a thing of the past — in the same vein rotary telephones and floppy disk drives have. Most of us now buy plane tickets online, make credit card payments online, and, increasingly, even order food online.

image: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Gregoire-Mike-crop-High-Res-600x840.jpg

Companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, SAP, Uber, Oracle, Airbnb, Amazon, IBM, Salesforce, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay and CA – to name a few – would not have been possible without software. These 14 companies alone employ more than a million people, and their revenues add up to more than the total GDP of Austria.
Read more at http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/software/ca-technologies-mike-gregoire-software-182503#zQaOmyHDwethgD2g.99

Businesses are facing greater urgency to commit to their digital transformation journey in a bid to stay ahead of the competition in today’s application economy. Across Asia Pacific, businesses will need to embrace agile practices to keep pace with evolving market demands,” said Kenneth Arredondo, President & General Manager, Asia Pacific & Japan, CA Technologies.

CA Technologies predicts five major trends will feature prominently in the way business and IT are run, apps are developed, and data is managed:

1. For flexible, scalable development, bring in the containers

2016 will be the year that organizations take IT complexity by storm, using containers and microservices to simplify the current software architecture and development process.  Container technology is set to shape the future of software development standards, making it easier and more efficient for developers to move an application from one system to another. Microservices will focus on enabling smaller services to be deployed independently, delivering new features continuously without the need to wait until a new version of an entire application is ready.

Otto Berkes, CTO at CA Technologies, asserts that "Bitcoin-born Blockchain shows it can be the storage of choice for sensors and IoT." I hardly fancy myself an expert on blockchain technology, so I asked CA for a little more explanation around this one. A gracious reply came back, explaining that "IoT devices using this approach can transact directly and securely with each other...such a peer-to-peer configuration can eliminate potential bottlenecks and vulnerabilities." That helped a bit, and it incidentally shines a light on just how early-stage IoT technology still is, with respect to security and distributed processing efficiencies.

"To me, digital transformation at a fundamental level means using using digital technology and in particular software as a source of new business growth and innovation," said Otto Berkes, chief technology officer at CA Technologies.

No longer just an enabler or a part of the back office, software becomes a core driver of the business as a whole, Berkes added. It's a shift in software's focus from operations to creating new value, enabling companies to do things like create new apps on the fly to respond to evolving customer needs.